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Gibbets from the Middle Ages to Modern times. An interdisciplinary method1

Martine Charageat e Mathieu Vivas
Questo articolo è una traduzione di:
Les fourches patibulaires du Moyen Âge à l’Époque moderne. Approche interdisciplinaire1 []

Testo integrale

  • 1 Composed of eleven articles, this publication finalises an international conference held at the Mai (...)
  • 2 The two-day conference took place thanks to the research project La gouvernance de l'État entre con (...)

1The collection of contributions, by research scientists from diverse but complementary domains, presented here demonstrates an interdisciplinary method applied to the study of a subject as yet untreated in France: mediaeval and modern gibbets and gallows. During the two-day conference a public similar to the body of speakers, composed of historians, art historians, archaeologists and archaeo-anthropologists, academic, professional or student2, assembled to debate this little known, but much fantasised, subject. The symposium was part of a process of reflection begun three years earlier, concerning the interactions between the different justices and their relationships with those answerable to their jurisdiction (resistance, negociation etc.), but proposed above all, within a larger geographic frame, to rethink and re-evaluate the uses of the instruments of justice represented by gibbets.

2Judicial devices initially intended for hangings, gibbets have not particularly interested French researchers. In parallel with the history of public executions, numerous questions surround gibbets and gallows. Where were they installed and how were they constructed? Who owned them? A symbol of justice, were they, in addition, considered a manifestation of power and authority? In spite of the diversity of examples, these questions, evolving in time and place, and according to the persons or authorities entrusted with such structures and those liable to their justice, represent common problems to which all the conrributions have supplied elements of response. By conducting fundamental work on written sources and images, but also by incorporating data generated by archaeologists and archaeo-anthropologists into their reflection, each article conceives gibbets as a constructed «object», a judicial space with multiple functions, a place of authority and, finally, a subject at the core of collective mental representations.

  • 3 The examples here may be multiplied: Gaston Marmier, « Des fourches patibulaires dans le Sarladais (...)
  • 4 See, for example, Bronislav Geremek, La potence ou la pitié. L’Europe et les pauvres du Moyen Âge à (...)
  • 5 See, in a broad bibliography, for example, Jacques Le Goff (dir.), La ville en France au Moyen Âge, (...)
  • 6 See, in a very broad bibliography, for example, Claude Gauvard, « De grace especial ». Crime, État (...)
  • 7 For example, Baudoin de Gaiffier, « Un thème hagiographique : « le pendu miraculeusement sauvé » », (...)
  • 8 Barbara Morel, Une iconographie de la répression judiciaire. Le châtiment dans l’enluminure en Fran (...)
  • 9 Sylvie Bépoix, Une cité et son territoire. Besançon, 1391. L’affaire des fourches patibulaires (Ann (...)

3Interest in gibbets appears in France during the 19C. Between toponymy and folkloric narratives, some local learned persons devote their time to these structures, but this represents an inventory rather than a study3. However, after 1980, places of execution are better defined by pioneering work on the history of justice, crime and criminality by, for example, Bronislav Geremek or Claude Gauvard4. At the same time, a few lines are also found about gibbets in works devoted to the town5. They find their place next to other instruments of execution and judiciary props - pillory, charrette de l'infamie (cart whose occupants are publicly humiliated) etc.6 Logically, they are also addressed in works focused on hanged men and hanging in general and based on written records, hagiographic tales7 and images8. Other publications, following the example of Sylvie Bépoix, restore the spotlight to the gibbet by means of a problematic turned towards the analysis of jurisdictional conflicts9.

  • 10 Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe si (...)
  • 11 Vol. 5, published 1861. The chapter concerning gibbets is p. 553-565.
  • 12 There are a great number of representations of gibbets, in particular of \Montfaucon, for the media (...)
  • 13 Henri Sauval, Histoire et recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris, Paris, Charles Moette & J (...)

