The Dungeons of the Early Modern Age

Abstract

Barna Mezey’s study examines the socio-legal and architectural foundations of penal execution in medieval and early modern Europe. The author argues that the carcer functioned not as an independent sanction but as a subsidiary measure alongside the poena ordinaria (capital punishment), serving primarily as the spatial manifestation of outlawry (Friedlosigkeit). The oppressive conditions of confinement were symbolic expressions of atonement and hell rather than mere security imperatives. Crucially, urban development and ecclesiastical influence fostered institutional differentiation: the emergence of the bourgeois-style arestum alongside the subterranean carcer refutes the monolithic conception of medieval prisons as uniformly inhumane. This structural separation provided the necessary precursor to the modern deprivation of liberty.

Footnote markers [n] follow the numbering of the original (1–36).

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Key concepts (Kulcsfogalmak)

Key concepts of the study in Hungarian–English mapping:

Hungarian term	English equivalent	Explanation
Outlawry / Deprivation of Rights	Jogvesztettség (Friedlosigkeit)	Not merely a penal category but an existential condition: the offender exits the community’s protective sphere, forfeiting the conditions of civil and physical existence. The dungeon is the spatial manifestation of this status; the inmate is no longer a legal subject but an ‘outlaw’.
Ordinary Capital Punishment	Poena Ordinaria	The ordinary principal penalty of medieval criminal law (death). Alongside this, corporal punishments predominated as the body constituted the sole asset for the majority; imprisonment functioned only as a secondary, subsidiary sanction.
Carcer vs. Arestum Dichotomy	Carcer vs. Arestum Dichotomy	The paramount innovation in urban penal practice: the deliberate separation of the oppressive subterranean carcer (for the dishonourable) from the bourgeois-style, well-lit arestum (for patricians/citizens). This refutes the misconception that all medieval prisons were pits.
Symbolic Oppression / Confinement as Corporal Punishment	Symbolic Oppression	Darkness, dampness, and lack of ventilation were not solely security imperatives but theological-legal messages: confinement itself constituted bodily torment—the destruction of the outlaw’s body—mirroring the otherworld/hell.
Subsidiary Sanction	Subsidiary Sanction	Imprisonment (carcer) was not an independent sanction but a ‘step’ between corporal punishment and banishment; applied where death was deemed excessive and exile insufficient.
Purification Through Suffering / Atonement	Purification Through Suffering (Satisfactio)	The Church introduced suffering as satisfactio (atonement/reform). Paradoxically, while humanising in intent, this conserved inhuman conditions: the deprivation of light and warmth was believed to facilitate self-examination and penance.
Social Stratification in Custody	Social Stratification in Custody	Patricians demanded separation from commoners and criminals. This created a differentiated custodial system where architectural quality (light, furnishing) directly reflected the detainee’s social status.

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Main Text

In late medieval Europe, daily life was characterized by violence, robbery and highwaymen, wars, famine, poverty, and epidemics. The majority of society, the poor, had to wage a daily hard struggle for survival against nature and their social environment. “For the people, contemporary history essentially meant bad governance, usury, the arrogance and violence of the rich, war and highway robbery, famine, poverty, and epidemics. Warfare became almost constant, the dangerous rabble caused perpetual unrest, and there was no trust in the administration of justice. Add to this the approaching end of the world, the anxiety about hell, witches, and demons, and we can understand the sense of universal uncertainty that painted the basic tone of life black.”¹ Even peaceful living conditions were harsh and simple; the “evil” response to crime, which punishment had to express, could not be “humane” in comparison. The essential element of punishment is to place the perpetrator in a disadvantageous position, into worse and more unpleasant circumstances than before. The severity of the penal system in all European countries corresponded to the tormenting ruthlessness of everyday life and the misery associated with physical suffering.

The poena ordinaria, the ordinary capital punishment in the Middle Ages, was the death penalty, which was merely supplemented by corporal punishments organized within the framework of public execution, such as mutilations, branding, and beatings. Property penalties could only affect the wealthy for centuries; they could not touch the destitute. Honor penalties only applied to those living in the closed communities of the time (villages, towns); the masses of outcasts, wanderers on country roads, and the “dishonorable” could not be punished by shaming.

Punishment by deprivation of liberty could also only take effect within strict limits. The nobility were protected from dungeons by their noble privileges (at most, as perpetrators of high treason or infidelity, they might end up in one of the notorious political prisons, such as the Tower, the Bastille, or the castles of Kufstein or Munkács). The feudal lords’ courts were reluctant to deprive serfs of their labor and other dues through imprisonment, preferring other solutions (mainly corporal punishments). Thus, the carcer primarily became the home of robbers, highwaymen, villains, and other outlaws awaiting judgment.

As a common result of all these factors, although prison punishment was undeniably present in penal practice, it appeared only as a special type of sanction in penal practice for centuries. (However, this does not change the fact that the dungeon became a precursor to the punishment of deprivation of liberty, which emerged and triumphed from the 16th–17th centuries onward.)

