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IMC 2018: Sessions

Session 1542: Power, Mercy, and Memory: Royal and Princely Pardons in the Late Middle Ages

Thursday 5 July 2018, 09.00-10.30

Organisers:Rudi Beaulant, Archéologie, Terre, Histoire, Sociétés (ARTEHIS - UMR 6298), Université Bourgogne, Dijon
Quentin Verreycken, Centre d’histoire du droit et de la justice (CHDJ), Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve / Centre de recherches en histoire du droit et des institutions (CRHiDI), Université Saint-Louis, Bruxelles
Moderator/Chair:Quentin Verreycken, Centre d’histoire du droit et de la justice (CHDJ), Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve / Centre de recherches en histoire du droit et des institutions (CRHiDI), Université Saint-Louis, Bruxelles
Paper 1542-aL'espace de la grâce ducale: L'invention d'un langage princier en Bretagne sous le règne de Jean IV
(Language: Français)
David Dominé-Cohn, Groupe d'Anthropologie Historique de l'Occident Médiéval (GAHOM), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
Index terms: Administration, Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Political Thought
Paper 1542-bThe Good, the Bad, and the Pardoned: The Evolution of the Pardon Procedure in Burgundy in the 14th and 15th Centuries
(Language: English)
Rudi Beaulant, Archéologie, Terre, Histoire, Sociétés (ARTEHIS - UMR 6298), Université Bourgogne, Dijon
Index terms: Archives and Sources, Charters and Diplomatics, Law, Politics and Diplomacy
Paper 1542-cTo Forgive and To Forget?: The Use of Abolition Letters for Rebel Cities by King of France Louis XI, 1461-1483
(Language: English)
Adrien Carbonnet, Center Roland Mousnier, Université Paris IV - Sorbonne
Index terms: Archives and Sources, Charters and Diplomatics, Politics and Diplomacy
Abstract

In the late medieval period, the power to pardon criminals and rebels who asked for mercy was one of the most important rights of sovereign rulers like the king of France, the duke of Burgundy, or the duke of Britain. By granting remission or abolition letters that allowed individuals and communities to escape punishment and get back to society, the monarchs constructed their own sovereignty upon their subjects and their justices by imposing an extraordinary procedure they controlled. Following a legal and political fiction, the merciful king or prince had even the power to erase crimes from memory itself. Thereby, the act of forgiving could also be an act of forgetting.