Dozens of these cases now have audio versions of the inquests, so users can listen to details of the more intriguing medieval casefiles. Using the rolls and maps from the Historic Towns Trust, researchers have constructed a street atlas of 354 homicides across all three cities. Recorded in Latin, they included names, events, locations, and even the value of murder weapons. Many of the York cases document feuds between artisans in the same profession, from knife fights among tannery workers to fatal violence between glove makers.Ĭoroners' rolls are catalogues of sudden or suspicious deaths as deduced by a jury of local residents. The site features a new map of York's homicides during its 14th century "golden age," when-driven by trade and textiles-the city flourished as Black Death subsided. "As well as clashes between town and gown, many students belonged to regional fraternities called 'nations,' an additional source of conflict within the student body," said Eisner.Ī new website, launched today by Cambridge's Violence Research Centre, allows users to compare the causes and patterns of urban violence in medieval England across three cities for the first time. These were young men freed from tight controls of family, parish or guild, and thrust into an environment full of weapons, with ample access to alehouses and sex workers." "Oxford students were all male and typically aged between fourteen and twenty-one, the peak for violence and risk-taking. "A medieval university city such as Oxford had a deadly mix of conditions," said Prof Manuel Eisner, lead murder map investigator and Director of Cambridge's Institute of Criminology. During this period, clericus is most likely to refer to a student or member of the early university. The team behind the Medieval Murder Maps-a digital resource that plots crime scenes based on translated investigations from 700-year-old coroners' inquests-estimate the per capita homicide rate in Oxford to have been 4-5 times higher than late medieval London or York.Īmong Oxford perpetrators with a known background, 75% were identified by the coroner as "clericus," as were 72% of all Oxford's homicide victims.
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