The Vision of Tundale as Penology: Medieval Conceptions of Rehabilitation and Justice

Abstract: This article begins by explaining the intellectual context in which The Vision of Tundale can be understood and providing a summary of the narrative, highlighting the descriptions provided of Otherworldly punishments. Medieval understandings of justice, both divine and terrestrial, can be seen as two sides of a single coin, allowing commentary about the nature and purposes of Otherworldly punishment to be construed also as understandings of the earthly criminal justice system. Rehabilitation, rather than simply deterrence and retribution, were seen, at least by some, as a fundamental aspect of medieval criminal justice, since punishments resulting in the death of an offender’s body served also as part of a longer-term penitential trajectory in which a form of rehabilitation could be completed in the afterlife.