To survive and gain acceptance, the dungeon had to conform to the barbaric practices of penal execution, to the horrifying spectacle of the scaffold. Adjusting to the sufferings of convicts who lost their hands, ears, noses, lips, or were beaten half to death, the prison itself became oppressive. In the Middle Ages, Europe’s dungeons were similar across the continent. Prisons were underground pits, cells in castle towers, or casemates of fortifications, where prisoners awaiting judgment or already sentenced were crowded together regardless of space; women, men, and children were mixed, occasionally even with the insane. Chained or shackled to the wall, prisoners sometimes saw no sunlight for years. The carcer was dark and airless; dirty and stinking. Its declared purpose, alongside secure custody, was the physical torment of those confined. And since, according to the philosophy of the age, those accused or convicted of the most serious crimes placed themselves outside the law, and since these outcasts inhabited the dungeons, their dishonor infected everyone thrown in with them. The dungeon carried dishonor; those who emerged from it could never again stand among the virtuous members of society, nor were they ever again considered truthful or moral.

The Birth of the Dungeon

Without delving into detailed penological expositions, it is evident that deprivation of liberty existed even in the most ancient times, either in the administration of justice or in its related phenomena. It is certain that ancient communities did not allow members who violated taboos, spirits, or deities to leave the tribe’s or clan’s territory without hindrance, thereby evading punishment or accountability. Even less so for captured foreigners, upon whom revenge rituals were to be performed. For the success of the process, the individual had to be prevented from leaving: that is, their movement had to be restricted, they had to be kept bound, perhaps tied to a tree, stake, or rock, or chained. The later successor of tying to a post was the pillory, and some authors assume that chaining to a block and the stocks also developed from this custom. Shackling also originates from binding. In antiquity, shackling as a security measure was already widespread, and even then, a tendency toward torture and torment began to take shape in its characteristics. These security measures did not yet have their own distinct profile: their short-term, movement-restricting function did not create any symbolic content. However, towards the end of the era, the allegorical connection between shackles/chains and slavery had already unfolded. In the history of slaveholding, the use of shackles became a natural phenomenon.²

Since the only requirement for detention at this time was secure custody, those entrusted with this task continuously sought more effective solutions. As long as architecture did not provide suitable frameworks, the idea of erecting a separate building for holding prisoners did not even arise. The solution known from the biblical story of Joseph was not unique. Dried-up wells and cisterns were often used for such purposes by ancient peoples: it was an obvious, simple, and practical solution to guard someone without significant risk of escape.³ The model of the prison well survived until the 19th century.⁴ The pit-like nature of dungeons slowly evolved from wells. Jeremiah’s dungeon was an underground cavity. Pits, holes, caves, and dugouts naturally became prisons. Philopoemen’s prison was an underground chamber whose single opening was sealed by a large stone, thus receiving “neither air nor light.”⁵ The influence of the “spirit” of wells and pits could be felt for centuries in the underground placement of dungeons, as this location was almost a mandatory requirement until the modern era. Throughout medieval Europe (and even in Hungary during the Reform Era), dungeons were called “dungeon holes” (tömlöclyuk) or simply “holes.”⁶ Initially for purely security reasons, later as a tool of oppression. Darkness, or at least dimness, cold, dampness, and of course security—these are the characteristics of wells and pits, and they became those of dungeons as well.

From the association of animal trapping and guarding, the use of pits and caves was institutionalized alongside cages, which were used in many places for detention. (The meaning of “Zwinger” as a prison was preceded by its meaning as an “animal cage,” just as bastille in French). This was a definite step towards prison construction. The cage used for guarding prisoners was a structure created specifically for detention, built by human hands. In the era of cages and later constructed prisons, the bars became the symbol of captivity. The metaphor of the cage and bars spanning centuries represents slavery, from shame cages to execution cages.

For a long time, guarding duties were performed by free members of the community, later by warriors, soldiers, guards, and court servants. The professional jailer—who also symbolized the emergence of the prison as a business—appeared only centuries later. A characteristic of this early period is that these features were not shaped by any uniformly acting criminal law (penal) consideration, central ideology, or artificial theory, but by the compulsory practice of beginnings and the experiences accumulated during guarding.

This natural model of the prison was incorporated into the history of penal practice primarily as a guarding technique. Its central element was secure custody, and although it was also used to execute punishments involving deprivation of liberty, its negligible weight did not have a perceptible effect on either its structure or its appearance.

Types of Early Liberty Penalties

With the emergence of criminal law punishment, the function of the prison expanded further. The state’s penal demand, increasingly pushing private law characteristics into the background, shifted the emphasis in penal goals towards public law sanctions. Revenge no longer dominated, thus the injured party’s obligation for blood feud, private execution, and obligation to provide satisfaction faded, while at the same time, the role of public punishments strengthened, among which—though not dominant—the prison found a place.

