«Истинная правда». Языки средневекового правосудия

The chapter primarily focuses on how the judges formulated their indictment in written form in order to: (1) prouve its truthfulness, (2) convince the people that their decision was just, (3) strengthen in people's minds their own image as that of judicial power capable of settling any conflict professionally and appropriately and guarantee peace, law and order to the subjects of the kingdom. These attempts to strengthen this image of judicial power in the documents (first of all, in the records of the sentences, arrêts) up till now had never been subjected to any special analysis. The author tries to retrace the process of forming of this image at several levels: of formulation of the arrêts; of vocabulary, i.e. the stable and constantly employed expressions and phrases used in formulation of the arrêts; of mistakes and/or slips of pen by the scribe; pronouns indicating the judges and the accused (the use of the pronouns of the first and second person instead of the third one); of verbal forms (use of the passive voice by the accused and the active voice by the judges); of direct speech; of references to any opinion of a person of authority confirming the judges' powers and their position in this or that disputable question (references to the coutumes and the royal legislation, to judicial precedents, to the opinion of «experts», i.e. the people knowledgeable in legal problems, to public opinion); of the notions creating a specific portrait of a criminal «deserving death penalty» («hard childhood», «bad upbringing», «bad temper», «indecent behavior»).

Nonetheless, as the author shows, the most effective ways to create a semblance of a terrible crime — discovered by very competent judges who passed a just sentence well-deserved by the guilty persons — was to use the most simple explanatory forms — the folklore ones — while formulating both the indictment, the confession of the accused and the sentence. It could well be a kind of play up with the notions of «good» or «evil» witch (the idea of Vladimir Propp worked out by Carlo Ginzburg on the basis of medieval witch trials); a description of an initiation ceremony (as in the trial of Giles de Rais); use of the Biblical analogies (as in the case of Joan of Arc accused of sorcery and prostitution). The indictment thus constructed and formulated was more easily accepted and remembered by the people who thought it the only possible and right interpretation of the event.

Chapter 5 of the book, «Mad Marion», deals with one of the witch trials of the end of the 14th century described in the «Registre criminel du Châtelet de Paris» — the case of the already known Marion la Droiturière and her elder friend Margot de la Barre. The author notes the lack of any inadequate survey of the early French witch trials and also indicates the historians' tendency to attribute the specific and particular perception of a witch common in 16th — 17th centuries to an earlier period. The lack of a definite stereotype of a witch in the end of the 14th century allowes the author to notice the traces of an earlier tradition in the perception of a witch and to bring to light the principles of exclusion of an individual (women first of all) from the society in medieval France. The subjects of madness, illicit love affairs (concubinage), prostitution, sorcery to which the judges then started to add the charges of witchcraft were the most noteworthy and important in this respect.

The chapter also deals with the special position of Aleaume Cachemarée, the compiler of the «Registre». The analysis of his presentation of this case led the author to the conclusion of his dual attitude towards the «heroines» of this trial whom he could not fully consider as «real», «bad» witches. The details of the trial were intentionally (or subconsciously) put down in a form of a fairy tale with the main theme of a difficult goal and its achievement and realization (with the help of a «good» witch). These facts cast a shadow of doubt upon Carlo Ginzburg's theory that in the analyzed period the stereotype of a «bad» witch was already in use everywhere and also that the judges used another fairy-tale scheme to present the information about witch trials; namely, the scheme of struggle with an enemy and victory over him.