Abstract
In the course of the eleventh century, mentions of imprisonment creep back into the sources. In part this is because the number and variety of writings available to historians increase, if by no means as dramatically as they will do during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Miracle stories and charters now yield nuggets of information in addition to those from chronicles; and although these nuggets are scattered geographically and often difficult to interpret, they do shed some rays of light on the fate of captives. But it is not just a matter of sources. The other reason for the increase in information is the building of more permanent and better-defended residences for aristocrats, the castles, which permitted easier and rather cheaper detention of peasants or knights. Consequently there was a real, not just a perceived, growth in the number of prisoners.
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Notes
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© 2002 Jean Dunbabin
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Dunbabin, J. (2002). The Means of Detention in the High Middle Ages. In: Captivity and Imprisonment in Medieval Europe, 1000–1300. Medieval Culture and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403940278_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403940278_3
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