Trial by Battle in France and England

Abstract

Trial by battle was a medieval European form of legal proof in which difficult lawsuits were decided by a single combat between two duellists before a judge. This dissertation surveys the history of trial by battle in the French-speaking regions of the European continent and England, concentrating on the period between roughly 1050 and 1350 when it was most practiced. Chapter One examines the origins of the procedure and the earliest references to it in the legal codes of the early Middle Ages. The second chapter discusses the courts in which it could be used and the gradual process by which higher courts reserved the privilege of holding judicial duels. Chapter Three examines the nature of the suits in which trial by battle could be used, while Chapter Four looks at the litigants who participated in it, finding that not only knights, but also poor men, could fight judicial duels, while women, clergy, Jews, the young, the elderly, the disabled and certain kinds of kin enjoyed varying forms and levels of exemption from them. The fifth chapter traces the steps involved in a lawsuit leading to proof by battle, while the sixth one describes the procedures on the duelling field and the consequences of winning and losing a judicial duel. Chapter Seven traces the history of opposition to trial by battle and concludes with its gradual decline and disappearance. The honour and shame of medieval litigants, and the reputations which both upheld these conditions and resulted from them, form an ongoing theme in this discussion. Trials by battle, both actual and threatened, were above all events that challenged and re-established their participants’ status and reputation in their communities.