«Истинная правда». Языки средневекового правосудия

All these chapters deal with the problem of medieval witchcraft whose very existence was not so easy to prove at the court. The use of the folklore explanatory schemes could be the most appreciable and the most successful here. Yet not just the most incredible criminal accusations could be based on such analogies. Chapter 8, «The Salmon's Choice», deals with another such «ready-made» form that was used with to help the compiler of the «Registre criminel du Châtelet de Paris», Alaume Cachemarée, to express his views apropos of one of the most important judicial question of his time, the question of the forced conversion of the Jews.

The chapter focuses on the trial of Salmon, a Spanish Jew from Barcelona, convicted of theft and executed in 1390. The unusual feature in the case, which has attracted the attention of the author, is the non-standard «offer» made by the royal judges to the accused: he could be converted to Christianity or remain a Jew and die a torturous «Jewish death» (hanged by the feet, together with two live dogs by his side). What did the judges try to achieve by their strange proposition to Salmon? How should one explain the decision of the accused to be converted just before his death? What specific features of criminal legal proceedings did Alaume Cachemarée try to illustrate by this case? These are but a few questions posed in this chapter.

The study of the economic and legal conditions of the Jewish community in the late 14th-century France, the mixed JudeoChristian character of conceptions in the sphere of legal proceedings, and the specific features of the legal institute of the «Jewish death», as well as the main principles of the French legal procedure, allows the author to speak of the uniqueness of Salmon's case in the legal practice of the time. The direct contradiction of the judges' verdict with the Royal Ordinance banning forced conversion to Christianity makes the very appearance of the case of Salmon or, at least, its outcome rather doubtful.

One of the possible variants of the interpretation of the case suggested by the author is an analysis of possible literary parallels, which might have served as a source of inspiration for Alaume Cachemarée when compiling his «Registre». The closest analogy may be seen in the story of a repentant highwayman, in particular, its 14th-century presentation in the miracle-play «Robert le Diable». The similarity of motives, key elements and impressive endings make the author see a certain resemblance between these two stories. Yet the problem of real or fictional legal case of Salmon of Barcelona remains open for discussion, which makes it right to regard the story as casus interpretationis of the compiler and the author as well.

The last part of the book deals with one more language of the medieval justice — not the «oral» or «written» one, but the language of rituals, the language of gestures [body language], which could be intelligible without words. These rituals were intended to convince the citizens not only of a man's guilt but also of the correctness of the chosen procedure of punishment, of its conformity to the human and divine ordinances.

Chapter 9, «Dead Man Walking», focuses on a very particular judicial ritual, a ritual of transmission of a condemned criminal from one court that could not put him to death to a court having this right. It became known from the only one document of 1431, the «Enqueste afuture fort ample et notable pour la recognoissance des droicts de la terre et justice du ban de Saint-Remy de Reins».

The study of the topography of Reims where the ritual took place led the author to the conclusion that the St.-Remy's judges desired to present the condemned criminal as a dead man even before the execution itself; at the very moment of his transmission to the judges of the archbishop of Reims. This idea of a condemned criminal as an already dead man was very close to the medieval sense of justice, especially to the ritual of public penance or to the ritual of transmission of a criminal from the spiritual court to the secular court. The procedure features marked by the author allow her to speak of the universal meaning of this ritual, of the pre-Christian traditions influencing its origins and development. Each gesture and movement of its participants (the exchange of the accused for money; his tying; a cord on his neck; a blow on his neck; the judges' exchange of remarks) actualized a metaphor of death, even if they were intended or explained differently. This meaning of the ritual was absolutely clear to the participants as well as to the citizens and there could not be another interpretation.