Rare Fragments from the Fifteenth-Century Châtelet of Paris

Abstract

Three newly-recognized binding fragments at UCLA Library Special Collections, MS 170/743 pts. II-IV, preserve unique documents from the day-to-day functioning of the Châtelet of Paris in the late fifteenth century. Two of these are reports from named investigating officers of the Châtelet datable to ca. 1488; no similar documents are known from this early period. The third is a demande en taxe de dépens, a request by the winner of a civil suit at the Châtelet for compensation from the loser. Although documents of this sort are known from the parlement of Paris as early as the fourteenth century, none but the UCLA document survives from the early Châtelet. In view of the paucity of fifteenth-century documentation of the Châtelet, these are important additions to scholarly resources.