Physical violence was an integral part of the exercise of power and judicial authority in the Middle Ages. Present as a threat, it could be demonstratively renounced or applied with expressive clarity. As the handling of violence and the legitimacy of the exercise of power remained mutually related, the practice of violence was reflected in forms of resistance, illustrating the relationship between the two as an expression of a specific political culture. The thirteen contributions gathered here do not aim for a theoretical definition of violence, but rather provide an exemplary description of significant individual cases and an international as well as intercultural comparison using examples from the history of Europe and the Arab-Islamic world.