Uolunt me suspendere: the first three executions by hanging in eleventh- and twelfth-century Iberia

Abstract

This article analyses the first personal executions by hanging during the eleventh and twelfth centuries of which we have evidence in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula (Galicia and León). Information from wills, witness statements, purchase, and sale litigations will be used to examine three case studies, contextualised at a microhistorical level within their local, social, and legal context. The need for, and interest of, this research lies in the paucity of earlier studies on capital punishment for this period, as well as in the current boom in historiography on judicial history and conflict in the Middle Ages. The study of this social and personal context adds a new dimension to the study of punishments and penalties which have hitherto been analysed primarily from a legal point of view, rather than from the perspective of social history