During the reign of King Cnut, the ruler of substantial territories across northern Europe in the 11th century, there was a law code which called for the removal of the eyes, nose, ears, upper lip and scalp for crimes considered worse than theft. It also stipulated the removal of the nose and ears in the case of a woman accused of adultery.
Cnut might even have been a right anagram but I really, really, don’t think that was true. The mutilation of a woman they thought was guilty of adultery quite possibly but suspected or accused? I think not.
Talking of King Cnut, this is an amusing story…..
https://www.kingcnut.com/pages/movie
Spoiler alert, I’m in the movie.
HTF do they kmow it was judicial? Maybe some scumbag was settling scores with his wayward missus. And I don’t think it would have been that easy even then. Too soon for Brother Cadfael to be on the case but some thing like that could not be kept quiet and such barbarism would not have been tolerated outside of a war or something akin. “Official” punishments would have involved official records. There were lots of nasty punishments then–but that is so OTT you would have to be a feminist idiot to believe it was a regular event.
what was the punishment for pendantry?
@Hallowed Be. Hanging, obviously!
This skeleton was found near Basingstoke, apparently, so injuries most likely due to a pub glassing.
The one thing almost everybody knows about Cnut is wrong. Henry Ford would grin at that.
The nose and ears weren’t the offending part.
The origins of doggie style?
“Codes of law from the Anglo-Saxon period – which lasted from the withdrawal of the Romans from Great Britain in 410 AD to the Norman conquest in 1066 – show that such punishments were inflicted on adulterers and slaves caught in the process of stealing.”
Female, so must be adultery. Imagine the other, in my humble opinion, much more likely option.
Seems unlikely to me.