According to Wolfgang SCHILD, “restriction of liberty as a type of punishment is connected to almost every punishment or type of sanction. In its proper sense, we know ‘punishment of deprivation of liberty’ as that sanction which, as an ‘evil’, intends to impair freedom of movement in spatial relations.”⁷ He includes exile, banishment, scourging, military service, restriction of residence, house arrest, opus publicum, galley slavery, the dungeon, and the prison in the modern sense among restrictions of liberty.

An ancient form of restriction of liberty was lifelong exile, which was particularly favored in antique penal practice for perpetrators of political crimes. It also occurred that deprivation of liberty was used as a subsidiary solution when the death penalty was commuted via mercy. In the Middle Ages, banishment from a city or province for a specified period became a permanent form. Judgments allowed return only after a fixed time had elapsed—with the consent of the murdered person’s relatives and friends in cases of homicide. It was not rare for the possibility to depend on the decision of councilors. In many cases, banishment from the city was combined with flogging.

Pilgrimage and military service, developed in medieval judicial practice, can be considered lighter forms of exile. Pilgrimage could be imposed for homicide, breach of public peace, blasphemy, or insult to superiors. Military service appeared primarily during the wars against the Turks, and in German territories, it was mainly used to punish religious offenses.

The exact opposite of exile was the designation of a forced residence, meaning the convict had to stay within a designated, specified district (settlement) and could not cross certain boundaries within it. This applied to regions, provinces, or cities, and from it developed house arrest, which was quite popular in practice. Alongside these, from the 16th century, work for the benefit of the community, opus publicum, appeared as an arbitrary punishment. Finally, there was the most classic form of deprivation of liberty: prison punishment, i.e., confinement in a dungeon for a specified time or for life. To prove the early existence of prison punishment in Europe, penal history literature customarily cites Liutprand’s relevant provisions (726),⁸ the capitularies of Pepin the Short (754–755),⁹ Charlemagne’s decree on prisons from 813,¹⁰ the Capitula Remedii, the decrees of REMEDIUS, Bishop of Chur, from the end of the 9th century,¹¹ and the 10th-century Ranshofer Dekret,¹² in which prison appeared as a legal penal tool.¹³ The Church did much for the spread of deprivation of liberty executed as confinement when it introduced the dungeon, monastic imprisonment, as an ecclesiastical punishment in its monasteries, which was later extended to laypeople as well.

However, the punishment of deprivation of liberty in the modern sense only took shape from the carcer combined with labor and corporal punishments in the 17th–18th centuries.¹⁴

According to HENTIG, one function of deprivation of liberty in the Middle Ages was to serve as an alternative form of capital and corporal punishments. The dungeon in the Middle Ages “can be regarded as a secondary measure stratified by social origin, which could be replaced by a fine or other performance. Dungeon punishment is found where the execution of the death penalty seems too much, and exile seems too little.”¹⁵ Medieval deprivation of liberty was thus a step in the hierarchy of punishments. Somewhere near the end of the line, but it was an existing model against those for whom traditional punishment (expulsion, shaming, beating) was no longer effectively enforceable as a punishment (e.g., against members of the vagrant world, the fluctuating population) or for punishing those from one’s own community, the urban bourgeois society, for whom the death or mutilation penalty was generally considered too severe.

The Symbolic Message of the Carcer in the Middle Ages

According to Karl KRAUß’s etymological elaborations, the word carcer, from which the German Kerker also derives, originates from the Semitic expression ’kar’ or ’kir’, which originally meant cage, wall, fortification, castle, or fortified city. Carthage, for example, called Karthada by the Punics, Carthago by the Latins, and Karhadeon by the Greeks, simply translates to “new castle” or “new city.” Usage of the word further developed in the Greek language. Karkaron or Karkaros already appeared in the sense of prison in DIODORUS and SOPHRONIUS.¹⁶ The great state constructions of antiquity (temples and castles, then cities) offered an obvious solution for housing prisons. The carcer was placed in some part of official buildings—rarely in a completely independent building. Paul was taken to the castle by the centurion who came to his aid, to be imprisoned there until his case was investigated. From PLUTARCH’s description, we know that in Athens, the dekas, the prison, was a separate building.¹⁷ In Rome, the Carcer Mamertinus and the Tullianum were likewise independent structures serving this specific purpose.¹⁸ A characteristic of all dungeons is that they mostly have no visual message to the outside world. Their task is to fulfill security guarding, but in their regime, the society’s negative judgment of criminals became increasingly emphasized.

The stratification of society, the formation of classes, and the pariah fate of slaves pushed the majority of offenders to the periphery of society. From this point on, detention was not only guarding but often also punishment for those still awaiting judgment. The person cast into captivity now lost not only their liberty but also their right and opportunity to a healthy lifestyle. The goal of detention became the induction of physical suffering. This functional role was visible only in the placement conditions of the mostly underground, stinking, airless, dark, damp, cold dungeons. Indeed, in many cases, the wailing of prisoners and the outflow of foul air made the presumably terrible conditions known to the neighbors as well.

