МНИМЫЕ БОГАЧИ И ПОДДЕЛЬНЫЕ НИЩИЕ: УЛИЧНЫЕ МОШЕННИКИ В СРЕДНЕВЕКОВОЙ ФРАНЦИИ

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of imposture, which is considered in relation to the daily life of marginal strata of society in medieval France. The question is about professional scammers who acted everywhere and posed as «decent people» for the purpose of personal gain. The main way of such transformations was the cross-dressing, and therefore the article analyzes a few, but vivid judicial cases that testify the use of someone else’s (often stolen) clothes to build a new personality. The author notes that, despite the existence of specific criminal cases related to cross-dressing, i.e. stable judicial practice, there was no general royal legislation devoted to this problem in France till the end of the 15th century. Instead of it there were only private legal acts, the effect of which extended only to the population of Paris. This situation was explained, according to the author, by the limited possibilities of the royal justice, its precedent character, as well as the importance of the capital not only as the center of the country, but also as its largest city.