The <i>Imaginaire</i> of Capital Punishment in England, France, and Italy, 1250-1350

What was it like to attend a public execution during the Middle Ages in Europe? This thesis addresses this question by exploring five facets of the imaginaire of capital punishment between 1250 and 1350, in France, Italy, and England. This dissertation aims to demonstrate that capital punishment was an experience governed by a collective mental landscape, or imaginaire, which structured the understanding, practices, and social behaviours at the gallows. In doing so, this dissertation reconciles both legal and religious frameworks of the later Middle Ages to better our knowledge of its punitive practices. As such, the thesis argues that the imaginaire of capital punishment was built on cultural productions—circulated across Europe on different scales. The first and second chapters explore the broader scales of circulations—with the international imaginaire of law students through manuscripts of the Institutes where criminals were represented as Judas hanged. The second chapter contrasts this negative perception of executed criminals with their positive usage in the corpus of exempla. The third, fourth, and fifth chapters tackle the local imaginaire of capital punishment in Norwich, Toulouse, and Pisa—moulded by the material circulated on an international scale, and local sensibilities. The third chapter dives into the hierarchy of crimes and sentences in Pisa, where public executions reflected the political instabilities and worries concerning the afterlife. The fourth chapter tackles the coexisting imaginaires crafted by the capitouls and the Inquisition in Toulouse, each attempting to legitimise their use of capital punishment. The fifth chapter discusses the de-hanging of criminals in Norwich, and the executions of criminals left in the hands of the King of England as custodian of social order, where the management of criminality rested on the local community.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Lagréou, Héléna

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Arnold, John

• Capital punishment
• Criminal justice
• Experience
• Imaginaire
• Public execution

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/568fad58-6c44-4919-983b-1be8a004706c/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.122294

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/390979