Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France 9781503620957

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Fiction in the Archives Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France

The Harry Camp Lectures at Stanford University The Harry Camp Memorial Fund was established in 1959 to make possible a continuing series of lectures at Stanford University on topics bearing on the dignity and worth of the human individual.

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Fiction in the Archives PARDON

TALES

TELLERS

IN

AND

THEIR

SIXTEENTH-

CENTURY

FRANCE

Natalie Zeman Davis

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

Stanford University Press, Stanford, California

© I 987 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stant(JrdJunior University Printed in the United States of America Orignul printing 1 found in several provinces. And back to sixteenth-century legal texts and Renaissance novellas. A cultural analysis of pardon texts would have to understand the rules for their creation. I could hope that historians of the law and of crime would savor with me the storytelling features of their documents, while perhaps critic/scholars would find here an interesting model for the production ofliterature. As I began to write up my material, links between violence, storytelling, and pardon seeking cropped up everywhere. They appeared in the sixteenth century, where connections between riot and ritual, which I had noted in an earlier publication, now seemed important not merely because events had happened that way but also because people of the time told about them that way. And they appeared in the twentieth century, where despite major differences from the Old Regime in values, law, and judicial procedure, similar motifs surface in crime reports and similar quarrels break out about accepting responsibility and seeking rightful excuse. "Listen to this," I would say to my husband as he was fixing breakfast and I was reading the New York Times, "here's a man sentenced for the beating death of his mother when she refused to make him meatballs for Thanksgiving dinner. ... Here's an uninvited guest shooting another young man at a party 'when everyone was dancing.' ... Here's a father who wants his son to accept the death penalty to atone for murder." Meanwhile, letters to the editor were debating how "self-defense" should be understood in Bernhan_; Goetz's shooting in the subway, and Jean Harris told us, in her book published from prison, that she never intended the death of the man she loved, that she docs not know how he was killed. My study stays squarely within its sixteenth-century bounds, but I hope readers will share my sense of its wider resonance, both for perceiving recurrent connections between history, literature, and law and for reading pardon tales and crime stories of the present. Given first in January 1986 as the Harry Camp Lectures at Stanford University, Fiction irz the Archives was also presented as the 1986 Whidden Lectures at McMaster University. I am appreciative not only of the honor of these invitations, but also of the lively questioning and suggestions from my audiences. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation provided funds to support my reVlll

Preface search, and, once in the archives, I was much assisted by the staff of the Archives Nationales, the Archives de Ia Prefecture de Ia Police at Paris, the Archives Departementales du Rhone, and the Archives d'Etat de Geneve. I want particularly to thank Barbara Roth at the last institution. The argument of this book was also presented in brief to several intellectual communities, whose responses helped in the early formulation and reformulation of the project: the Toronto Semiotic Circle; the Center for the Humanities of Wesleyan University; the History Departments of Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, Case Western Reserve University, Hofstra University, and the University of Edinburgh; and the Centre de Recherches Historiques of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Alfred Soman gave me excellent guidance on how to track down materials in the registers of the Parlement of Paris and the Paris Police Archives and responded with his characteristic generosity to questions about the workings of French criminal justice, both early in my work and at its end. Bernard Lcscaze helped me to follow the pardon trail in Geneva. The manuscript of the lectures was read by Stephen Greenblatt, Joan W. Scott, and Thomas A. Green, and their suggestions were invaluable in writing the final version of the book. Numerous friends provided ideas and bibliography, including John M. Beattie, Philip Berk, Joan deJean, Carla Hesse, Madeleine Jeay, Jean-Philippe La brousse, Franc;ois Rigolot, Peter Sahlins, Marcia Cantor Stubbs, Stephen D. White, and Froma Zeitlin. Dean Dabrowski was indefatigable in tracking down books and in other secretarial help, and Ellen Smith of Stanford University Press gave astute attention to copy editing the finished manuscript. None of these counselors should be held responsible, however, for any defects in the final product, but only its author. As for my husband, Chandler Davis, I hope he will pardon me for countless interruptions to hear one more bloody tale or to discuss one more interpretation, even though I have no excuse and do not promise to mend my ways.

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Contents

Illustrations

xm

Introduction ONE

The Time of Storytelling

7

TWO

Angry Men and Self-Defense

36

THREE

Bloodshed and the Woman's Voice Conclusion

B.

77

I I I

Appendixes A. Transcriptions of Letters of Remission I I7 Sources on the Wife-Homicide of Claude Dater 13 8 c. The Dismissal of Letters of Remission I 4 I Notes

145

Index

207

Illustrations

I.

2.

A I 548 letter of remission. Archives Nationalcs, Tresor des Chartes. Male homicides. New York Public Library, Spencer Collection.

3. A humble request for ratification. New York Public Library, Spencer Collection.

9 I

3

54

4- Public executions. New York Public Library, Spencer

Collection.

55

5. Pardon for the Sire de Saint-Vallier. Bibliotheque

Nationale, Salle des Manuscrits. 6. The sin of wrath. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes.

56 So

7- Women's conversations. Bibhotheque Nationale,

Cabinet des Estampes.

90

8. Women fighting. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes.

99

9. The battle for the eel. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes.

roo

Fiction in the Archives Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France

Introduction

l!!!!!•!l!!!.i~!!!!1!~er me begin with an archival text: Fran