literary parallels, which might have served as a source of inspiration for Alaume Cachemarée when compiling his «Registre». The closest analogy may be seen in the story of a repentant highwayman, in particular, its 14th-century presentation in the miracle-play «Robert le Diable». The similarity of motives, key elements and impressive endings make the author see a certain resemblance between these two stories. Yet the problem of real or fictional legal case of Salmon of Barcelona remains open for discussion, which makes it right to regard the story as casus interpretationis of the compiler and the author as well.
The last part of the book deals with one more language of the medieval justice — not the «oral» or «written» one, but the language of rituals, the language of gestures [body language], which could be intelligible without words. These rituals were intended to convince the citizens not only of a man's guilt but also of the correctness of the chosen procedure of punishment, of its conformity to the human and divine ordinances.
Chapter 9, «Dead Man Walking», focuses on a very particular judicial ritual, a ritual of transmission of a condemned criminal from one court that could not put him to death to a court having this right. It became known from the only one document of 1431, the «Enqueste afuture fort ample et notable pour la recognoissance des droicts de la terre et justice du ban de Saint-Remy de Reins».
The study of the topography of Reims where the ritual took place led the author to the conclusion that the St.-Remy's judges desired to present the condemned criminal as a dead man even before the execution itself; at the very moment of his transmission to the judges of the archbishop of Reims. This idea of a condemned criminal as an already dead man was very close to the medieval sense of justice, especially to the ritual of public penance or to the ritual of transmission of a criminal from the spiritual court to the secular court. The procedure features marked by the author allow her to speak of the universal meaning of this ritual, of the pre-Christian traditions influencing its origins and development. Each gesture and movement of its participants (the exchange of the accused for money; his tying; a cord on his neck; a blow on his neck; the judges' exchange of remarks) actualized a metaphor of death, even if they were intended or explained differently. This meaning of the ritual was absolutely clear to the participants as well as to the citizens and there could not be another interpretation.
Yet, some christological motives (the very idea of the delivery of a criminal to the court that had the right to send him to execution; the instruments of punishment that he had to carry to the place of execution by himself; his tied hands; the stone and the cross as the places of justice) allow the author to think of a concrete prototype for this ritual, the scene of Jesus Christ's delivery from the chief priests to Pontius Pilate. As the author supposes, the use of a «negative» image as a historical prototype should not mislead the researchers as it was a usual practice for the medieval judges (f.e. they used the image of the Sinagogue to create their own Dame of Justice). The scene of Jesus Christ's delivery brought not only negative connotations to their mind: Christ was perceived as an ideal criminal whose death became the expiation of all human sins and crimes. Using the association between Christ and every «ordinary» criminal the judges of medieval Reims, the author supposes, had created their own «dead-man-walking» ritual.
Yet, the ideal image of an impartial judge was not the only possible one. The medieval judge could at any time be accused of any breaches of procedure, of prejudice, of unjust sentence. But even in this case the medieval justice was up to the mark as it managed to create an image of a guilty judge capable to admit his mistakes and to repent. This image made the base of one more judicial ritual which is examined in Chapter 10 of the book, «A Right to Make a Mistake», a ritual of public penance of a judge, including taking down of an unjustly executed criminal's body from the gallows.
The theme of their own guilt was of great importance to the medieval judges, even though the number of non-rejected appeals on the unjust sentence was not very considerable in the 14th — 15th centuries. Public penance with a ritual of taking down of a criminal's body was a usual French punishment for this type of crime. The study of its elements (the image of a sinner that the convicted judge had to enlarge upon, his perception as a dead man during the penance, etc.) led the author to the conclusion about the spiritual character of its origins. Yet, some secular elements (such as strict sequence of the places of penance — first at the gallows and then in church; the imitation of the same punishment to what the accused judge had earlier condemned his victim, etc.) were also present.
The very meaning of this ritual was the medieval judges' recognition of the possible culpability of one of their colleagues, their readiness to trace him down and to punish him exemplarily. Admitting the judge's right to make a mistake and to correct it, the citizens let him (as well as his victim) return to their society. Thus the social order seemed to be restored.