Abstract
This research project explores the narratives of sexual violence in the late medieval Low Countries
(1250-1550) through a comparative analysis of literary, historical, and documentary sources. The
concept of moral injury (of the victim, perpetrator and society) helps interpret these accounts. Moral
injury refers to the violation of one's moral beliefs, more specifically the ethical and moral challenges
that arise from experiencing, committing, witnessing or documenting violence that violates deeply
held social and cultural values. As such, this project does not only focus on the sexual violence itself,
but also on the reaction afterwards of victim, abuser and society. In literary sources, fictionalized
stories intersect with cultural ideals, sexual scripts and social anxieties of the time. Often in
romances and medieval plays, the female victims have an active voice. In chronicles, women are
frequently depicted as victims of rape and pillaging during wartime. Such depictions not only
demonize the enemy, but also reflect the chroniclers' moral injury as a bystander. Finally,
documentary sources like pardon letters provide a more grounded view of how sexual violence was
addressed in legal and administrative contexts, but often almost exclusively from the perspective of
the perpetrators. By examining these three types of sources, this project sheds light on the multiple
ways sexual violence was represented, interpreted, and framed in the late medieval Low Countries.
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