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La justice à l'épreuve

Le parricide à l’aune de la justice au XIXème siècle

Sylvie Lapalus
p. 141-154

Abstracts

In the XIXth century, although parricide was a relatively rare crime, it was at the top of the penal hierarchy. For the judiciary, however, it was a crime difficult to judge as shown by the obstacles encountered in establishing corpus delicti, the legal controversies on the precise nature of the crime and, above all, the uncertain nature of the legal definition of the facts. By progressively moving its view of the crime towards the criminal the XIXth century judicial system managed to consider with less dread a criminal act which, as such, left it helpless. But, if the magistrates perceived parricides as “cold” monsters, a finer and more qualified perception of the crime began to appear in courts with a distinction between a monstrous parricide and one who was provoked and thus a tendency to match the sentence with the characteristics of each case. The special attention given the legal profession to the specific ordeal of parricides shows very clearly the gravity of such a crime in a profoundly patriarchal society still impregnated with the memory of regicide.

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Index terms

Geographical index:

XIXème siècle
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References

Bibliographical reference

Sylvie Lapalus, “Le parricide à l’aune de la justice au XIXème siècle”Revue d’histoire de l’enfance « irrégulière », Hors-série | 2001, 141-154.

Electronic reference

Sylvie Lapalus, “Le parricide à l’aune de la justice au XIXème siècle”Revue d’histoire de l’enfance « irrégulière » [Online], Hors-série | 2001, Online since 31 May 2007, connection on 13 February 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rhei/440; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rhei.440

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Copyright

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.

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