‘Of Good and Ill Repute’: The Limits of Community Tolerance

Abstract

Abstract Not all crimes, trespasses, slanders, and irritations are prosecuted or end in some sort of settlement; this is a given in studying the latitude of social behavior in enforcing laws, getting satisfaction, or even registering disapproval. To be labeled “of ill repute” or “of no account” in medieval society or in any society implies that the person has committed a violation of accepted standards of social interaction and has stepped beyond the bounds of permissible behavior. Labeling is complex, because members of the medieval nobility committing “fur-collar crime” might have had considerable leeway to oppress their neighbors and countryside with violence and legal violations before they offended so flagrantly that the king had to reprimand and control them. On the other hand, a woman who was caught without appropriate attire and without the proper escort outside the milieu of her daily life hazarded the label “a woman of ill repute.” To have the reputation of being of “good repute,” on the other hand, was a sufficient reason for jurors to acquit suspects. Gender, class, social status, wealth, connections, bribes, friends, and community all played a role in how quickly or how permanently a person’s reputation could be damaged, but so too did unwritten and sometimes written codes of behavior that determined who was of good repute and who was not. Medieval sermons, advice books, manuals of penance, ballads, laws, legal treatises, court records, and city and guild ordinances drew lines between good and bad behavior, but in practice dichotomies of behavior were less common than a range of actions that damaged a person’s good name. Social regulation and stigmatization were so complex that no simple measure explains how people arrived at their decisions about condemnation and exoneration or what behavior moved a person beyond community tolerance. This chapter looks at a variety of measurements expressing the limits of medieval community tolerance.