What were human rights in the Middle Ages?

Answer 1

Really, there is no way to answer this question from a definitive, legal point of view. The question of historic human rights is difficult for several reasons.

One difficulty is that the the rights of people, as referenced in ancient and medieval times, were often left unstated under the law, even where they were acknowledged. The body of Common Law is based to some degree on the interpretations of unstated laws derived from custom. This implies that a person had an unwritten right to expect that custom would be respected. A good specific example of the importance of unstated rights being acknowledged is in Northern Germanic laws. In some places, the death penalty was not used. Instead, the person was punished by simply declaring him an outlaw. To a modern person, this may seem a weak measure and so a waste of time, but what it meant was that the person was deprived of all legal protection, as the person had no recourse to law. Put perhaps too simply, his rights, which were acknowledged but not clearly stated by the law, were lost; at this point his very life depended entirely on the extent to which other people were willing to tolerate his continued existence.

Another source of difficulty is that the legal codes of the Middle Ages are often very difficult to interpret, and sometimes not even available; in the cases of Early Germanic Laws, they were often not even written down. Even in the cases of written laws, the meanings could often be debatable. For example, many of the old legal codes are written in medieval Latin with Germanic legal terms interspersed in them, but we are not even sure what Germanic language the terms come from, let alone their precise meaning. And this difficulty of interpretation persists to some degree in legal documents through the entire period, with the precise meaning of some terms in doubt. (Modern translations of such material that read easily in English are mostly produced with the idea that they be easy to read, rather than that they be accurate, and this is true for laws right to the present day.)

Another problem is that idea of practical use of what are regarded as natural rights is rather new, beginning with such people as john Locke, who came after the Middle Ages. And the idea of having a constitutional list of rights to which all laws must conform is also new.

But if these are not sufficiently daunting, the Middle Ages lasted a thousand years, had numerous countries, had local laws in many countries, and had laws that could change with each new ruler. The question can only be answered in terms of the broadest generalities.

Nevertheless, the lack of statement of a right did not mean a person was regarded as not having it; people could and did appeal to such sources as custom to support claims of rights. Ordinary people had rights to expect both oaths and customs to be respected, and they usually had a path for appeal.

Part of the underlying legal structure of the Middle Ages was the concept of secular versus ecclesiastical laws. Secular laws could be passed according to the practice of the lands to which they applied. But the Church laws were under the control of the Church, and among other things, the Church retained the rights pertaining to oaths and their applications. Oaths were regarded as supremely important, and a person had a right to expect that a oath would be fulfilled, but only the Church could void an oath. The Church had the right to annul marriages, terminate oaths of homage, and even void treaties. This meant that there was a sort of unwritten, and unfixed, constitutional counterpoise for the secular laws, by which they could be to some extent restrained, which was the will of the pope and bishops. If the pope did not like the way a king was doing things, he could excommunicate the king, and release all obligations of those who had taken oaths to him. There was more than one monarch who had this happen, and the result was almost always at least a great loss of the monarch's power.

The Church had two other powers that protected the rights of some people. One was the right a person could claim for sanctuary within a church or monastery, and while there was a lot of local variation in what this meant, there were many times and places where it placed anyone, regardless of the crime for which he was accused, beyond the reach of secular law. In one case a woman who had been caught trying to poison a king of France lived out her life to a natural death because she managed to reach a convent where she claimed refuge. The other was a right of benefit of clergy, which put all clerics subject to ecclesiastical authority rather than secular. In application, the question of whether a person was a cleric finally depended on the person's ability to read, rather than any oaths he might have taken. Ecclesiastical courts were more lenient than secular courts, and were not allowed to use torture or trials by ordeal as these had been declared both factually and theologically unsound.

Also, there were some rights that were specifically and explicitly established. Importantly, in England, there was a specific right to appeal unlawful imprisonment, the writ of habeas corpus, which was acknowledged in the Magna Carta. The earlier document called the Charter of Liberties implicitly acknowledged the requirement that a king behave in accordance with established custom. These two documents have both been described as fundamental for the establishment of modern human rights; though both really were intended for the barons and earls, and had much less to do with common folk, they nevertheless established a limit of royal power and a universal right to due process.

From the point of view of a serf working on a manor in medieval England, what all this meant was that perhaps his most important rights were based on custom and his mutual obligations with his lord. The specifics varied from manor to manor, and from one era to another. Typically, however, he had a right to farm the land, to have his home, to raise his children, to be protected as much as possible from the effects of war, crime, and famine. The lord, who was obliged to respect and fulfill these rights, had a right to labor, a part of the crop, or money from the serf, and a right to the land to which he was the lord. The king, who was obliged to respect the lords' use of the lands, had a right to support and the promise of continued support from the lords.

