Social Memory, Reputation and the Politics of Death in the Medieval Irish Lordship

✍ Scribed by Joanna MacGugan PhD

Publisher: Four Courts Press
Year: 2023
Tongue: English
Leaves: 207
Category: Library

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis

Stories of murderous monks, tavern brawls, robberies gone wrong, tragic accidents and criminal gangs from court records reveal how the English of medieval Ireland governed and politicized death and collectively decided what passed for ‘ truth’ in legal proceedings. This study of the social practices underlying the lordship’ s legal culture centres on the coroner’ s jurisdiction, homicides and sentences of capital punishment between 1257 and 1344. It highlights how the English of Ireland relied on collective memory, customary law, oral histories, common fame and social networks to assess truth in legal contexts. In the period when courts increasingly emphasized written evidence, the politics of death offered opportunities to employ these social practices to both strengthen and contest the authority of the written word. Exploring how they functioned alongside developing literate practices brings Ireland’ s place in the history of medieval literacy into sharper focus.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Orality, Literacy and the Politics of Death
2. A Brief History of the Medieval Irish Lordship
3. Social Memory, Custom and the Coroner's Authority
4. Fama and Familiarity in the Justiciar's Court
Part 1: Social memory, custom and the coroner's authority
1. Jurors thinking historically: politicizing death in inquisitions
2. Fusing charter and custom in the civic coroner's jurisdiction
3. Orality and the coroner's inquest
Part 2: Fama and familiarity in the justiciar's court
4. Social networks and the family fama in the lordship's criminal justice system
5. Consequences of ill fame: patterns of capital punishment in the Irish colony
6. Overruling the felon's reputation: the social dynamics behind royal pardons
7. The persistence of fama: proving ethnicity in the justiciar's court
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

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