Premodern Crime and Punishment
About the Book Series
Studying premodern societies’ efforts to define and cope with deviance continues to generate insights about the usefulness of the pre/modern divide. Such study historicizes what appear, from a modern perspective, to be perennial problems and staple characteristics of crime and punishment. To accommodate the influx of quality research in this field, this series provides a congenial venue for works exploring the social, legal, institutional, religious, and cultural aspects of premodern crime and punishment.
The series invites scholars at any stage of their careers and with a geographical focus on any sub-region within Europe and the Mediterranean World to share their book proposals and draft manuscripts with us.
The series is interested in both monographic studies and proposals for developing edited volumes dealing with specific crimes (such as murder) and punishments (such as the death penalty) from a comparative and trans-regional perspective, as well as thematic volumes exploring the relations of gender and crime, religion and punishment, and the spatial and performative dimensions of justice in premodernity.
Police Power in the Italian Communes, 1228-1326
1st Edition
By Gregory Roberts
December 01, 2025
Medieval states are widely assumed to have lacked police forces. Yet in the Italian city-republics, soldiers patrolled the streets daily in search of lawbreakers. 'Police Power in the Italian Communes, 1228-1326' is the first book to examine the emergence of urban policing in medieval Italy and its...
Policing the Urban Environment in Premodern Europe
1st Edition
Edited
By Carole Rawcliffe, Claire Weeda
December 01, 2025
Tapping into a combination of court documents, urban statutes, material artefacts, health guides and treatises, Policing the Urban Environment in Premodern Europe offers a unique perspective on how premodern public authorities tried to create a clean, healthy environment. Overturning many ...