A characteristic mirror of the underground reality of the dungeon was the model of prisons established in castle and city towers, which were by no means more pleasant than underground rooms. The meter-thick walls of towers and fortifications, windowless rooms, doors installed in the ceiling, and grates opening upwards created exactly the same situation as underground prisons.

The directions of architectural development in the Middle Ages were fundamentally determined by the evolution of ecclesiastical architecture, behind which secular architecture lagged far behind in both time and technique. The carcers and ergastulums of monasteries provided models for secular architecture, which was linked to them in many ways. The need to discipline disrespectful and disobedient monks and nuns, and wandering friars, brought dungeons to life everywhere.¹⁹ For perpetrators of serious crimes, the incorrigibles, the underground carcer was used, while for others, cell confinement or the ergastulum operating with labor was used. Later, secular authorities also sent (secular) convicts to monastery prisons.

Part of the monastery prisons did not architecturally separate from other buildings of the convent or cloister. Originally, the carcer was nothing more than a cell designated for this purpose. The rules of the Monte Cassino monastery (529) ordered punishment to be carried out in their own cells. With the spread of prison punishment, monastery carcers also differentiated, grades formed: there were already rooms providing milder and stricter execution. Palladius of Galatia reported that monks who blasphemed the sacraments were sentenced to one year of imprisonment, loaded with chains, in a separate building. Columban wrote a description of the prison of Bobbio monastery.²⁰ Abbot CLIMACUS (6th century) noted regarding the monastery on Mount Sinai that its prison was located outside the monastery building, a thousand steps away from the monastery.²¹ One major contribution of monastery dungeons to the development of the prison idea was the introduction of the concept of atonement and thereby improvement into the world of penal execution. However, this thesis also conserved the inhuman dungeon conditions. Through torments comparable to the sufferings of saints, one could reach purification; that is, the light, air, and body warmth stolen by confinement in a pit, thus the dark, damp environment alien to human life, could favor self-examination and repentance. HENTIG also mentions that not only in Christian dungeons but in the worldview of all peoples, the religious site of atonement is the other world, hell, which is associated with darkness and often with evil forces lurking in the depths of the earth.²² Thus, the underground placement of the dungeon gained theoretical interpretation. The strong ecclesiastical connection of the carcer made it self-evident that later, in the era of planned penal institutions, master builders started from the traditions of monastery architecture.

The secular dungeon of the Middle Ages became permanent (could become permanent) where architectural conditions allowed it, i.e., in castles and cities. The prison of feudal large estates appeared only when permanent buildings of estate centers were established. For centuries, counties, districts, and regions sent their prisoners to castles under the execution of the army. In this way, the castle became organically connected to penal execution. For long centuries, the castle (tower) was somewhat synonymous with the dungeon. No castle could exist without a carcer, and conversely: there were hardly any dungeons beyond the walls of castles. Over time, castle prisons became institutionalized and integrated into the practice of penal execution. In the function of the Tower, the Bastille, the Roman Castel Sant’Angelo, Kufstein, Brünn, Munkács, Szamosújvár, and other fortifications, the penal execution character gradually prevailed. As their military significance decreased, as their war function became insignificant with the development of military technology, their criminal law role strengthened.

These castle prisons differed from each other architecturally as much as possible. What lent them a common feature was defense against a dual enemy. That is, they defended against those outside to prevent intrusion, and they guarded those locked inside against escape. They resisted both breakout and break-in. The primary task was, of course, to repel external attacks (since castles and fortifications were built for this purpose), and dealing with prisoners could only occur afterwards. The intertwined functions made the strong castle walls and bastions the symbol of the prison.

When the dungeon revived in European legal history in the 13th century after a temporary “Sleeping Beauty sleep,” it was not primarily an institution of feudal-estate law, but largely a phenomenon of urban law. The fact that we notice the proliferation of dungeons most in urban legal practice is due to two factors. Urban architectural specifics, which differed significantly from the appearance of the feudal countryside; due to its structure, spaces for carcer functions were easily found in city walls, towers, gates, and even in official buildings. (Schweinfurt, for example, as a free royal city, operated nine prison facilities. The Rote Kappe, Blaue Kappe, Weißer Turm, Sammet-, and Faulturm all accepted prisoners. Convicts were locked in the Studentenstube established in the Rathaus, in the cellars of the Rathaus, in the house of city servants, and within the walls of the Dragonergefängnis erected next to the Rathaus. But the Triller, the Narrenhaus (madhouse), and finally the orphanage also functioned as prisons. For the sake of completeness, the house of correction \[Zuchthaus\] that later joined these, and house arrest, which was very popular due to its cheapness, must be mentioned. The variety cannot be considered small.)

