Confession and criminal justice in late medieval Italy: Siena, 1260–1330

Abstract

This interesting study of criminal justice in the Sienese context offers a new exploration of tensions between Christian education about peace and penance, the idea of public justice, and the culture of revenge. Zanetti Domingues proposes a penitential model of medieval criminal justice, using as a case study the Italian commune of Siena in the years 1260 – 1330. The author argues that criminal justice reform had among its aims penance and moral reintegration, goals that are fundamentally religious in nature. She proposes that “ a penitential discourse on criminal justice [. . .] coexisted alongside the other ones based on revenge or on notions of public order ” (2).