4Despite the quality of such work, the structural form of the sinister contraptions, what they symbolise, the way they function and their employment have rarely been studied. One of the only works to propose such a view is the Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française by Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc10; a chapter is dedicated to them, where the architect attaches great importance to supreme judicial powers (High Court) and considers the structure from a symbolic angle11. Supported by earlier works, he details the architectural form of gibbets and, because of his interest for monumental complexes, presents the Royal Gibbet of Montfaucon in Paris as the symbol of justice par excellence 12. Since the 19C it has often been mentioned, the plates from the Dictionnaire reprinted many times and the words of Henri Sauval, «the most ancient, the most magnificent and most famous gibbet of the realm», frequently repeated13. The Parisian construction was composed of sixteen pillars, arranged on two levels, and a stonework foundation. Allowing sixty subjects to be hanged and exposed simultan bolise or, more precisely, by what they are meant to symbolise and the terms «pillars» or «columns» of justice (both plural and singular), or even, yet more explicitly, «pendus» (hanged men) appear. Like the royal Parisian gibbet, some structures are simply designated by the site ate which they are located: the place name Montfaucon (like Tyburn) needed no qualification to be localised and associated with judicial hanging.

5The various appellations can be found between the pages and leaves and, while aware of the limits of toponymie, they have sometimes left their mark on the land in the form of place names (Fabrice Mauclair), so texts and fieldwork combine to provide a first survey of the sites where gibbets were erected. For a long time they were thought to be located out of towns, on a mound and close to highways, but several interventions show that gallows were raised in public squares and also, in the case of naval justice, in ports on the quays (Samantha Frénée). As the construction of a gibbet was of public, judicial and communal interest, written sources may prove to be relatively precise. Wooden or stone, from two to four pillars, square, rectangular or round, manorial and municipal records provide numerous indications about building materials and the cost of construction or repair (Pierre Prétou). A typology of these edifices can be established from textual and pictoral documentation as well as from archaeological operations.

6Beyond the architectural aspect, all the sources can be studied to clarify management of the gibbets and the handling of the criminals' and executed men's bodies. Places of excution, gibbets are also the site where the mortal remains of criminals are displayed and the last resting place of justice's cadavers. Sentence inflicted, crime punished, the displayed corpse of the lawbreaker bears the mark of justice rendered to guarantee social peace (Christophe Regina). Order is restored during a public ceremony which may be lengthened, with all its implied visual and resonant message, to address the community at large, as well as passers-by (Vincent Challet). Because they receive the dead, these places of execution must also be thought of as burial spaces. For this reason, archaeological excavations lead to debate about the treatment and fate of the bodies condamned to death (Pavlína Mašková and Daniel Wojtucki). Between infamia juris and exclusion, but with, at the same time, the confession of those condamned to death accepted by the Church in 1397, this collection of the dead provokes reflection about the right to have and duty to provide a tomb. However, hanged, displayed or buried, the criminal's cadaver becomes an «object» which, like the gibbet, serves the political message.

7In this sense, each contributor affirms that gibbets mark jurisdictional boundaries. Although their construction responds to judicial practice evolving in time and place, it must also be a response to the more political game of their custodians (Andrew Reynolds; Flocel Sabaté). Over and above the right to render or privilege of rendering justice, they anchor its influence in the ground and materialise judicial authority. Objects of institutional competition and sources of conflict, gibbets are not always used to hang or to bury (Michelle Bubenicek).

8Of public interest, the gibbet represents a physical reality which crystallises a conceptualisation. Allegorical, pictoral representations relate a society where each crime is punished by impartial justice, but also where the hanged man is guilty of treason to the community (Cécile Voyer). The same codes are developed in literary performances: the hanged man is shown as a troublemaker/culprit, exclude from the society whose cohesion he has disrupted (Sophie Coussemacker).

