Accepted and even sometimes encouraged in the Middle Ages, juvenile violence was gradually channeled by society and states at the same time as the disapproval of delinquent acts increased. By Thibault le Hégarat.
All historians working on the subject confirm it: youth violence does not date from the 20th century.e century. On the European continent, from antiquity to the present day, countless adults have complained about the violence of the new generations. Adolescence often marks the entry of young people into brutality. The intensity and frequency of violent acts have fortunately been in decline since the 17the century, and their nature has changed. But one constant runs through the centuries: this youth violence remains predominantly male.
MIDDLE AGES, YOUNG MALES FULL OF VIOLENCE
Historian Robert Muchembled places the peak of violence in the West at the 13the century. “Everyone was violent in the late Middle Ages,” he says. There were a hundred times more murders committed than in today’s Europe. Brutality was omnipresent: when little shepherds defended their flocks by smashing the skulls of sheep thieves with their crooks, no one was shocked. Youth violence, commonplace, affected all social classes. Crimes, particularly homicide and rape, were mainly committed by young single men between the ages of 20 and 29. The justice system was extremely permissive and murderers who pleaded their youth easily obtained a royal pardon. Girls, for their part, formed a small portion of young criminals. They were closely monitored, educated in restraint, and society did not allow them to express their brutality. The justice system especially criminalized female infanticides, who were numerous at a time when access to abortion was reserved for those with money and connections. In the Middle Ages, young males were molded by a juvenile culture of violence and had to conform to an ideal of brutal virility. Boys learned to fight with knives and suffered frequent physical abuse at the hands of their parents, teachers or workshop masters, intended to “f[…]
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