Answer 2

Really, there is no way to answer this question from a definitive, legal point of view. The question of historic human rights is difficult for several reasons.

One difficulty is that the the rights of people, as referenced in ancient and medieval times, were often left unstated under the law, even where they were acknowledged. The body of Common Law is based to some degree on the interpretations of unstated laws derived from custom. This implies that a person had an unwritten right to expect that custom would be respected. A good specific example of the importance of unstated rights being acknowledged is in Northern Germanic laws. In some places, the death penalty was not used. Instead, the person was punished by simply declaring him an outlaw. To a modern person, this may seem a weak measure and so a waste of time, but what it meant was that the person was deprived of all legal protection, as the person had no recourse to law. Put perhaps too simply, his rights, which were acknowledged but not clearly stated by the law, were lost; at this point his very life depended entirely on the extent to which other people were willing to tolerate his continued existence.

Another source of difficulty is that the legal codes of the Middle Ages are often very difficult to interpret, and sometimes not even available; in the cases of Early Germanic Laws, they were often not even written down. Even in the cases of written laws, the meanings could often be debatable. For example, many of the old legal codes are written in medieval Latin with Germanic legal terms interspersed in them, but we are not even sure what Germanic language the terms come from, let alone their precise meaning. And this difficulty of interpretation persists to some degree in legal documents through the entire period, with the precise meaning of some terms in doubt. (Modern translations of such material that read easily in English are mostly produced with the idea that they be easy to read, rather than that they be accurate, and this is true for laws right to the present day.)

Another problem is that idea of practical use of what are regarded as natural rights is rather new, beginning with such people as john Locke, who came after the Middle Ages. And the idea of having a constitutional list of rights to which all laws must conform is also new.

But if these are not sufficiently daunting, the Middle Ages lasted a thousand years, had numerous countries, had local laws in many countries, and had laws that could change with each new ruler. The question can only be answered in terms of the broadest generalities.

Nevertheless, the lack of statement of a right did not mean a person was regarded as not having it; people could and did appeal to such sources as custom to support claims of rights. Ordinary people had rights to expect both oaths and customs to be respected, and they usually had a path for appeal.

Part of the underlying legal structure of the Middle Ages was the concept of secular versus ecclesiastical laws. Secular laws could be passed according to the practice of the lands to which they applied. But the Church laws were under the control of the Church, and among other things, the Church retained the rights pertaining to oaths and their applications. Oaths were regarded as supremely important, and a person had a right to expect that a oath would be fulfilled, but only the Church could void an oath. The Church had the right to annul marriages, terminate oaths of homage, and even void treaties. This meant that there was a sort of unwritten, and unfixed, constitutional counterpoise for the secular laws, by which they could be to some extent restrained, which was the will of the pope and bishops. If the pope did not like the way a king was doing things, he could excommunicate the king, and release all obligations of those who had taken oaths to him. There was more than one monarch who had this happen, and the result was almost always at least a great loss of the monarch's power.

The Church had two other powers that protected the rights of some people. One was the right a person could claim for sanctuary within a church or monastery, and while there was a lot of local variation in what this meant, there were many times and places where it placed anyone, regardless of the crime for which he was accused, beyond the reach of secular law. In one case a woman who had been caught trying to poison a king of France lived out her life to a natural death because she managed to reach a convent where she claimed refuge. The other was a right of benefit of clergy, which put all clerics subject to ecclesiastical authority rather than secular. In application, the question of whether a person was a cleric finally depended on the person's ability to read, rather than any oaths he might have taken. Ecclesiastical courts were more lenient than secular courts, and were not allowed to use torture or trials by ordeal as these had been declared both factually and theologically unsound.

Also, there were some rights that were specifically and explicitly established. Importantly, in England, there was a specific right to appeal unlawful imprisonment, the writ of habeas corpus, which was acknowledged in the Magna Carta. The earlier document called the Charter of Liberties implicitly acknowledged the requirement that a king behave in accordance with established custom. These two documents have both been described as fundamental for the establishment of modern human rights; though both really were intended for the barons and earls, and had much less to do with common folk, they nevertheless established a limit of royal power and a universal right to due process.

From the point of view of a serf working on a manor in medieval England, what all this meant was that perhaps his most important rights were based on custom and his mutual obligations with his lord. The specifics varied from manor to manor, and from one era to another. Typically, however, he had a right to farm the land, to have his home, to raise his children, to be protected as much as possible from the effects of war, crime, and famine. The lord, who was obliged to respect and fulfill these rights, had a right to labor, a part of the crop, or money from the serf, and a right to the land to which he was the lord. The king, who was obliged to respect the lords' use of the lands, had a right to support and the promise of continued support from the lords.