Gaspard de Monconys’ Defence against the Charge of Imposture: Criminal Justice, Social Hierarchy, and Personal Identity in Early Seventeenth-Century France

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses a remarkable criminal trial which took place in early seventeenth-century France. In 1617, Gaspard de Monconys, son of a prominent judge in Lyon, was accused of committing sacrilege and theft in the basilica of Saint-Denis, and then framing an innocent man who was sent to the galleys. The case attracted significant contemporary interest because of the Monconys family’s status and the way the dispute became a literary event. Monconys’ adversaries circulated their arguments among an informed public through extrajudicial publications known as factums, and Monconys’ counsel responded in kind. This trial is fascinating in itself, since it involved a complex and notorious appeal before the Parlement of Paris, and reveals how extrajudicial print interacted with oral and manuscript pleadings. But the affair also provides new insight into the relationship between criminal justice, social hierarchy, and personal identity in the seventeenth century.