Survival and Decline of the Right to Vengeance at the Turn of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period in a City of the Low Countries (Namur, 14th-17th Centuries)

Abstract

In his study on people's morals and the right to vengeance in the Low Countries, a highly urbanised and populated area, in the 15th century (1908), Charles Petit-Dutaillis established a distinction between two trends: whereas public action was superseding vengeance in Flanders as a way to settle conflicts, vengeance was still to endure a long time in the counties of Namur and Hainaut, as well as in Brabant. The “Haute Cour”, the court in charge of judicial matters in the capital of the County of Namur, has produced many archives from the 14th century until the end of the Ancien Regime. These archives shed light on vengeance appearing within physical violence cases. A true right to vengeance indeed still existed at the end of the Middle Ages in the County. The court knew the rules according to which vengeance was allowed to be carried out, and many examples show how families asked the court for advice when they had doubts on it. Concurrently, urban authorities tried to restrict the use of vengeance, at least from the 14th century onwards. By punishing less serious cases of violence through a fine system according to which vengeance was more expensive, they made an attempt for stopping the process escalating as long as they still could. They encouraged peaceful solutions to conflicts and restricted the possibilities for carrying out vengeance, notably as for homicidal vengeance. The Namur's case testifies to the part that towns, at first, played in framing vindicatory violence. Chronologically speaking, the State was the second actor to come into play with an attempt for eradicating vengeance. I will therefore consider the trails left by vengeance in urban judicial sources, the way urban justice framed it, and how urban and state authorities' perception of vengeance changed from the 14th century until the beginning of the 17th century.