«Истинная правда». Языки средневекового правосудия

Yet, some christological motives (the very idea of the delivery of a criminal to the court that had the right to send him to execution; the instruments of punishment that he had to carry to the place of execution by himself; his tied hands; the stone and the cross as the places of justice) allow the author to think of a concrete prototype for this ritual, the scene of Jesus Christ's delivery from the chief priests to Pontius Pilate. As the author supposes, the use of a «negative» image as a historical prototype should not mislead the researchers as it was a usual practice for the medieval judges (f.e. they used the image of the Sinagogue to create their own Dame of Justice). The scene of Jesus Christ's delivery brought not only negative connotations to their mind: Christ was perceived as an ideal criminal whose death became the expiation of all human sins and crimes. Using the association between Christ and every «ordinary» criminal the judges of medieval Reims, the author supposes, had created their own «dead-man-walking» ritual.

Yet, the ideal image of an impartial judge was not the only possible one. The medieval judge could at any time be accused of any breaches of procedure, of prejudice, of unjust sentence. But even in this case the medieval justice was up to the mark as it managed to create an image of a guilty judge capable to admit his mistakes and to repent. This image made the base of one more judicial ritual which is examined in Chapter 10 of the book, «A Right to Make a Mistake», a ritual of public penance of a judge, including taking down of an unjustly executed criminal's body from the gallows.

The theme of their own guilt was of great importance to the medieval judges, even though the number of non-rejected appeals on the unjust sentence was not very considerable in the 14th — 15th centuries. Public penance with a ritual of taking down of a criminal's body was a usual French punishment for this type of crime. The study of its elements (the image of a sinner that the convicted judge had to enlarge upon, his perception as a dead man during the penance, etc.) led the author to the conclusion about the spiritual character of its origins. Yet, some secular elements (such as strict sequence of the places of penance — first at the gallows and then in church; the imitation of the same punishment to what the accused judge had earlier condemned his victim, etc.) were also present.

The very meaning of this ritual was the medieval judges' recognition of the possible culpability of one of their colleagues, their readiness to trace him down and to punish him exemplarily. Admitting the judge's right to make a mistake and to correct it, the citizens let him (as well as his victim) return to their society. Thus the social order seemed to be restored.