The Meaning of the Head in High Medieval Culture

Abstract

While the ancient world was rife with various forms of execution, very few of them were capital in the sense that they killed people by separating head from body. The ancient Germans, said Tacitus, either hanged their criminals for publicity, or buried them in swamps under hurdles, for shame and silence. In the Greco-Roman tradition, we hear of fires, crucifixions, wild beasts, starving to death, garroting, burning, throwing off rocks – but very little about hanging or beheading, which were the most common forms of execution throughout the high medieval and post-medieval periods. By the fifth century, only two of the classical capital penalties for the non-citizen and the slaves remain in the Theodosian code – the fire and the sack, for parricides. The arguments for the preeminence of the head and the brain in the twelfth century come simultaneously from several different sources. Keywords:ancient Germans; Greco-Roman tradition; high medieval periods; Theodosian code; twelfth century