The power to pardon in late medieval and early modern Europe: New perspectives in the history of crime and criminal justice

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, few sources have been the subject of more scholarly attention than medieval and early modern pardon letters. These charters, issued by the royal or princely chancery in response to a petition addressed to the monarch and his council, were the strongest manifestation of the sovereign's right to remit crimes in many European polities, including France, England, the Low Countries, Castile, and Portugal. Following the paradigmatic interpretation of ordinary violence as the expression of well‐integrated social behaviours, historians of crime and criminal justice have found in petitions and pardon letters records of powerful narratives describing episodes of violence in the population's everyday life. Yet scholars have also debated the reliability of these stories, as they were obviously designed to support the petitioners' claim for pardon. Another major historiographical controversy concerns the articulation between the power to pardon and the criminal policies of the monarchs. While some historians considered the granting of pardon letters as the product of a weak or corrupted justice system that preferred to remit crimes in exchange for money rather prosecuting the perpetrators, others argued that the rise of the power to pardon followed the process of early modern State‐building and served to temper criminal prosecutions and assert the sovereign's right over the life and death of his subjects. This essay introduces the reader to the historiography of pardon letters and shows its connections with the recent developments in the history of crime and criminal justice in late medieval and early modern Europe.

“Parere contrario”

“…Il punto di partenza della ricerca nasce da una preliminare constatazione: il potere di grazia, tema di rilevanza interdisciplinare (Pisani 2007;Ruckman jr. 2012) e oggetto di analisi in chiave comparativa (Sebba 1977;Novak 2016;Udofa 2018), è stato studiato, oltre che in ambito giuridico, soprattutto in quello storico (per l'Italia, cfr. fra gli altri Stronati, 2009;Nubola 2001Nubola , 2011Nubola , 2019 e specificamente di history of crime and criminal justice (Verreycken 2019), mentre più limitatamente in ambito sociologico e, in particolare, sociologico-giuridico (per es. MacEvoy, Mallinder 2012; Norton 2018).…”

Judging sexy women in late medieval France

“…Many of the alleged offenders were pardoned. Sometimes pardon came because the offence seemed somehow justified or mitigated by circumstances, but in other instances royal mercy expressly sought to perform power by pardoning the absolute worst of offenders (Gauvard 2018, 187-214;Verreycken 2019). Among those in fact executed, while it is hard to understand why they, and not others, died for their crimes, we can at least recognise some clearer patterns in the ways in which they were executed (Gessler 1939;Cohen 1993, 96-98;Turning 2016;Gauvard 2018).…”

‘En nous humblement requerant’: Crime Narrations and Rhetorical Strategies in Late Medieval Pardon Letters

“…For the late medieval period, the most numerous and homogenous series of remission letters copied in chancery records are those granted by the kings of France, registered in the Trésor des chartes, and those granted by the dukes of Burgundy, preserved in the registres de l'audience (François, 1942;Gauvard, 1991: 59-109;Verreycken, 2014: 45-65). 2 The power to pardon criminals was in fact a major feature of sovereignty in the late Middle Ages and many lay rulers began to deliver charters of pardon from the 13 th century onwards (Verreycken, 2019). One of the earliest surviving series of royal pardon letters are those granted by the English Crown and recorded in a register of letters patent called the patent rolls, which was created under King John in 1201 (Hurnard, 1969;Lacey, 2009).…”