Description:
Abstract The town council in Ulm, Germany banished over a thousand offenders in the course of the sixteenth century. Examination of the banishment verdicts issued by these magistrates reveals how they used expulsion to regulate both the physical borders of their territory and inclusion in the urban commune. In banishment cases involving resident aliens, the local authorities sought to expel resident aliens who seemed to threaten the community's property or its purity, using purgation to police the margin between legal and physical inclusion and exclusion. Finally, the local magistrates used the public expulsion rituals that accompanied banishment to display their role in regulating these boundaries before their subjects.