Just how violent was medieval Europe? Traditionally, historians have depicted the Middle Ages as an era of brute strength and underdeveloped empathy, leading to high rates of violence. Yet, the evidence to support this interpretation is highly flawed. While we cannot measure medieval rates of violence with enough accuracy to draw medieval-modern comparisons, we do know that medieval Europeans deemed some forms of violence as not only necessary, but laudable. God’s wrath was the archetype of principled violence wielded by a righteous authority. Spectacles of justice in the form of staged executions, shaming rituals, or torture procedures, when enacted by the church or the state, fell neatly in line with this view of violence as a purgative, removing sin from society before it infected others. This ideology was imposed also on the family, where communities urged patriarchs to govern their dependents with a firm hand. Nevertheless, violence also had its limits. As king in his own home, a patriarch’s conduct might still cross the line between chastisement and cruelty. The law generally sided with figures of authority, but in practice the courts protected both ends of the social and familial hierarchy from abuse.

From contact, gendered violence was critical to the European conquest of America. The Spanish conquistadors sexually exploited indigenous women as part of their subjugation of native societies in Mexico and Peru. French and English colonists also exploited native women, although they imagined themselves as victims of Indian sexual abuse. In the English colonies, the importance of the household as a unit of political organisation gave men enormous power over women and other dependents. This concealed sexual violence in the family and spousal abuse. Rape was illegal in the English colonies, but rarely prosecuted, except among the Quakers in Pennsylvania. The prevalence of unfree labour also contributed to gendered violence in early America. Indentured servants were often left to the mercy of their masters. Enslaved African American women were routinely brutalised and raped in order to reproduce more slaves. The Enlightenment and the American Revolution challenged colonial sensibilities. As the power of the household head weakened and marriages were idealised as loving relationships, spousal abuse and rape were problematised and prosecuted at higher rates. However, the persistence of slavery limited these changes to white women.