Taralon, Jean, and Pierre Héliot. Notice in Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de la France
(1959).
LETTERS OF REMISSION
. The stern justice of late-medieval France was somewhat mitigated by the granting of
pardons. Pardons were expensive, with chancery fees alone costing over ten livres
tournois by 1550, so that only individuals with financial resources and political influence
normally obtained them. Individuals charged with capital crimes, such as murder,
obtained pardons by requesting the king, chancellor, or other high chancery official to
order the notarial preparation of a description of the crime and any extenuating
circumstances. This draft was reviewed in council or chancellery and issued as a letter of
pardon (lettre de rémission), which then had to be ratified by the royal court with
jurisdiction over the case. The process of ratification involved a series of hearings and
investigations to ensure the accuracy and propriety of the pardon letter. A sort of plea
bargaining resulted that often provided for modified punishment and compensation of
victims before the case was closed. Most pardon letters were registered in chancellery,
where 58,300 are still to be found in the Trésor des Chartes (58 percent of registers after
1300). However unreliable they may be as a statistical indicator of criminality, they
comprise an invaluable source of anecdotal information, providing marvelous vignettes
of late-medieval France.
Paul D.Solon
[See also: LAW AND JUSTICE]
Actes du 107e Congrès National des Sociétés Savantes, Brest 1982. Section de Philologie et
d’Histoire jusqu’à 1610. Paris, 1984, Vol 1: La faute, la répression et le pardon.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-
Century France. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.
François, Michel. “Note sur les lettres de rémission transcrites dans les registres du Trésor des
Chartes.” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 103 (1942):317–24.
LEYS D’AMORS
. Attributed to Guilhem Molinier, the Leys is the art of versification for Occitan poetry
drawn up in the 14th century by the Consistòri de la Subregaya Companhia del Gai
Saber. This group, organized at Toulouse by seven troubadours in the early 14th century,
was dedicated to preserving Occitan poetry and the values of fin’amor. Theirs was a last-
ditch attempt to keep alive a dying art. With French victory in the Albigensian Crusade,
love poetry in Occitan was disappearing in favor of moral and didactic works, and works
in French. At the Consistòri’s inaugural meeting on May 1,1324, its chancellor, Guilhem
Molinier, was commissioned to draw up a Code of Poetry, which seems to have been
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