01:202:203 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Cesare Beccaria, Weregild, Jeremy Bentham
30 Oct 2014
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In most of europe, forms of legal sanctions that are familiar today did not appear until the beginning of the middle ages, in the 1200s. Before that time, europeans viewed responses to crime as a private affair, with vengeance a duty to be carried out by the person wronged or by a family member. Lex talionis law of retaliation; the principle that punishment should correspond in degree and kind to the offense ( an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ) Secular law the law of the civil society as distinguished from church law. Wergild man money ; money paid to relatives of a murdered person or to the victim of a crime to compensate them and to prevent a blood feud. Benefit of clergy the right to be tried an ecclesiastical court, where punishments were less severe than those meted out by civil courts, given the religious focus on penance and salvation.
