Shaming by offending the body during the sentence of pillory in Medieval France

In a society of honour where the respect of deep-sworn faith is essential to the proper functioning of justice, lies the necessity of identifying and casting out perjurers, liars and, moreover, those who shatter the common peace. To solve this problem, French Medieval justice developped a serie of public-shaming sentences, the most iconic being the sentence of pillory. Though historiography acknowledges that this sentence entails infamy and loss of civil rights, its process and ritual of shaming has seemingly not been analysed yet. This paper focuses on the concrete practices, during the pillorying, which bring the juridical status of infamy upon the condemned. It attempts to show that this ritual mainly focuses on outraging his body. Judgments from the Parliament of Paris during the 14th century and miniatures gathered from French chronicles were analysed together. It stands out that each type of actors – justiciary, sergeant, common people – performs different practices on the condemned's body which, combined, produce a shared knowledge of his infamy. Thus, infamy is not only a juridical status, but also a bright memory of the public-shaming ritual performed around the pillory at the expense of the condemned, and commonly shared by all the members of a community.