9This conference intended to discuss the diverse uses of gibbets, whether judicial, social or political. All the contributors have stressed the implications and means of their construction, destruction or reconstruction and we thank them here. By taking an interest in one aspect of the history of justice and by bringing to the fore the recourse to a particular judicial instrument, the re-interpretation of an entire section of the history of crime and punishment has been suggested. It needed no more to choose the hypermedia magazine Criminocorpus to publish the texts assembled here. Recording the outcome of the discussion held during the two-day conference, they represent a first attempt at synthesis on a subject which indisputably merits development.

Gaiffier Baudoin de, « Un thème hagiographique : “le pendu miraculeusement sauvé” », in Baudoin de Gaiffier, Études critiques d’hagiographie et d’iconologie, Bruxelles, Société des Bollandistes, Bruxelles, Société des Bollandistes, 1967, p. 194-226.

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Bibliografia

Bépoix Sylvie, Une cité et son territoire. Besançon, 1391. L’affaire des fourches patibulaires (Annales littéraires de l’Université de Franche-Comté, 871 ; Cahiers d’Études Comtoises, 71), Paris, Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2010.

Gauvard Claude, « Pendre et dépendre à la fin du Moyen Âge : les exigences d’un rituel judiciaire », in Jacques Chiffoleau, Lauro Martines, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (éd.), Rites et rituels dans les sociétés médiévales (XIIIe-XVIe siècles), Riti e rituali nelle società medievali, Erice, sept. 1990, Spolète, Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1994, p. 5-25.

Gauvard Claude, Violence et ordre public au Moyen Âge (Les médiévistes français, 5), Paris, Picard, 2005.

Gauvard Claude, « Droit et pratiques judiciaires dans les villes du Nord du royaume de France à la fin du Moyen Âge », in Jacques Chiffoleau, Claude Gauvard, Andreas Zorzi (dir.), Pratiques sociales et politiques judiciaires dans les villes de l’Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge (collection de l’École Française de Rome, 385), Rome, École Française de Rome, 2007, p. 33 à 79.

Geremek Bronislav, La potence ou la pitié. L’Europe et les pauvres du Moyen Âge à nos jours, Paris, Gallimard, 1987, rééd. 2010.

Helbling Laurie, « Potences et gibets à la fin du Moyen Âge », in Christiane Raynaud (éd.), Armes et outils (Cahiers du Lépoard d’Or, 14), Paris, Éditions du Léopard d’Or, 2012, p. 37-62.

La Villegile Arthur de, Des anciennes fourches patibulaires de Montfaucon, Paris, Techener, 1836.

Le Goff Jacques (dir.), La ville en France au Moyen Âge, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1980, rééd. 1998.

Leguay Jean-Pierre, Terres urbaines. Places, jardins et terres incultes dans la ville au Moyen Âge, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009.

Maillard Firmin, Le gibet de Montfaucon (étude sur le vieux Paris), Paris, Auguste Aubry, 1863, rééd. Paris, BnF-Gallica, 2014.

Marmier Gaston, « Des fourches patibulaires dans le Sarladais au XIVe siècle », Bulletin de la Société Historique et Archéologique du Périgord, 1881, 8, p. 77-8.

Mašková Pavlína, Michálek Jan, « Archeologický výzkum v poloze “Na šibenici” ve Vodňanech (okres Strakonice) : Příspěvek k archeologii popravišť [résumé en allemand : « Archäologische Grabung in der Flur “Na šibenici” (« Am Galgen ») bei Vodňany (Bezirk Strakonice) : Ein Beitrag zur Archäologie der Hinrichtungsstätten in Böhmen] », Archeologické rozhledy, 2006, 58, p. 790–809.

Molinier Victor, Notice historique sur les fourches patibulaires de la ville de Toulouse (Mémoires de l’Académie impériale des sciences, Inscriptions et Belles-lettres de Toulouse, 6), Toulouse, Rouget frères et Delahaut, 1868.