The island role played by the city in feudal society rather favored solidary conflict-resolution solutions that spared the lives of its own citizens and inhabitants, rather than mutilations, ostracism, or easily imposed death sentences.

The central element of public life in the medieval city was adjudication. Maintaining order, resolving disputes between citizens, preventing acts endangering the city, and even legislation took place within this activity. The public procedure expressed the power and authority of the city council most faithfully. This then made the institutions assisting adjudication important as well. The city prison occupied a place in the most diverse buildings of the settlement, often as an independent structure, but it became a basic requirement that the place of adjudication and interrogation and the dungeon of the person under investigation be close to each other. Legislation laid claim to the various annexes and cellars of town halls. Security was not a problem: next to (or above) the carcer in the town hall was the guard room, and council members were guarded by servants and armed men. This phenomenon created the practice, lasting in many places to this day, of the unity of judicial buildings: the planned complex of the courthouse, the prison, and the guard room. The building complex or group symbolizing the concentration of power was a warning message from city leaders to the population.

The third factor in the impact of medieval urban development on prison affairs was the emergence of the idea of differentiation. The patricians demanded separation from commoners and especially from criminals thrown into dungeons. Therefore, the dungeon practice of cities rested on differentiated placement, at one pole of which was the underground carcer, the place of detention for dishonorable criminals, and at the other, the arestum, resembling the quality of bourgeois houses, truly only restricting free movement, possessing an “honorable character.” The arestum was near the room of the city guard, next to the residence of city court servants, perhaps opening directly from some remote room of the town hall. Above ground, in a furnished room, fresh air and light were let in through the windows, and there might even be heating. Nothing indicated harsh treatment of prisoners. The latter, with its symbolic openness, directness, and honorable features appearing in the building’s appearance, pointed the way of development towards a new type of prison. Therefore, the simplifying standpoint that finds medieval prisons only in the depths of some pit or in dark, stinking places cannot be maintained regarding the placement and construction conditions of medieval prisons. Consistency can be observed in the separation of arestom and carcer in the establishment of city prisons. Moving westward, these broke down into further grades. A definite intent of differentiation took shape in urban dungeons as well. Almost everywhere, milder and stricter prison variants developed. The former adapted to the conditions of bourgeois housing, while the latter reached back to the prison customs of antiquity.²

Execution Conditions in the Medieval Dungeon

In the Middle Ages, the main task of the prison was custody before the verdict was delivered. This was carried out in existing buildings intended for other purposes but suitable for this, which were primarily connected to the spaces of the criminal process. Thus, for a long time, no building was constructed specifically as a prison (Leslie Fairweather). By its nature, this prison could be nothing other than a dirty den, a place suitable for oppression, since society had to get rid of the criminal it had cast out as cheaply as possible. They could not and did not want to pay attention to the quality of life in prison. Sources from the 16th century report that prisons were not cleaned for years, whereby garbage, filth, and feces covered the floor knee-deep, and prisoners were tormented by parasites, rats, and bats.

The places used as dungeons were given various names by citizens, which already referred to the miserable internal conditions. Such as: Loch (hole), Verlies (pit), Ghorsam (horror). In Paris, there was a prison called Puits (well), another called Fosse (pit). There was also a “Cercueil” (coffin).²⁴ Erfurt law calls the carcer “temenitze” (after the Slavic temnyica \[darkness\]).²⁵

“Since for a long time criminal law had no other basis than the revenge of Gods and men… and penal tools were limited to destruction… in the Middle Ages, the prison, in which and the manner in which it was executed, bore the character of destruction or the characteristics of mental-physical torment.”²⁶ As a rule, therefore, execution conditions had to make confinement mean a punishment executed on the body. Since money and production played a lesser role in the feudal-estate era, and physical liberty was strongly restricted by feudal lordship (see serfdom/bind to the soil), punishments directed at the body were characteristic. The only asset of the vast majority of society was their body.²⁷ It is no coincidence, therefore, that the essence of punishment consisted of the pain and oppression of the physical entity, the body, up to the death penalty (alongside beating and flogging, mutilation with its possible variations became popular).²⁸ The characteristics of prison placement were cramped space, dimness or total darkness, lack of air, dampness, and filth. As a consequence of these conditions, the prisoner underwent such health deterioration in a short time that it hastened their death.²⁹ In the 14th century, it became general practice to keep prisoners on bread and water.³⁰ In practice, therefore, the dungeon also counted as a type of corporal punishment. (KÜNßBERG, referring to medieval German law, writes that instead of “stone-carrying” \[shame stone\], determined as corporal and shaming punishment, prison punishment was increasingly imposed, or already imposed stone-carrying was converted into dungeon confinement.)³¹ The obvious alternativity clearly marked the place of the dungeon in the realm of corporal punishments.

