202 crime, punishment, and the courts
raided by the GOTHSin 268, the VANDALSin 457, and
the SLAVSin 623. ARABSoccupied it briefly in 674, and
in about 827 Arabs expelled from CÓRDOBAand reset-
tled in ALEXANDRIAmade their way to Crete. They took
over the island, establishing Chandax as their capital.
Crete became a base of operations for raids throughout
the AEGEANuntil 961, when it was taken back by the
future Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II Phokas (r.
963–969). The island remained in Byzantine possession
until the Fourth Crusade’s conquest of CONSTANTINOPLE
in 1204, when it was awarded to Boniface of Montferrat
(ca. 1150–1207). He sold it to VENICE, which had some
difficulty in taking over the island, but eventually it
became a source of a significant amount of income for
Venice.
There were numerous revolts against the Venetian
and Latin or Catholic administration by the Greeks on
Crete. Eventually a rapprochement allowed Venice to
hold the island until 1669.
Further reading:David Holton, ed., Literature and
Society in Renaissance Crete(Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1991); Sally McKee, Uncommon Dominion:
Venetian Crete and the Myth of Ethnic Purity(Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Elisavet A.
Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade: Venetian Crete and the
Emirates of Menteshe and Aydin (1300–1415)(Venice: Isti-
tuto ellenico di studi bizantini e postbizantini di Venezia
per tutti i paesi del mondo, 1983).
crime, punishment, and the courts The administra-
tion of JUSTICEin terms of crime, punishment, and the
courts in the Middle Ages was carried out in several ways
and forms. This was because of the multiple and divided
nature of justiciary power and its exercise. Civil jurisdic-
tion was not the same as that of criminal. There were
courts that could exercise either high or low justice.
There were secular or lay courts and ecclesiastical courts.
High justice could administer the death penalty and
much higher fines than courts of low justice could apply.
From the 12th century, there was a great increase in the
professionalization and learned study of the law in uni-
versities and at the INNS OFCOURT.
The individual could be subject to ecclesiastical,
seigniorial or manorial courts, and royal or princely
courts. Trials would be adjudged according to the status
of the culprit or on political connections or circum-
stances. The procedures and conceptualizations of crimes
and punishments of these courts would be governed by
barbarian, customary, common, Roman, canon, manorial,
and feudal law. These laws, their interpretations, and pro-
cedures changed over time during the Middle Ages. The
administration of justice could be delegated by a
monarch or pope. It could be fiscally lucrative, thus
linked with political status or patronage. For a secular
holder of a delegated right of administration of justice, to
be able to condemn people to death was considered a
reflection of status and even of nobility and a place in the
true hierarchy of power.JURISDICTIONAL CONFLICT
Exact jurisdictions for specific crimes were not clear and
were much debated, giving ample space for conflict
among monarchs, popes, urban societies, and princes
throughout the Middle Ages. The jurisdiction of these
overlapping courts was dependent in part on the nature
of the crime but also on the relative strength of those in
political control of a society. If a town or a prince had
more control of a locality, ecclesiastical courts might see
considerably fewer cases. The clergy were supposed to be
tried only in ecclesiastical courts, but some regimes were
able to exert jurisdiction over them for serious crimes.
Ecclesiastical courts could not administer the death
penalty, even in cases of unrepentant heresy. Those
judged guilty of capital offenses would be turned over to
the lay courts for the dispensing of capital punishment.
Throughout the Middle Ages there was constant tension
between powerful people who were merely exercising pri-
vate revenge and the intervention of the state to control
the law and sometimes to protect the interests of those of
lesser status and relative power.
See alsoBRACTON,HENRY OF;CLARENDON,CONSTITU-
TIONS OF;CORPUS IURIS CIVILIS;FEUDALISM AND FEUDAL
INSTITUTIONS; JUSTICE; LAW, CANON AND ECCLESIASTICAL;
MANORS AND MANORIAL LORDSHIP; NOBILITY AND NOBLES;
OUTLAWRY;PARLEMENT OFPARIS; POLITICAL THEORY AND
TREATISES; POLITICAL STRUCTURE.
Further reading: John Bellamy, Crime and Public
Order in England in the Later Middle Ages(London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1973); David Chambers and
Trevor Dean, Clean Hands and Rough Justice: An Investi-
gating Magistrate in Renaissance Italy(Ann Arbor: The
University of Michigan Press, 1997); John H. Langbein,
Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance: England, Germany,
France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1974); Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime
and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice(New York: Oxford
University Press, 1985); Laura Ikins Stern, The Criminal
Law System of Medieval and Renaissance Florence(Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).Crimea, khanate of The khanate of Crimea was
founded between 1426 and 1430 by a descendant of
JENGHIZKHAN. His successors ruled as Turkish vassals
over the Crimean peninsula and the vast steppe territory
north of the BLACKSEAbetween the Dnieper and the
Don until 1783, when the khanate was annexed by the
Russians.
The first issue for the earlier survival of the khanate
was its relationship with the GOLDENHORDEand later the
Great Horde. In the period 1430–1502 the khanate had to