Justice was not necessarily kind at the time of the Prince-Bishops of Basel… and that is an understatement to say. The subject will be the subject of a conference this Monday evening at 7 p.m. in the aula of the Oiselier primary school in Porrentruy. The event is organized by the Jura Popular University as part of the training of tourist guides. The conference is open to the public. It will be given by Jean-Claude Rebetez, curator of the Archives of the former Bishopric of Basel (AAEB). The theme of the conference will be: “Drunkards, adulterers and other criminals: the forms of judicial repression in Porrentruy in the 16th and 17th centuries”. Justice at the time was generally harsher than today, but not necessarily on all subjects. “At the time, it was “normal” for a man to beat his wife and if he did not maim her, he did not end up before the courts,” notes Jean-Claude Rebetez. The curator of the AAEB, however, emphasizes that many “afflictive and corporal punishments” – such as whippings or even piercing the tongue in cases of blasphemy – were applied at the time. He also recalls that the prison sentence did not exist and that the defendants were sentenced to banishment, the length of which depended on the seriousness of the offense.
The location of places of justice in Porrentruy – such as prisons, the court and places of punishment – will also be at the heart of Jean-Claude Rebetez’s conference. The precise locations have sometimes been lost over time and documents from the period mention their names, but without giving any indication of their location. The curator of the Archives of the former Bishopric of Basel will also discuss some concrete affairs which can be both truculent and/or sordid. Jean-Claude Rebetez cites in particular the case of a surgeon accused, in 1547, of having become engaged in Porrentruy, when he was already married in Belfort and who defended himself by claiming that his Bruntrutian bride had administered a powder of love… He will ultimately escape the death penalty, but not certain tortures.
Jean-Claude Rebetez’s conference on the forms of judicial repression in Porrentruy in the 16th and 17th centuries will therefore take place this Monday evening at 7 p.m. in the aula of the Oiselier primary school. /comm-fco
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