Resistances against the monopolisation of pardon for homicide in the Low Countries in 16th-18th centuries
(2014) 10th European Social Science History Conference — Location: Vienne (23.April.2014)
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- Abstract
- Basing themselves on the French model, the Dukes of Burgundy developed the practice of pardon for criminal cases in the Low Countries: the prince could grant his pardon to the author of an homicide, which interrupted the ordinary course of justice. This power of pardon was one of the only possibilities for central power to directly intervene in prosecuting criminals. During the 15th and 16th centuries, the prince sought to prevail as the only source of pardon, and the competing forms of pardon ― exerted by different judicial officials (prince's justice officials, urban justices, lords holding a right of high justice) ― gradually tended to subside. Trials and conflicts between lords holding a right of high justice or justice officials and public prosecutors can be found in the archives of the Conseils provinciaux and that of the Private Council. Public prosecutors became the privileged delegates of central power when it came to enforce the princely monopoly. The analysis will enable us to determine how long and under which forms other powers of pardon coexisted with that of the ruler. These observations will provide an opportunity to refine the understanding of the process that led to the ruler's monopoly of the power of remission, which he used as a way to make his authority ― and his increasingly restrictive definition of pardonable violence ― prevail in the eyes of his people. But the results of the analysis will mostly help us to comprehend the resistances against this process by powers who became competitors to that of the prince, whose purpose was to monopolise pardon and the use of legitimate violence.
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Musin, A. (2014). Resistances against the monopolisation of pardon for homicide in the Low Countries in 16th-18th centuries. 10th European Social Science History Conference, Vienne. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/85707