"Pour Faire Blasme et Diffame": Honour, Bill-Casting, and Female Agency in Late Medieval Paris
(2026) Women and Violence in Late Medieval Europe — Location: Leuven, Rijksarchief Leuven (31.March.2026)
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- This paper explores the use of defamatory writings by individuals involved in private conflicts in late fourteenth-century Paris, focusing on the story of Colette la Buquette as a case study. In 1391, this young single mother resorted to bill-casting to force Jehan le Mercier, one of King Charles VI’s principal counselors, to publicly acknowledge her son as his natural child. Rather than achieving her goal, however, her actions backfired spectacularly, provoking a public scandal that led to her condemnation to the pillory and banishment for defamation. Drawing on the judicial records of the Châtelet of Paris, this paper examines the circumstances of this affair to explore the complex dynamics of public defamation in late medieval urban society. In medieval legal culture, defamatory writing was understood as a form of symbolic violence, a direct assault on an individual’s honour and public reputation. Yet for Colette herself, bill-casting was not conceived as an act of defamation but a desperate attempt to make her truth publicly known. It was a last-resort strategy in a conflict opposing two adversaries of vastly different social standing. This case thus shows that even vulnerable female individuals, such as a single mother with limited resources, could attempt to make their voices publicly heard, at the risk of being swiftly silenced by judicial authorities.
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Verreycken, Q. (2026). “Pour Faire Blasme et Diffame”: Honour, Bill-Casting, and Female Agency in Late Medieval Paris. Women and Violence in Late Medieval Europe, Leuven, Rijksarchief Leuven. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/276136