Steven BednarskiI atten­ded a great talk by Steven Bed­narski of St. Jerome’s Uni­ver­sity today. His CV lists UQAM, York, Toronto as places of exper­i­ence. His fram­ing ques­tion today: How does a social his­tor­ian make use of a research data­base?
Bed­narski explains that he was trained in the French school and con­siders him­self a storyteller by prac­tise. The leads to a valu­able reminder for me: the quant­it­at­ive his­tor­ian makes good use of his tools and may carry out exquis­ite ana­lysis of data­sets through many means (stat­ist­ical, spa­tial, SNA, etc) but what this allows him to do is con­struct the model and then use nar­rat­ive to illus­trate it through anec­dotal evid­ence.
His research has focussed on the south of France dur­ing the period 1300–1500.
His cur­rent work is look­ing towards the iden­ti­fic­a­tion of mas­culin­ity in the 16th C.
As a good social his­tor­ian he asks the ques­tion: How did ordin­ary people nav­ig­ate soci­ety? and is thus less inter­ested in elite cul­tures, polit­ics or theo­logy.
He cites the work of Pierre Bour­gault? look­ing at the devel­op­ment of mas­culin­it­ies in Medi­eval times. Little has been done on fath­er­hood, more on motherhood…the Cult of Joseph is a start of this.
His MA thesis at U of T looked at hat is termed ‘low Magic’ aka: super­sti­tion, pop­u­lar reli­gion, low magic.
In his MA study he focussed on 4 women accused of sor­cery…
The won­der­ful Provencal town of his study: Manosque.
In his on screen aer­ial of the town, one is struck that is for­ti­fied, but in a val­ley sur­roun­ded by hill. I quer­ied Jac­queline Mur­ray and she indic­ated that the walls were as much for demark­ing a bound­ary as for defense.

First Trial
A rumour that mother and daugh­ter, seduced by diabol­ical instig­a­tion, poisoned the mind of a vic­tim such that he couldn’t keep his hands off the daugh­ter. The poor vic­tim was son of a not­ary, thus a father trained in sci­entific law. The women actu­ally reside at the house­hold, but not as ser­vants. The older brother of the ‘vic­tim’ instig­ates the legal charges. The women are even­tu­ally found inno­cent a no laws have been broken. Inter­est­ingly, Stephen notes that there are no witch tri­als in the early 1300s. Five years later the same woman is before the court with a hus­band alleging that she is a bigam­ist. Appar­ently she did marry the notary’s son. The upchuck of this from a meth­od­o­lo­gical stand­point: One is able to make these con­nec­tions through a data­base of appear­ances before the court.

Second Trial
Manosque is loc­ated on a road com­ing from Avignon. In this case, a woman (mar­ried) trav­el­ing in the com­pany of an uncle is arres­ted and accused of unseemly acts as she is not in the com­pany of her hus­band. She is found innocent.

Third Trial
Two accused women, again inspired by diabol­ical instig­a­tion, enchanted a man and his wife and sowed dis­cord between them. This was done by wash­ing cat and dog in same water and then throw­ing the water between the hus­band and wife…causing them to be incompatible…like cats and dogs. One of the accused woman is prob­ably a pros­ti­tute, and thus the pos­sible cause for this case: the man lay­ing the charge was try­ing to kick women out of his neigh­bor­hood and into red light dis­trict. The clever women each accuse each other, but a clear guilt can not be thus drawn. Thus Black­ing real evid­ence the charges are unproven and the women acquitted.

Fourth Case
The defend­ant Math­ilda is denounced by employer and lover. She was serving girl who had given him three chil­dren. He has since decided to marry in his own status and this is most eas­ily accom­plished through crim­inal court. He accussed her of put­ting a wax fig­ur­ine of him into the mat­tress of his mar­ital bed with adorn­ments ;-)…thus frus­trat­ing his sexual life with his new wife. Doc­tor examined him and couldn’t find any­thing wrong with him…yet he claims he’s ill. Court takes a two weeks break, dur­ing which he dies …what has happened? Case is left unproven.