Morel Barbara, Une iconographie de la répression judiciaire. Le châtiment dans l’enluminure en France du XIIIe au XVe siècle (Archéologie et Histoire de l’Art, 27), Paris, Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 2007.

Prétou Pierre, « Le gibet de Montfaucon : l’iconographie d’une justice royale entre notoriété et désertion, de la fin du XIVe siècle au début du XXe siècle », in Jean-Pierre Allinne, Mathieu Soula (dir.), La mort pénale. Les enjeux historiques et contemporains de la peine de mort, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015, p. 95-114.

Reynolds Andrew, « The Emergence of Anglo-Saxon Judicial Practice : The Message of the Gallows », Anglo-Saxon, vol. 2, 2008, p. 1-52.

Reynolds Andrew, Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs. Medieval History and Archaeology, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009.

Sauval Henri, Histoire et recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris, Paris, Charles Moette & Jacques Chardon, 1724, 3 vols.

Stirland Ann, Criminals and Paupers. The Graveyard of St Margaret Fyebriggate ‘in combusto’, Norwich (East Anglian Archaeology, 129), Norfolk, Norfolk Museums Service, Archaeology & Environment Division, 2009.

Toureille Valérie, Vol et brigandage au Moyen Âge, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2006.

Trevedy Julien-Toussaint-Marie, « Les fourches patibulaires du fief de Quément », Bulletin de la Société Archéologique du Finistère, 1883, 10, p. 211-222.

Viollet-le-Duc Eugène Emmanuel, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, Paris, A. Morel & Cie, 1854-1868, 10 vols.

Vivas Mathieu, La privation de sépulture au Moyen Âge. L’exemple de la province ecclésiastique de Bordeaux (Xe-début du XIVe siècle), Thèse de doctorat d’histoire et d’archéologie du Moyen Âge, Poitiers, 2012, typed example.

Vivas Mathieu, « Les lieux d’exécution comme espace d’inhumation. Traitement et devenir du corps des criminels (XIIe-XIVe siècle) », Revue Historique, t. 670, 2014, p. 295-312.

Wojtucki Daniel, Publiczne miejsca straceń na Dolnym Śląsku od XV do połowy XIX wieku [abstract in German Öffentliche Richtstätten in Niederschlesien vom 15. bis Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts], Katowice, Zamek Chudów, 2009.

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Note

1 Composed of eleven articles, this publication finalises an international conference held at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme de l'Aquitaine (MSHA) the 23rd /24th January 2014. At the moment, three articles are lacking: they will be published at a later date.

2 The two-day conference took place thanks to the research project La gouvernance de l'État entre contestation et médiation. La souvereineté négociée en justice de l'Aquitaine à l'Espagne du Nord (XIIIe-XIXe siècles) supervised by Martine Charageat, sustained by the Conseil régional d'Aquitaine and accommodated by the MSHA.

3 The examples here may be multiplied: Gaston Marmier, « Des fourches patibulaires dans le Sarladais au XIVe siècle », Bulletin de la Société Historique et Archéologique du Périgord, 1881, 8, p. 77-82 ; Julien-Toussaint-Marie Trevedy, « Les fourches patibulaires du fief de Quément », Bulletin de la Société Archéologique du Finistère, 1883, 10, p. 211-222 ; Victor Molinier, Notice historique sur les fourches patibulaires de la ville de Toulouse (Mémoires de l’Académie impériale des sciences, Inscriptions et Belles-lettres de Toulouse, 6), Toulouse, Rouget frères et Delahaut, 1868...

4 See, for example, Bronislav Geremek, La potence ou la pitié. L’Europe et les pauvres du Moyen Âge à nos jours, Paris, Gallimard, 1987 ; Claude Gauvard, Violence et ordre public au Moyen Âge (Les médiévistes français, 5), Paris, Picard, 2005 ; Id., « Droit et pratiques judiciaires dans les villes du Nord du royaume de France à la fin du Moyen Âge », in Jacques Chiffoleau, Claude Gauvard, Andreas Zorzi (dir.), Pratiques sociales et politiques judiciaires dans les villes de l’Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge (collection de l’École Française de Rome, 385), Rome, École Française de Rome, 2007, p. 33 à 79.

