6 - Insult and revenge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 July 2009
Summary
Filthy worm-head.
You're lying in your throat, filthy, rotten woman.
I hate you.
Go on, rotten prattler. God give you ill-fortune. Filthy, shitty ass, why do you come round here with your prattle?
While you were a local official, you took some fish from me as ‘tribute’.
Go on, go and talk to your mates, the whores. You shouldn't be talking to good women.
I hate you like a dog. I shall punch and kick you.
Ugly, rotten pimp.
You're a devil and a piece of filth.
Thief and rogue.
You'd better think of leaving your house, otherwise I shall chase you from Savona, knock your sons' heads off and break your ribs.
Look at this shame.
By Christ's body, I shall have to hit you on the head.
Mad boy.
Do your worst.
Witch-whore.
I shall cut your throat and put the boot in.
Ugly, shameful woman, you take men in your anus.
Go and get fucked.
False Jewess, you don't know what you've got coming to you.
Rotten pimp, we shall chase you from your house.
Rotten dog whore.
Rotten donkey, ribald.
You robbed me.
Ugly, rotten whore.
I'm going to have to poke my fingers in your eyes, as you punched me in the face.
I want to see you dragged through this town.
These are just some of the forty-eight insults prosecuted in Savona in one year in the fourteenth century. They are a representative sample from this city's court records, as the remainder take similar forms. ‘I hate you’ was common (three further instances in the same year), as was ‘You're lying in your throat’ (six other instances).
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- Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy , pp. 113 - 134Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007