The security perspective derived from the criminal process was only strengthened by the dungeon’s task of deprivation of liberty punishment. The medieval architectural response to the security guarding challenge became the replication of the pit-form architectural solution. A characteristic depiction of castle prisons is a 12th-century engraving showing the cell where Henry IV held Count Rogerius of Andria captive. This dungeon had only one opening in the ceiling, through which a servant lowered bread and water to the count, whose legs were shackled. Beyond this, we often see prisoners in engravings chained, or fixed in hand or leg stocks. The stocks used in prisons and originally serving security purposes were later applied to public penal execution as well. Criminals fixed in stocks had to sit, stand, or kneel for days, exposed to the effects of weather and the mockery and malice of the people.

Differentiation among detainees was unimaginable in the dungeon; separation of women and men, children, adolescents, and adults. Only in the large cities of the West did traces of segregation develop, mainly due to solutions offered by architectural possibilities. In cities, several prisons usually operated, which allowed some separation between different types of prisoners but less so between investigative prisoners and those sentenced, or between different classes of dangerousness, rather meaning separation by rank and status.³¹ HENTIG cites the names of numerous city towers as examples, which mostly referred to the placement and quality of prisoners. The name Katze (cat) symbolized the detention of unmanageable women (Stuttgart, Feldkirch), Schantterloch (chatter hole) testified to confessions extracted under torture (Miltenberg). Basel’s Eselturm (donkey or fool tower) evoked the donkey bench of shaming punishments, Diebsturm (thief tower), Diebesloch (thief dungeon) leaves little doubt about the crimes committed by those imprisoned there (Michelstadt, Heilbronn, Braunau), just like the Hexenturm (witch tower), which proclaimed the necessity of action against Satan’s accomplices in numerous cities (Gelnhausen, Schweinsberg, Marburg, Idstein, Walberg, Rheinbach, Unkel, Bonn). The name Rote Turm (red tower), according to HENTIG’s interpretation, preserved the memory of the bloody activities taking place within (Vienna, Halle), just as the still-living name Henkersturm (executioner tower) or Schinderturm (knacker tower) does (Rothenburg, Ochsenfurt). HENTIG believes, for example, that Fröschturm (frog tower) refers to the wet, watery conditions prevailing inside (Nuremberg).³² The “Loch” named dungeons (hole, pit, dugout) of various cities evoke the underground prisons of the Middle Ages. Bornheimer Loch (Frankfurt am Main), Lästerloch, Diebsloch (Braunau), Schnatterloch (Maintal), Lochgefängnis (Nuremberg), Petersloch (Cologne).³³

The interpretation of the offender’s assessment at any given time had a great influence on execution conditions. KAISER records the medieval general conception of the perpetrator, which had serious consequences for the legal status of the convict. The perpetrator was regarded as one who violated the community (state, king, superior), who, as a result of their act, as an evildoer turning against the public good and ignoring its rules, placed themselves outside the community. They lost the rights arising from the protective function of the community, and as a convict, became an outlaw deprived of rights. This approach essentially deprived the criminal of physical (bodily) and civil existential conditions. Their property was confiscated for the benefit of the injured party or their family and the community, and their labor power was utilized in the interest of the injured party and the community.³⁴ ESEINHARDT, joining this view, cited KRAUß. “Antique penal practice saw the perpetrator as an enemy of the community, against whom one must fight with all means. The convicts thus became deprived of rights, and answered to the avenging power with their persons and property.”³⁵ Consequently, the targeted result was the restoration of community norms and the authority of the authorities, the satisfaction of the injured party’s demands for justice (retribution), and the compensation of caused damages (compensation). The main penal tools: death, mutilation, beating, torture, compositional (property) solutions, exile, fines, imprisonment, and penal slavery.

Thus, the formula is as follows:

The Perpetrator	Enemy of the community

The Convict	Person deprived of rights, in property, civil, and physical quality

The Convict’s Property	Sum serving the satisfaction of the injured party

The Convict’s Labor Power	Belongs to the community, its utilization is necessary for the compensation of the injured party and the community

The Dungeon	Place of custody for pariahs recorded as deprived of rights, outlaws, enemies of the community.[36]

The convict became deprived of rights, forfeited their rights against the community, discarded its protection, and thus could not claim any legal protection or right during the execution either. This is one of the main principles of the body-and-health-tormenting penal execution of the feudal-estate society.

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The [n] markers in the body text refer to this note numbering. The author-name abbreviations (BRUNNER, CONRAD etc.) are resolved in the file mezey-barna-04-roviditesek.en.md.

Abbreviations in the notes: p. = page · évf. = year of a periodical · sz. = number, issue · ford. = translated by · szerk. = ed./eds. · vö. = cf. · uo. = ibid. (same place) · Loc. cit. = loco citato, in the place cited (Latin)

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Notes

1 ↩ HUIZINGA: p. 28.

2 ↩ MOMMSEN: p. 300.

3 ↩ KAISER — KERNER — SCHÖCH: p. 17.

