The methods of micro-history with their focus on a person, an individual, certain details and cases (including legal cases as a précédent) appear to be the most adequate while studying the individual perception of law, legal procedure, judicial rituals, etc. in the Medieval France. This book attempts to show the possibilities of micro- (and macro-) analysis in relation to the registers of judicial practice of the Late Middle Ages. As the most telling document the author examines the «Registre criminel du Châtelet de Paris», composed in the end of the 14th century.
The tradition of the studies of the «Registre» is based on the serial character of such documents. Thus, the «Registre» and its analogues are used primarily in macro-historical research, treating such problems as the phenomenon of medieval criminality, the influence of this specific stratum on the society as a whole, its internal composition, the laws governing its existance. The authors of such works study the society of the criminals holistically, not representatively. This attitude bears the influence of Michel Foucault's methodology: the personality of a man is described not as a subject, but as an object of relationships, deprived of his/her own language. The author tries to offer other ways of analysis, partly based on Carlo Ginzburg's methodology, in particular on his assumption of a different type of discourse of the accused and of the accuser. The difference between the two types of discourse, in author's opinion, allows to apply the micro-study of the personality of an individual (or the judge or the criminal), his outlooks, his internal motivations and his Weltanschauung.
The first chapter, «Waiting for Death», deals with the pecularities of the criminals' discourse and behaviour at the royal court, with their perception of the power and the law. Where lies the border between «normal» and «individual» behaviour is the question which the author considers looking at the «Registre criminel du Châtelet de Paris». The expectation of death and the understanding of such a possibility made the criminals' discourse and behaviour in prison and at court unpredictable. The themes of violence (forced imprisonment), of loneliness (broken social relations), of physical pain (perception of tortures) become dominant here. But the attempts of the medieval criminals to overcome this situation appeared to be very different. Some tried a trick of using their «doubles», i.e. pretending to be a «clerc» with a tonsure (it was forbidden to try the clergy in royal and secular courts) or a «homme honnêtte» wearing good clothes. Some tried to change his/her name or pretended that he/she is infirm (mad) or pregnant. Some agreed to testify but refused to repeat their own words claiming that these words had been extorted by torture. Some even preferred to keep silence even after numerous torments.
The «Registre criminel du Châtelet de Paris» is a real collection of such individual conduct strategies of the medieval criminals and of their methods to resist the judges' intentions. The second chapter of the book, «A Man and a Woman: Two Love-stories», deals in detail with one of these methods — the way of speaking without saying, i.e. without testifying. The author tries to understand for what reasons the compiler of the «Registre», Alaume Cachemarée, incorporated the love-stories of two criminals, Florant de Saint-Lô and Marion la Droiturière, in his text considering that they were not their confession. The analysis of these stories (as of the love-discourse in Roland Barthes' terms) and of the peculiarities of men's and women's speech allows the author to assume that the two criminals' perception of love, sex and private life was too atypical for the end of the 14th century. The peculiarity of the two love-stories — beside the attempt of their authors to talk the judges' heads off — was the very reason to include them into the «Registre criminel».
Though Florant, Marion and more than a hundred of their «colleagues» had to carry out their defence in court themselves, some of the medieval criminals asked for a professional legal councel. Chapter 3, «A Witch and her Advocate», deals with one of such cases. It is based on the materials of the earliest of the witch trials kept in the French archives. The trial took place in Paris in 1354 (A.N. X 2a 6, f. 153vB—157A, 9 avril 1353/1354). Some materials from the French, German and Swiss court files of the end of the 14th — beginning of the 15th century are used in this chapter as well.
The participation of a legal councel in this trial is of great interest considering the nearly full absence of advocates at royal courts of that time. Besides, the case of Margareta Sabia was the only one French witch trial of the 14th century where the participation of a professional lawyer took place. His role was very considerable: he could secure the change of venue of Sabia's case from Montferrand to Paris, the temporary discharge of the accused, the transportation of her «accomplices» to Paris and — the last but not the least — her complete acquittal.
Besides the analysis of the role of lawyer, the author tries to understand how a private, family conflict over inheritance could lead to the institution of a criminal trial with charges of witchcraft. This charge, as it appears, was baseless since it was not connected with any actually committed crime. Nevertheless, the case of Margareta Sabia — for the first time in the French medieval legal practice — dealt with a «witches' conspiracy» and a «sect» allegedly founded by them. The author looks into how such an accusation was brought about at the time when there were no explicit criteria for such a notion as «witches' conspiracy»; on what «scientific» ideas the accusers and judges based their indictment if they had no demonological treatises at their disposal; why this trial became so interesting for the royal judges that they managed to transfer the case from the local court to the Parliament of Paris.
It appears possible to the author to suppose that in the given case (as in some other cases known from the French pardon letters of the 14th — 15th centuries) the charges of witchcraft could be based on the notions already known to the medieval thought. First of all, it was the notion of the unjustly acquired wealth already used in 1307–1314 during the trial of the Knights Templar and in some politico-religious trials of the beginning of the 14th century. Social status of the accused woman was also of great importance. As comparative analysis of similar trials in Switzerland and Germany shows any unattached woman of certain wealth (not married or widowed) could easily be accused of witchcraft. All these necessary requirements were met in the case of Margareta Sabia.
The materials of this trial also help the author to answer the question as to how the French judges of the 14th century understood the notion of «witches' conspiracy». By that they usually meant the existence of a certain group of women and men, close relatives or intimate friends, who were considered witches or sorcerers. Compared with the earlier period when a «conspiracy» usually meant a group of people where only one member was a sorcerer or witch, such a «conspiracy» was rather closer to a «sect» the notion of which appeared in the Medieval Europe much later, in the 15th — 16th centuries. Thus the analyzed case allows to suppose that the process of forming of the perception of witchcraft and sorcery in the countries of the Western Europe took place not continuously (as the majority of the researchers think) but discretely, unevenly. With all that, even the members of one and the same court (the Parliament of Paris in this case) during a period of several dozen years could — several times — change their opinion on what should be considered to be witchcraft, sometimes to the exact opposite.
Studying the problem of the appearance of judicial prosecution with accusation of witchcraft the author has to turn to the problem of recording of such cases, the problem of legal discourse itself, which became the subject of Chapter 4 of the book, «The Judges and their Texts». The author uses here the archive materials of the early witch trials as well as other judicial archive documents and some already published documents, first of all, of the accusatory trial of Joan of Arc of 1431 and the case of Giles de Rais of 1440.
The chapter primarily focuses on how the judges formulated their indictment in written form in order to: (1) prouve its truthfulness, (2) convince the people that their decision was just, (3) strengthen in people's minds their own image as that of judicial power capable of settling any conflict professionally and appropriately and guarantee peace, law and order to the subjects of the kingdom. These attempts to strengthen this image of judicial power in the documents (first of all, in the records of the sentences, arrêts) up till now had never been subjected to any special analysis. The author tries to retrace the process of forming of this image at several levels: of formulation of the arrêts; of vocabulary, i.e. the stable and constantly employed expressions and phrases used in formulation of the arrêts; of mistakes and/or slips of pen by the scribe; pronouns indicating the judges and the accused (the use of the pronouns of the first and second person instead of the third one); of verbal forms (use of the passive voice by the accused and the active voice by the judges); of direct speech; of references to any opinion of a person of authority confirming the judges' powers and their position in this or that disputable question (references to the coutumes and the royal legislation, to judicial precedents, to the opinion of «experts», i.e. the people knowledgeable in legal problems, to public opinion); of the notions creating a specific