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Violence and Local Society in Late Medieval Bavaria: A Look at the Evidence
| In this paper I intend to explore the nature of interpersonal violence in villages and small towns in Bavaria during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One question that must be addressed is the extent to which sources generated in the interests of elites offer a reliable window for understanding violence at the local level. Despite the difficulties of the evidence it is my contention that verbal and physical assaults—which ranged from name calling to beatings and stabbings—were accepted as an everyday form of communication and ritual interaction in villages and small towns in late medieval Bavaria. Such actions were apparently acceptable as a means for individuals in local communities to criticize the behavior of their neighbors and others. One of the themes that needs to be explored is whether violence was used to assert positions within social hierarchies, if not to establish such hierarchies in the first place (through striking alleged inferiors, etc). The final and related issue I will examine concerns the way violence was tied to the assertion of a person’s individual and social identity. The main sources used are law codes and local court records.
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