4 ↩ HENTIG: p. 166.

5 ↩ PLUTARCH: pp. 1158–1159.

6 ↩ KNAPP

7 ↩ SCHILD: p. 208.

8 ↩ CONRAD: p. 171. ; FUMASOLI: p. 7.

9 ↩ BRUNNER: p. 875.

10 ↩ KRAUß: p. 128. ; DOLSPERG: p. 25.

11 ↩ BRUNNER: p. 852.

12 ↩ HIPPEL: p. 9.

13 ↩ LIEBERWIRTH: p. 1239.

14 ↩ SCHILD: op.cit. p. 208.

15 ↩ HENTIG: op.cit. p. 172.

16 ↩ KRAUß: op.cit. pp. 2-3.

17 ↩ PLUTARCH: op.cit. p. 1274.

18 ↩ MOMMSEN: op.cit. p. 303.

19 ↩ EISENHARDT: Strafvollzug. p. 20.

20 ↩ KRAUß: op.cit. p. 211.

21 ↩ Loc.cit. pp. 212-213.

22 ↩ HENTIG: op.cit. p. 165.

23 KNAPP: op.cit. p. 64.

24 ↩ La Justice et les tribunaux. Impôts, monnaies et finances. p. 92.

25 ↩ HIS: p. 560.

26 ↩ EISENHARDT: Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte. p. 12.

27 ↩ REEBS: p. 3.

28 ↩ Loc.cit.

29 ↩ FUMASOLI: op.cit. p. 8.

30 ↩ LAUBENTHAL: p. 26. ; PAULTRE: p. 26.

31 ↩ KÜNßBERG: p. 45.

32 ↩ HENTIG: op.cit. p. 180.

33 ↩ Loc.cit. p. 163.

34 ↩ KAISER — KERNER — SCHÖCH: op.cit. p. 43.

35 ↩ EISENHARDT: op.cit. p. 12.

36 Loc.cit. p. 13.

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The bold code is the abbreviation used in the notes; it is followed by the full bibliographic entry. Hungarian titles are retained in the original (they are the search keys of Hungarian scholarly literature) with an English translation in square brackets. Latin abbreviations (Loc. cit.) are left untranslated.

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MONOGRAPHS, SHORT MONOGRAPHS AND SIMILAR VOLUMES

BRUNNER — BRUNNER, Heinrich: Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte. \[German Legal History.\] Vol. I-II. Berlin, 1958, Verlag von Duncker & Humblodt. 934 p.

DOLSPERG — Doleisch von DOLSPERG, Franz: Die Entstehung der Freiheitstrafe unter besauberer berücksichtigung des Auftretens moderner Freiheitsstrafe in England. \[The Emergence of Deprivation of Liberty Punishment with Special Regard to Modern Imprisonment in England.\] Breslau, 1928, Schletter'sche Buchhandlung.

EISENHARDT: Strafvollzug. — EISENHARDT, Tilo: Strafvollzug. \[Prison Execution/Penology.\] Stuttgart – Berlin - Köln - Mainz, 1978, Verlag W. Kohlhammer. 278 p. DE-ISBN 978 317 00 4910 9.

EISENHARDT: Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte. — EISENHARDT, Ulrich: Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte. \[German Legal History.\] München, 1984, C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. 424 p. DE-ISBN 978 340 60 9730 0.

FUMASOLI — FUMASOLI, Georg: Ursprünge und Anfänge der Schellenwerke. Ein Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte des Zuchthauswesens. \[The Origin and Beginnings of Shackling. A Contribution to the Early History of Penal Institutions.\] Zürich, 1981, Schulthess Polygraphischer Verlag. 201 p. CH-ISBN 978 372 55 2130 2.

HENTIG — HENTIG, Hans von: Die Strafe II. Die modernen Erscheienungsformen. \[Punishment. The Modern Forms of Appearance.\] Berlin-Göttingen - Heidelberg, 1955, Springer Verlag. 415 p.

HIS — HIS, Rudolf: Das Strafrecht des deutschen Mittelalters. \[Criminal Law in the German Middle Ages.\] Vol. I. Die Verbrechen und ihre Folgen im allgemeinen. \[Crimes and their Consequences in General.\] 671 p. Vol. II. Die einzelnen Verbrechen. \[Individual Crimes.\] 362 p. Weimar, 1964², Scientia Verlag.

HUIZINGA — HUIZINGA, Johann: The Waning of the Middle Ages. \[Original title: Studien über Lebens- und Geistesformen des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts in Frankreich und in den Niederlanden\]. Translated by S ZERB Antal. Budapest, 1979², Európa Publishing House. 372 p. HU-ISBN 963 07 1446 9. /Pro memoria./ HU-ISSN 0139-133X.

KNAPP — KNAPP, Hermann: Das Lochgefängnis. Tortur und Richtung in Alt-Nürnberg. \[The Dungeon Hole. Torture and Execution in Old Nuremberg.\] Nürnberg, 1907, Verlag von Heerdegen-Barbeck. 91 p.

