Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2025

The Pope or the King of France? Where Could Killer Priests Turn for a Pardon in the Late 15th Century?

Résumé

Since the 1980s, research on medieval and early modern letters of pardon has demonstrated how kings and princes asserted their sovereignty by granting mercy and grace to confessed offenders. This practice of ‘government by pardon’ has been examined on a European scale, yet the relationship between secular pardons and those issued by popes has largely been overlooked. This paper compares pardons granted by the king of France between 1480 and 1500 with petitions submitted to the Apostolic Penitentiary. It focuses on several homicide cases involving clerics, in which both the French king and the pope granted pardons. How should we interpret these joint requests for clemency? Were they redundant, or did the pope and the French king address distinct needs? Scholarship on the rise of the modern state often portrays secular and ecclesiastical courts in the late Middle Ages as rivals, with secular authorities progressively limiting the Church’s jurisdiction. However, recent studies suggest that their relationship should not be framed solely in terms of conflict, but rather as one of collaboration or even interdependence. https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/10.7788/9783412533861.101

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hal-05317101 , version 1 (16-10-2025)

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Élisabeth Lusset. The Pope or the King of France? Where Could Killer Priests Turn for a Pardon in the Late 15th Century?. Ulrike Ludwig; Quentin Verreycken. The Power to Pardon in Medieval and Early Modern Christian Europe, Böhlau Verlag Köln, pp.101-134, 2025, 978-3-412-53386-1. ⟨10.7788/9783412533861.101⟩. ⟨hal-05317101⟩
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