5 See, in a broad bibliography, for example, Jacques Le Goff (dir.), La ville en France au Moyen Âge, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1980, rééd. 1998 ; Jean-Pierre Leguay, Terres urbaines. Places, jardins et terres incultes dans la ville au Moyen Âge, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009.

6 See, in a very broad bibliography, for example, Claude Gauvard, « De grace especial ». Crime, État et société en France à la fin du Moyen Âge, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne 1991, 2 vols, rééd. 2010 ; Nicole Gonthier, Cri de haine et rites d’unités. La violence dans les villes (XIIIe-XVIe siècles), Turnhout, Brepols, 1992 ; Id., Le châtiment du crime au Moyen Âge, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1998 ; Valérie Toureille, Vol et brigandage au Moyen Âge, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2006 (essentially page 201 onwards).

7 For example, Baudoin de Gaiffier, « Un thème hagiographique : « le pendu miraculeusement sauvé » », in Baudoin de Gaiffier, Études critiques d’hagiographie et d’iconologie, Bruxelles, Société des Bollandistes, 1967, p. 194-226.

8 Barbara Morel, Une iconographie de la répression judiciaire. Le châtiment dans l’enluminure en France du XIIIe au XVe siècle (Archéologie et Histoire de l’Art, 27), Paris, Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 2007 ; Laurie Helbling, « Potences et gibets à la fin du Moyen Âge », in Christiane Raynaud (éd.), Armes et outils (Cahiers du Léopard d’Or, 14), Paris, Éditions du Léopard d’Or, 2012, p. 37-62.

9 Sylvie Bépoix, Une cité et son territoire. Besançon, 1391. L’affaire des fourches patibulaires (Annales littéraires de l’Université de Franche-Comté, 871 ; Cahiers d’Études Comtoises, 71), Paris, Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2010.

10 Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, Paris, A. Morel & Cie, 1854-1868, 10 vols.

11 Vol. 5, published 1861. The chapter concerning gibbets is p. 553-565.

12 There are a great number of representations of gibbets, in particular of \Montfaucon, for the mediaeval period alone. See, for example, Barbara Morel, op. cit., p. 36-53 and p. 213-227; Laurie Helbling, art. cit. About the Montfaucon gibbet, see the recent article: Pierre Prétou, «Le gibet de Montfaucon: l'iconographie d'une justice royale entre notoriété et désertion, de la fin du XIVe siècle au début du XXe siècle », in Jean-Pierre Allinne, Mathieu Soula (dir.), La mort pénale. Les enjeux historiques et contemporains de la peine de mort, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015, p. 95-114. Among 19C works dedicated to Montfaucon can be found Arthur de La Villegile, Des anciennes fourches patibulaires de Montfaucon, Paris, Techener, 1836 and Firmin Maillard, Le gibet de Montfaucon (étude sur le vieux Paris), Paris, Auguste Aubry, 1863, rééd. Paris, BnF – Gallica, 2014.

13 Henri Sauval, Histoire et recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris, Paris, Charles Moette & Jacques Chardon, 1724, 3 vols, see vol. 2, p. 612.

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Martine Charageat e Mathieu Vivas, «Gibbets from the Middle Ages to Modern times. An interdisciplinary method»Criminocorpus [Online], 5 | 2015, online dal 03 mars 2016, consultato il 18 avril 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/3184; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/criminocorpus.3184

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Autori

Martine Charageat

Maître de conférences en histoire médiévale, université de Bordeaux-Montaigne (Ausonius).

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Mathieu Vivas

Post-doctorant au Laboratoire d’Excellence des Sciences Archéologiques de Bordeaux (LaScArBx).

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