The power to pardon in late medieval and early modern Europe: New perspectives in the history of crime and criminal justice

Abstract

AbstractOver the past 30 years, few sources have been the subject of more scholarly attention than medieval and early modern pardon letters. These charters, issued by the royal or princely chancery in response to a petition addressed to the monarch and his council, were the strongest manifestation of the sovereign's right to remit crimes in many European polities, including France, England, the Low Countries, Castile, and Portugal. Following the paradigmatic interpretation of ordinary violence as the expression of well‐integrated social behaviours, historians of crime and criminal justice have found in petitions and pardon letters records of powerful narratives describing episodes of violence in the population's everyday life. Yet scholars have also debated the reliability of these stories, as they were obviously designed to support the petitioners' claim for pardon. Another major historiographical controversy concerns the articulation between the power to pardon and the criminal policies of the monarchs. While some historians considered the granting of pardon letters as the product of a weak or corrupted justice system that preferred to remit crimes in exchange for money rather prosecuting the perpetrators, others argued that the rise of the power to pardon followed the process of early modern State‐building and served to temper criminal prosecutions and assert the sovereign's right over the life and death of his subjects. This essay introduces the reader to the historiography of pardon letters and shows its connections with the recent developments in the history of crime and criminal justice in late medieval and early modern Europe.