KRAUß — KRAUß, Karl: Im Kerker vor und nach Christus. Schatten und Licht aus dem profanen und kirschlichen Cultur und Rechtsleben vergangener Zeiten. \[In Prison Before and After Christ. Shadows and Light from the Profane and Ecclesiastical Culture and Legal Life of Past Times.\] Freiburg - Leipzig, 1895, Akademische Verelagsbuchhandlung von J. C. B. Mohr. 402 p.

KÜNßBERG — KÜNßBERG, Eberhard Freiherr von: Über die Strafe des Steintragens. \[On the Punishment of "Stone-Carrying".\] Breslau, 1907, Verlag von M & H. Marcus. 65 p. /Deutschen Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte \[German State and Legal History\], 91. /

La Justice et les tribunaux. Impôts, monnaies et finances. — La Justice et les tribunaux. Impôts, monnaies et finances. \[Justice and Courts. Taxes, Currencies and Finance.\] Paris, 1888, Firmin-Didot. 342 p.

LAUBENTHAL — LAUBENTHAL, Klaus: Strafvollzug. \[Prison Execution/Penology.\] Berlin - Heidelberg - New York - Barcelona - Budapest - Hong Kong - London - Mailand - Paris - Tokyo, 1995, Springer. 336 p. DE-ISBN 978 354 05 8633 3.

MOMMSEN — MOMMSEN, Theodor: Römisches Strafrecht (Systematisches Handbuch der deutschen Rechtswissenschaft; Abt. 1, T. 4). \[Roman Criminal Law. (Systematic Handbook of German Jurisprudence).\] Vol. XXIII. Leipzig, 1899, Duncker & Humblot. 1078 p.

PAULTRE — PAULTRE, Christian: De la Répression de la mendicité et du vagabondage en France sous l’Ancien Régime. \[The Suppression of Begging and Vagrancy in France under the Ancien Régime.\] Paris, 1906, L. Larose et L. Tenin. 642 p.

PLUTARCH — PLUTARCH Lucius Mestrius: Parallel Lives. \[Original title: Bioi paralelloi\]. Translated by MÁTHÉ Elek, afterword by István Borzsák. Budapest, 1965, Magyar Helikon. 1699 p. /Helikon Classics./

REEBS — REEBS, Winifred: Geschichte der Knastarchitektur. Die Suche nach dem richtigen. Vernichtungsbau. \[History of Prison Architecture. The Search for the Right Solution.\] Grafenau - Döffingen, 1987, Trotzdem Verlag. 40 p. DE-ISBN 978 392 22 0914 0.

SCHILD — SCHILD, Wolfgang: Alte Gerichtsbarkeit. Vom Gottesurteil bis zum Beginn der modernen Rechtsprechung. \[Old Jurisdiction. From Trial by Ordeal to the Beginning of Modern Jurisprudence.\] München, 1980, Verlag Callwey. 255 p. DE-ISBN 376 67 0528 8.

TEXTBOOKS

CONRAD — CONRAD, Hermann: Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte. Vol. I. Frühzeit und Mittelalter. Vol. II. Neuzeit bis 1806. Ein Lehrbuch. \[German Legal History. Vol. I. Early Period and Middle Ages. Vol. II. Modern Era until 1806. A Textbook.\] Karlsruhe, 1962, Verlag Müller. 552 p.

KAISER — KERNER — SCHÖCH — KAISER, Günther — KERNER, Hans Jürgen — SCHÖCH, Heinz: Strafvollzug. Eine Einführung in die Grundlagen. \[Prison Execution. An Introduction to the Fundamentals.\] Heidelberg – Karlsruhe, 1978, C.F. Müller Juristischer Verlag. 481 p. DE-ISBN 978 381 14 2677 1.

STUDIES

HIPPEL — HIPPEL, Robert von: Die geschichtliche Entwicklung der Freiheitsstrafe. In Erwin BUMKE (ed.): Deutsche Gefängniswiesen. Ein Handbuch. \[German Prison Systems. A Handbook.\] Berlin, 1928, Verlag von Franz Vahlen.

DICTIONARY ENTRIES

LIEBERWIRTH — LIEBERWIRTH, Rolf: Freiheitsstrafe. \[Deprivation of Liberty/Imprisonment.\] In Adalbert ERLER et al. (eds.): Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte. \[Concise Dictionary of German Legal History.\] Berlin, 1977¹, Erich Schmidt Verlag. p. 1239.

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Latin abbreviations

Abbreviation	Latin term	Meaning
cf.	confer	compare
Idem / Id.	idem	the same (author)
op. cit.	opere citato	in the work cited
p.	pagina	page
i. m.	—	work cited
i. h.	—	place cited
uo.	—	ibidem
vö.	—	compare
szerk.	—	edited by
ford.	—	translated by

No matches.