Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Medieval Petitions in Context
- 2 Parliamentary Petitions? The Origins and Provenance of the ‘Ancient Petitions’ (SC 8) in the National Archives
- 3 Petitioning in the Ancient World
- 4 Petitioning Between England and Avignon in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century
- 5 Petitions to the Pope in the Fourteenth Century
- 6 Understanding Early Petitions: An Analysis of the Content of Petitions to Parliament in the Reign of Edward I
- 7 Petitions from Gascony: Testimonies of a Special Relationship
- 8 Murmur, Clamour and Noise: Voicing Complaint and Remedy in Petitions to the English Crown, c. 1300–c. 1460
- 9 Queenship, Lordship and Petitioning in Late Medieval England
- 10 Taking Your Chances: Petitioning in the Last Years of Edward II and the First Years of Edward III
- 11 Words and Realities: The Language and Dating of Petitions, 1326–7
- 12 A Petition from the Prisoners in Nottingham Gaol, c. 1330
- 13 Thomas Paunfield, the ‘heye Court of rightwisnesse’ and the Language of Petitioning in the Fifteenth Century
- Index
3 - Petitioning in the Ancient World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Medieval Petitions in Context
- 2 Parliamentary Petitions? The Origins and Provenance of the ‘Ancient Petitions’ (SC 8) in the National Archives
- 3 Petitioning in the Ancient World
- 4 Petitioning Between England and Avignon in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century
- 5 Petitions to the Pope in the Fourteenth Century
- 6 Understanding Early Petitions: An Analysis of the Content of Petitions to Parliament in the Reign of Edward I
- 7 Petitions from Gascony: Testimonies of a Special Relationship
- 8 Murmur, Clamour and Noise: Voicing Complaint and Remedy in Petitions to the English Crown, c. 1300–c. 1460
- 9 Queenship, Lordship and Petitioning in Late Medieval England
- 10 Taking Your Chances: Petitioning in the Last Years of Edward II and the First Years of Edward III
- 11 Words and Realities: The Language and Dating of Petitions, 1326–7
- 12 A Petition from the Prisoners in Nottingham Gaol, c. 1330
- 13 Thomas Paunfield, the ‘heye Court of rightwisnesse’ and the Language of Petitioning in the Fifteenth Century
- Index
Summary
In AD 238, the residents of Skaptopara, a village in Thrace, in modern Bulgaria, petitioned the emperor Gordian III. They had the petition and Gordian's response recorded in an inscription that survives today. The problem of the Skaptopareans was this:
A famous market takes place two miles from our village. Those who stay there to attend the market do not [however] remain at the marketplace for all the fifteen days – they leave it and turn up in our village and compel us to provide them with quartering and most of the other things for their entertainment without offering payment. In addition to these, soldiers who are despatched elsewhere, leave their proper routes and appear among us, and likewise press us hard to furnish them quartering and provisions without paying anything. For the most part because of the thermal springs, the provincial governors but also your procurators come here to stay. We greet the authorities in a most hospitable way by necessity, but as we could not put up with the others, we have on many occasions appealed to the governors of Thracia, and they have – in accordance with the imperial instructions – ordered that we shall be undisturbed … For some time, the orders of the governors held force…But as time went on, numerous persons who despise our private status have again ventured to stick close. So since we can no longer sustain these burdens…we beg you, invincible Augustus, to order by your sacred rescript that everyone shall keep to his proper route, that they shall not leave the other villages and come to us and compel us to offer them provisions at our expense, and that we shall not quarter those who are not entitled to [such service].
The Skaptopareans petitioned the emperor because their attempts to get help from local officials had been unsuccessful. Petitioning, they knew, was a well-used method of seeking legal advice and remedies, and they were likely to receive an answer: Roman emperors worked hard to respond to their subjects.
The petitioners were suitably humble: in the opening to their petition, they say that they are bringing ‘a legal supplication to your divinity’. And they laid out the facts of their case carefully, even including a speech previously delivered to the provincial governor. But to little avail.
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- Medieval PetitionsGrace and Grievance, pp. 47 - 63Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009
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