The pillory has long been considered a typically medieval sentence with all traditional negative connotations. In the light of an anthropological reading, the condemnation to the pillory appears as a tool and above all a ritual, allowing urban society to reconstruct itself.
In this book, the revised version of a supported doctoral thesis at Sorbonne University in 2015, Isabelle d’Artagnan corrects some received ideas that combine a condemnation to the pillory with a certain idea of a dark and barbaric Middle Ages. It thus paints the complete portrait of a specific phenomenon which has implications for different fields of analysis of history: in the first place urban history and the history of mentalities, but also – in a less surprising way – the history of institutions and justice.
After reading this beautiful opus it clearly appears that condemning someone to the pillory exceeds the concern to punish those who have transgressed the standards of society (urban in the first place). It is indeed a practice which, by the very ritual of the exhibition, provides the need to restore the scandalized community, even raped by punished acts. The very object of the pillory (the justice post, which should not be confused with other instruments of constraint or torture) is obviously a criminal tool, but also a symbol of power, and becomes the place of a single ritual. This implies that the phenomenon requires, in addition to a historical and legal analysis, an anthropological reading. This is what the author brilliantly realizes, mainly based on legal sources (from the parliament of Paris and local and temporal justices in the first place) by adding testimonies drawn from available and very varied sources: narrative sources, charters, standards and urban deliberations, epic and lyrical literature….
In search of the pillory: origins and development
In the first part, the subject goes in search of the practice, starting by tracing “ The invention of the pillory ». A lexicographic analysis shows that the very word is of Picardy origin and the first testimonies of the practice of exposure to the pillory are in fact in the northern parts of the Kingdom of France: in Flanders, Artois, Picardy and Normandy. A large region characterized by a high degree of urbanization. However, who says city says market: it is precisely in the need to protect social peace during the markets that the pillory appears in the municipal charters. It is a question for the urban elites of acting against what could disturb the desired organization of the market: to ensure the transparency of transactions, to enforce the rules aimed at fraud or deception on the quality of the products.
The penalty of the pillory therefore gives body to the solidarity of good people in the communes, it makes it possible to delimit the separation from each other, and those by whom the scandal arrives. If the penalty has its origin in a stately institution marking the rights of the owner and protector of the market, it manifests itself first in the municipal charters and becomes a tool in the hands of the young aldermen authorities, that is to say the holders of both political, legal and legislative power within the city. Once put in place, the institution spreads in a broader space, in a movement from north to south and from west to east.
The penalty associated with the pilor, the infamous exhibition (which aims to punish by touching the honor of the condemned person), remains the primary use of construction. Nevertheless, the various supports to make this exhibition (scale, shackles, post, pillory or even mechanized tower) also symbolize the differences between the levels of justice, the ranks of jurisdictions.
A highly ritualized punishment
After an overview of the origins and the dissemination of the model of the penalty associated with the Pilor, the subject then devotes itself to the sensitive and not very obvious ground (by taking into account the historiographical discussions) of the ritual meaning of the scenes which take place around the pillory. This part-the most original and perhaps the most attractive of the book-is deliberately inscribed in the discussions around the notion of ritual (and its application in history). The author describes not only the pillory as an immutable ritual, but she also takes stock of the appropriation in time and in the space of this ritual.
It turns out that pillory is far from being a tool for political communication up to bottom (from authorities to the public), but gives the main role to the public who not only is called to interpret the ritual, but also to invest the performance of a specific sense. By acting in this way, the adhesion of all to the law and in power becomes visible and in turn a source of meaning. The author illustrates with multiple examples how the public is involved in the ritual, shouting insults, throwing objects on the pillory and on the condemned, mutating the ritual into an almost festive restoration, although constantly codified, of urban peace. The community with which the standards have been transgressed is refounded by the emotions expressed around the pillory. In this game between the condemned and his audience, the authorities often take care to keep a certain physical distance, while maintaining control over the situation.
It is just as important to note that the infamous exposure is very flexible and is part of a modification in time, which allows vigilantes to adapt the punishment to the different options concerning the public humiliation available: the rope on the neck, the race or the honorable fine, even the fustigation or the mutilation and last the execution. The ritual marks the urban space, because before arriving at the pillory and therefore to the market, there is a displacement often in a soiled cart, or made by a humiliating walk towards the pillory. Signs or texts are attached to the condemned specifying the crime
Punish: why and to what effect ?
Finally, the book also deals with the different uses of the infamous exhibition. There is a question of attempts to prevent crime by highlighting the punishment by the pillory, but above all of the need to avenge honor and to amend the insult inflicted in power: either that of the urban community, or that of the prince. In the French context, it is not only about the honor of the king, but also that of the princes of blood which, like the Dukes Valois of Burgundy in the XVe century, apply royal recipes in their lordships. The process of grabbing the infamous penalty for blasphemy and insulting words develops and allows royalty, based on the legislation of King Saint Louis promulgated on his return from Crusade in 1254, to grasp the practice and to expand it from an application in crimes of fraud and lacin to all types of lies and disloyalty. We are therefore close to what sociologist Norbert Elias described as “ Civilization process », By emphasizing the internalization of bourgeois values.
The end of the book confirms this impression, since he poses what the author describes as “ milestones For a sociography of sentenced to the infamous exhibition. She concludes that the penalties in question apply above all to “ criminals with a desperately ordinary profile », To use an expression from Claude Gauvard. Most of them are commoner in the age of age, married, sedentary, winning their bread by working, and equipped with a solidarity network. The marginalized people, already excluded from society are remarkably absent, as well as the privileged (especially the nobles, clerics and commoners exercising a public charge), protected by the legal mechanisms in place. Infamatic penalties and exposure to the pillory therefore apply preferably to those that this performative ritual makes it possible to reintegrate into urban society.
Finally, and it is not one of the smallest qualities of the book, exposure to the pillory exceeds by its ritualized character the exclusion (temporary or not) of an individual, in that it allows the restoration of a community through the ritualized action of a specific justice. We are far from a terrifying application of justice, quite the contrary: the gathering of an audience whose role is essential is festive and pleasant. It is therefore necessary to resume the expression of the author, with a nod to the Sisyphus Albert Camus, “ Imagine the audience of happy infamous rituals ».
Isabelle d’Artagnan’s book is remarkable as much by the extent of the questionnaire, and by the long period studied (from the XIIe At XVe century), only by the use of a vast international literature and by the scholarship which it shows. An impressive number of notes finally allows the author to regularly confront his interpretations with direct sources.