Sorcellerie et justice criminelle

The Parlement of Paris was the largest secular court in Christendom. Although its criminal archives have been preserved virtually intact, historians of the period of the great witch trials, as well as scholars of the Ancien Rgime in general, have been discouraged by the notorious difficulties of research into them, and have effectively avoided these records. Alfred Soman was the first historian to have undertaken the task. In the fifteen articles republished here, which include both detailed investigations of particular cases and broad-ranging overviews, he contends that criminal justice in the 16th- and 17th-century France was far more humane and less severe than traditional assumptions would suggest. As early as 1588, the High Court began to take steps to restrain indiscriminate witch hunting, particularly in the eastern provinces where prosecutions were instigated not in conformity with, but in defiance of, the highest judicial authority in the land. Le Parlement de Paris, la plus grande cour de justice de lOccident, nous a lgu ses archives criminelles quasiment intactes. Pourtant les historiens des procs de sorcellerie, ainsi que les spcialistes des aspects institutionnels et sociaux de lAncien Rgime, dcourags par les difficults notoires de la recherche, ont vit lexploitation de ces documents. Alfred Soman est le premier chercheur en avoir relev de dfi. Dans cette srie de quinze articles, qui comprennent des enqutes dtaills, ainsi que des essais de synthse, il soutient que lancienne justice a t beaucoup plus clmente et moins injuste que de vieilles ides reues ne le prtendent. Ds 1588, la Haute Cour commena rprimer les nombreuses poursuites pour faits de sorcellerie, plus particulirement dans lEst du royaume, o certains siges subalternes entamaient des actions criminelles intempestatives, prenant le contre-pied de la politique mise en place par le Pouvoir judiciaire central.