ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the multiple penalties for piracy in the medieval Mediterranean world, from hanging to physical mutilation, reprisal, and recompense, with the aim of problematizing piracy and revealing the ambiguities that surrounded it. Piracy was the subject of myth and miracle collections as well as lawsuits, royal grants of letters of marque for retribution, and documents of practice. Medieval attitudes toward piracy were dependent on perspective, and there was not always stigma attached. Though pirates, if caught, were often punished, legal criminalization of piracy came late in the Middle Ages.
