Az erőszak topográfiája. Hétköznapi térhasználat a 15–16. századi párizsi bűnesetekben
The Topography of Violence. Everyday Usage of Space in Fifteenth–Sixteenth-Century Criminal Cases in Paris

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines the uses of urban space in fifteenth and early sixteenthcentury Paris, based on the analysis of ninety pardon letters, surviving mainly from the JJ series of the Archives Nationales in Paris. These documents contain brief narratives describing the adventures of petty thieves as well as simple craftsmen guilty of manslaughter and bloodshed. These criminals’ stories contain many details on space: mentions of the domicile, the place of work, and, very playgrounds. The first analytical layer of the study delineates the possible limits of the protagonists’ space of activity was drawn, inserting the phenomena within the wider problem of urban neighbourhood (quartier, voisinage). The concrete movements located on the map show a rather flexible space of work within the city, but quite a narrow space of urban sociability, with the criminal artisans frequenting only the nearby taverns. A special theme seems to emerge from the background of these findings, namely the spatial practices of the youth’s sociability, which is the second layer of the analysis. Twenty-two stories are narrated by young perpetrators whose cases present recurrent and specific motifs: organised, collective, often nighttime tours on urban streets, with longer trajectories than the short walks of the adults. Young people often leave the city and look for leisure at the suburban taverns surrounding Paris. In summary, the study draws a larger context of spatial practices and representations around the picture that emerges from the individual itineraries narrated in a peculiar type of source material on late medieval Paris.

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