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Simony is the act of selling church offices and roles or sacred things. It is named after Simon Magus, who is described in the Acts of the Apostles as having offered two disciples of Jesus payment in exchange for their empowering him to impart the power of the Holy Spirit to anyone on whom he would place his hands. The term extends to other forms of trafficking for money in "spiritual things".
Theft is the taking of another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word theft is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting, library theft or fraud. In some jurisdictions, theft is considered to be synonymous with larceny; in others, theft has replaced larceny. Someone who carries out an act of or makes a career out of theft is known as a thief.
Black's Law Dictionary is the most widely used law dictionary in the United States. Henry Campbell Black (1860–1927) was the author of the first two editions of the dictionary. However, it remains an abridged dictionary with pronunciation guides and slight reference material.
An eponym is a person, place, or thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives derived from eponym include eponymous and eponymic.
Bitch is a pejorative slang word for a person, usually a woman. When applied to a woman or girl, it means someone who is belligerent, unreasonable, malicious, controlling, aggressive, or dominant. When applied to a man or boy, bitch reverses its meaning and is a derogatory term for being subordinate, weak, or cowardly.
Larceny is a crime involving the unlawful taking or theft of the personal property of another person or business. It was an offence under the common law of England and became an offence in jurisdictions which incorporated the common law of England into their own law, where in many cases it remains in force.
Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and may be revealed to family members or associates rather than to the general public. It may involve using threats of physical, mental or emotional harm, or of criminal prosecution, against the victim or someone close to the victim. It is normally carried out for personal gain, most commonly of position, money, or property. It is also used, sometimes by state agencies, to exert influence; this was a common Soviet practice, so much so that the term "kompromat", transliterated from Russian, is often used for compromising material used to exert control.
In historical legal systems, an outlaw is one declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so that anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. In early Germanic law, the death penalty is conspicuously absent, and outlawing is the most extreme punishment, presumably amounting to a death sentence in practice. The concept is known from Roman law, as the status of homo sacer, and persisted throughout the Middle Ages.
Jonathan Wild, also spelled Wilde, was a London underworld figure notable for operating on both sides of the law, posing as a public-spirited crimefighter entitled the "Thief-Taker General". Wild simultaneously ran a significant criminal empire, and used his crime fighting role to remove rivals and launder the proceeds of his own crimes.
Frankpledge was a system of joint suretyship common in England throughout the Early Middle Ages and High Middle Ages. The essential characteristic was the compulsory sharing of responsibility among persons connected in tithings. This unit, under a leader known as the chief-pledge or tithing-man, was then responsible for producing any man of that tithing suspected of a crime. If the man did not appear, the entire group could be fined.
Henry of Bracton, also Henry de Bracton, also Henricus Bracton, or Henry Bratton also Henry Bretton was an English cleric and jurist.
Hudud is an Arabic word meaning "borders, boundaries, limits". In the religion of Islam it refers to punishments that under Islamic law (shariah) are mandated and fixed by God. These punishments were rarely applied in pre-modern Islam, and their use in some modern states has been a source of controversy.
A fence, also known as a receiver, mover, or moving man, is an individual who knowingly buys stolen goods in order to later resell them for profit. The fence acts as a middleman between thieves and the eventual buyers of stolen goods who may not be aware that the goods are stolen. As a verb, the word describes the behaviour of the thief in the transaction. This sense of the term came from thieves' slang tracing from the notion of such transactions providing a defence against being caught. The term remains in common use in all major dialects of modern English, all of which spell it with a "c" even though the source word in some dialects is now spelled defense.
It Takes a Thief is an American reality television series that originally aired on the Discovery Channel from February 2, 2005 to April 13, 2007. The program stars and is hosted by Matt Johnston and Jon Douglas Rainey, two former thieves who use their unique expertise to teach people in an unusual way to protect their properties.
Charles Hitchen, also mentioned as Charles Hitchin in other sources, was a "thief-taker" and under-marshal of the City of London in the early 18th century, also, famously tried for homosexual acts and sodomitical offences. Alongside his former assistant and then a major rival Jonathan Wild, against whom he later published a pamphlet and contributed to his sentencing to death, Hitchen blackmailed and bribed people and establishments irrespective of their reputation, suspicious or respectable. Despite the disgrace of the people he earned through his abusive exercising of his power, he remained in power and continued fighting against violent crime, especially after the ending of the war of the Spanish Succession and until 1727.
Possession of stolen goods is a crime in which an individual has bought, been given, or acquired stolen goods.
The Halifax Gibbet was an early guillotine used in the town of Halifax, West Yorkshire, England. Estimated to have been installed during the 16th century, it was used as an alternative to beheading by axe or sword. Halifax was once part of the Manor of Wakefield, where ancient custom and law gave the Lord of the Manor the authority to execute summarily by decapitation any thief caught with stolen goods to the value of 13½d or more, or who confessed to having stolen goods of at least that value. Decapitation was a fairly common method of execution in England, but Halifax was unusual in two respects: it employed a guillotine-like machine that appears to have been unique in the country, and it continued to decapitate petty criminals until the mid-17th century.
Belief in and practice of witchcraft in Europe can be traced to classical antiquity and has continuous history during the Middle Ages, culminating in the Early Modern witch hunts and giving rise to the fairy tale and popular culture "witch" stock character of modern times, as well as to the concept of the "modern witch" in Wicca and related movements of contemporary witchcraft.
Infangthief and outfangthief were privileges granted to feudal lords under Anglo-Saxon law by the kings of England. They permitted their bearers to execute summary justice on thieves within the borders of their own manors or fiefs.
Furtum was a delict of Roman law comparable to the modern offence of theft despite being a civil and not criminal wrong. In the classical law and later, it denoted the contrectatio ("handling") of most types of property with a particular sort of intention – fraud and in the later law, a view to gain. It is unclear whether a view to gain was always required or added later, and, if the latter, when. This meant that the owner did not consent, although Justinian broadened this in at least one case. The law of furtum protected a variety of property interests, but not land, things without an owner, or types of state or religious things. An owner could commit theft by taking his things back in certain circumstances, as could a borrower or similar user through misuse.
References
- ↑ Bracton de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ 1, 3, tr. 2, c. 32.
- ↑ Henry C. Black, Black's Law Dictionary, 4th ed. 1968; see also 7th ed.
- ↑ John Bouvier, A Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America, J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 15th ed., 1883.
- 1 2 3 Henry C. Black, Black's Law Dictionary, 4th ed. 1968.
- ↑ Laws of Henry I , chap. 59; Laws of Aethelstane, § 6; Fleta, lib. 1, chap. 38, § 1; Britton p. 72; DuCange, Handhabenda.