The Fall and Rise of Rome
The Fall and Rise of Rome
Compensation, Atonement, and Deterrence in the Early Middle Ages
This chapter traces the various strands of thought and practice that formed the fabric of punishment in western Europe. In the early Middle Ages, punishment was largely retroactive, imposing fines and various forms of penance for crimes and sins that had already been committed. From the eleventh century onward, however, a renaissance in the study of Roman law ushered in an era of penal deterrence which was largely concerned with preventing crimes in the future, both by making individual offenders less likely to reoffend and by dissuading others though the example of their punishment. Beneath a preoccupation with penal deterrence, which survives to this day, vestiges of earlier conceptions of compensation and atonement have nevertheless endured.
Keywords: punishment, crime, sin, penance, compensation, atonement, deterrence, fines, Roman law
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