«Истинная правда». Языки средневекового правосудия

Though Florant, Marion and more than a hundred of their «colleagues» had to carry out their defence in court themselves, some of the medieval criminals asked for a professional legal councel. Chapter 3, «A Witch and her Advocate», deals with one of such cases. It is based on the materials of the earliest of the witch trials kept in the French archives. The trial took place in Paris in 1354 (A.N. X 2a 6, f. 153vB—157A, 9 avril 1353/1354). Some materials from the French, German and Swiss court files of the end of the 14th — beginning of the 15th century are used in this chapter as well.

The participation of a legal councel in this trial is of great interest considering the nearly full absence of advocates at royal courts of that time. Besides, the case of Margareta Sabia was the only one French witch trial of the 14th century where the participation of a professional lawyer took place. His role was very considerable: he could secure the change of venue of Sabia's case from Montferrand to Paris, the temporary discharge of the accused, the transportation of her «accomplices» to Paris and — the last but not the least — her complete acquittal.

Besides the analysis of the role of lawyer, the author tries to understand how a private, family conflict over inheritance could lead to the institution of a criminal trial with charges of witchcraft. This charge, as it appears, was baseless since it was not connected with any actually committed crime. Nevertheless, the case of Margareta Sabia — for the first time in the French medieval legal practice — dealt with a «witches' conspiracy» and a «sect» allegedly founded by them. The author looks into how such an accusation was brought about at the time when there were no explicit criteria for such a notion as «witches' conspiracy»; on what «scientific» ideas the accusers and judges based their indictment if they had no demonological treatises at their disposal; why this trial became so interesting for the royal judges that they managed to transfer the case from the local court to the Parliament of Paris.

It appears possible to the author to suppose that in the given case (as in some other cases known from the French pardon letters of the 14th — 15th centuries) the charges of witchcraft could be based on the notions already known to the medieval thought. First of all, it was the notion of the unjustly acquired wealth already used in 1307–1314 during the trial of the Knights Templar and in some politico-religious trials of the beginning of the 14th century. Social status of the accused woman was also of great importance. As comparative analysis of similar trials in Switzerland and Germany shows any unattached woman of certain wealth (not married or widowed) could easily be accused of witchcraft. All these necessary requirements were met in the case of Margareta Sabia.

The materials of this trial also help the author to answer the question as to how the French judges of the 14th century understood the notion of «witches' conspiracy». By that they usually meant the existence of a certain group of women and men, close relatives or intimate friends, who were considered witches or sorcerers. Compared with the earlier period when a «conspiracy» usually meant a group of people where only one member was a sorcerer or witch, such a «conspiracy» was rather closer to a «sect» the notion of which appeared in the Medieval Europe much later, in the 15th — 16th centuries. Thus the analyzed case allows to suppose that the process of forming of the perception of witchcraft and sorcery in the countries of the Western Europe took place not continuously (as the majority of the researchers think) but discretely, unevenly. With all that, even the members of one and the same court (the Parliament of Paris in this case) during a period of several dozen years could — several times — change their opinion on what should be considered to be witchcraft, sometimes to the exact opposite.

Studying the problem of the appearance of judicial prosecution with accusation of witchcraft the author has to turn to the problem of recording of such cases, the problem of legal discourse itself, which became the subject of Chapter 4 of the book, «The Judges and their Texts». The author uses here the archive materials of the early witch trials as well as other judicial archive documents and some already published documents, first of all, of the accusatory trial of Joan of Arc of 1431 and the case of Giles de Rais of 1440.