In reading Giovanni Boccaccio's 14th century book set in Florence, Italy I've started to wonder if it's true that e.g. A father could go to the King and arrange for a man to be hanged for getting his unwed daughter pregnant?
I know there were far worse things happening in these times. I'm just wondering if the drama is set in the factual this-could-happen present or "older times".
As I understand it, Amerigo in the story goes to the head of the local militia and reports Pietro's crime against (himself) by getting Violente pregnant.
However, after he had said to her that which his rage dictated to him, he took horse again and returning to Trapani, recounted the affront that Pietro had done him to a certain Messer Currado, who was captain there for the king. The latter caused forthright seize Pietro, who was off his guard, and put him to the torture, whereupon he confessed all and being a few days after sentenced by the captain to be flogged through the city and after strung up by the neck
Could something like this happen? Well, it's quite a bit later but in 1555 Nuntio of Rocca Sinibalda, who is testifying in court after a double murder has occurred due to an unwed daughter getting pregnant, recalls a rather extreme situation with tragic results:
Here is a piteous story from 1555, from the Sabine mountains east of Rome, told by Nuntio of Rocca Sinibalda to the pope’s magistrate. One day, he informs the magistrate, he was working in the fields when his brother arrived with an urgent summons to Uncle Barnabeo’s, in a nearby town. Why? asked Nuntio; the brother would not say. Arriving at his uncle’s house, Nuntio found all his kin there, crying. What is wrong? It is your cousin, Bernardina. She is pregnant, and she was a virgin! Nuntio too burst into tears. Who did it? The village judge! But don’t worry; we have his house surrounded, and the priest is negotiating to secure a dowry. All afternoon and evening they parleyed, but to no avail. The next morning, the feckless judge chose to make a run for it, jumping out his window and down the town walls. Dashing for freedom across the terraced gardens, he failed to reckon on Barnabeo’s lurking kinsmen. They cut him down. At once, word came to the father: the judge is dead! Aware that with the seducer had died the promise of a dowry and of familial honor redeemed, the father took his daughter by the elbow and, under the eyes of the whole village, led her across the field to her lover’s corpse. There, as all watched, he slit her throat.
As you can see, the primary goal at first would ideally to force marriage upon the seducer, but if that were not possible to at least secure a generous dowry from the adulter so that the woman might still find respectable marriage despite her "diminished" purity and therefore value due to her pregnancy. In this case, the situation gets out of hand and ends in tragedy after the seducer is slain and the possibility of a dowry is lost. The father then cruelly takes his daughter and honor kills her in front of her lover's corpse.
That Nuntio was testifying in the first place of this incident in court should hint that this was not commonplace at all. Women could still find "redemption" in their purity by entering a convent for some time before being married off on charity, or entering religious service, either of which would absolve the father of their daughter's responsibility and therefore, their dishonor. That the father would choose this route to claim their family's honor would be considered as cruel. There are, however, court cases cropping of up this very thing happening where both lovers are killed. When they do come up the family are vindicated and grievous, the community shocked and sorrowful and the law is lenient. That patriarch would be both defender and provider of his female family members who's public reputation was closely tied to the purity of his female offspring was an accepted part of Renaissance Italian culture.^(1)
1 Elizabeth Storr Cohen, Thomas Vance Cohen, Daily Life in Renaissance Italy