These were the bulk of his MA paper. But these could be handled without a data­base or soph­ist­ic­ated technology

For his PhD…decided to read all tri­als in the series.
Manosque is inter­est­ing as it was given more and more inde­pend­ence from its sei­gneur. Town gains con­trol over its own muni­cipal functions…during this period it shifts in ‘own­er­ship from the Sei­gneur to the Knights Hospitaller…they inher­ited con­trol of the town. The crim­inal court was a hangover from when the count/seigneur had owned the town, and thus the court is sec­u­lar and is not con­trolled by the knights. The town of Mono­sque pos­sesses a long proud his­tory of inde­pend­ence. When the French Revolu­tion seeks to elim­in­ate the vestiges of the Ancien Regime, they com­mand the destruc­tion of records from this period. Although this throw­ing off of noble oppres­sion is a tri­umph in the north, in the south in places such as Manosque…people care­fully packed and kept all records. Proud of their past. So all records have been kept where in most other places was burned dur­ing this period. A find for a historian.

Stephen’s idea was to look at all the records as a whole. 1500 tri­als. Star­ted to make notes and tran­scrip­tions in a word processor.

Stephen ran through the ques­tions asks and the inform­a­tion he tracked.
How do I ref­er­ence? Cre­ate unique call num­ber,
Who is accused? Name, reli­gion, status in the city (nat­ive, new arrival(up to 3 or 4 gen­er­a­tions), for­eigner), date, how did trial start (accused, or by court itself invest­ig­at­ing on its own), what was the charge (these are great), Some­times extra charge, a wit­ness?, Jews place hand on Torah, depos­ition, Response of accused, accused state­ment and inter­rog­a­tion, inter­ac­tion between judge and accused.
How long does it take a fam­ily to integ­rate into soci­ety?
What moved the court (per­sonal enmity/vendetta played out in court or a case that there was a pro­act­ive judge (or behind the scenes player)?
Took extra steps to ascer­tain that the wit­ness was not bribed, or forced to make testimony…unique..ensure that this is not anti­semit­ism.
In the north women are gen­er­ally not included in court proceedings…in the south, its much more com­mon.
He throws him­self on courts mercy…he is found guilty and forced to pay fine…almost never cor­poral punishment.

Why the data­base?
How many tri­als against pimps? 1/1643
Hoe many tri­als of child abuse 4/1643
How many against Jews? 81/1643 (5%

How are these found?
Inno­cent 10
Con­fessed Freely 42
Con­demned on evid­ence 17
Unproven 4
Unknown 8 (105)

Can then do a stats ana­lysis on Jews before state justice?
How does this com­pare to how Chris­ti­ans were treated?

Numbers…are the same, Jew or Christian…they are about the same…no harsher towards the Jews. Big proof.
Could only do with raw data.
If you want to get drawn into the anec­dotal, frame it with the num­bers
Wife Assault…10 or 12 of them…civil war in Provence in late 14th. Tries to incite rebels to rise against Queen in Manosque. Roman law.
21 tri­als dur­ing the civil war…tax eva­sion (36)

Uses FM 5.5 — and as all good FM users apo­lo­gizes for using it as a tool.
1643 records…

Is the hope for out­come always suc­cess­ful prosecution…no…sometimes go to court just to air grievances.

Is there higher con­vic­tion rates for dif­fer­ent crimes? Yes, some much more hard to find evid­ence of and this has impact on the outcome…obviously.

Judges came from all over South of France and had to pos­sess a uni­ver­sity edu­ca­tion. They didn’t and although they were sup­posed only take one year term this too was often not the case — short­age of labour one explanation.

People were shop­ping around for justice and gen­er­ally took it where they might get best treat­ment. Battle between Eccle­si­ast­ical and Civil courts. Often accused will ton­sure them­selves in their cell and demand eccle­si­ast­ical privileges…ie. can’t be charged.