Author: Julian Calcagno
Calcagno, Julian, 2025 Honour and Shame in Early Medieval English Legal Systems, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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The early medieval English legal system consisted of evolving customary law (æ), royal judgements (domas), penitential law (poenitentiale). This thesis explores the development of this complex system by analysing the concepts of honour and shame using legal evidence written in Old English and Latin from the seventh century to the eleventh century. It explains how the promotion of written law reflected an idealised reconciliatory and punitive legal system, in which honour could be preserved or shame imposed. The influence of these concepts in law stems from how the legal texts navigate around ideal outcomes of justice. This principal argument of this thesis is that shame became an increasingly central principle in the ideal administration of punishment, as kings sought to merge traditional honour-based justice with Christian ideals of internalised shame, sin, and the pursuit of redemption. Notably, however, while early English law codes appear to increasingly impose shame, the overall framework of honour remained mostly consistent. Both phenomena persisted as ideals in the legal system well throughout the pre-Conquest period.
Despite significant recent strides made in research on early medieval English attitudes to honour, the concept of shame has received far less attention. While shame has been the recent focus in studies on ecclesiastical discourse, particularly in hagiography, homilies, and other religious sources, it is often overlooked as a mechanism of social control in early medieval English legal systems. To address this oversight, this thesis adopts a diachronic study of early medieval English legal system, and draws on examples from royal law codes, penitential literature, lawsuits, and literary sources, to illustrate the shift from a primarily reconciliatory system, centring on honour-based justice, to a stronger punitive system focused more closely on shame-based justice. In doing so, it is concerned not so much with examining how these laws were implemented across their kingdoms of origin in historical practice, but rather, with understanding what royal and penitential legal texts reveal about broader cultural ideas and elite mentalities concerning how justice should ideally be administered.
Keywords: Anglo-Saxon England, Early Medieval English Law, Anglo-Saxon Law Codes, Anglo-Saxon Law, Honour, Shame.
Subject: English thesis
Thesis type: Doctor of Philosophy
Completed: 2025
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Dr Erin Sebo