hrvatski

Case against Diletta. On the intersection of Roman, Canon, Customary and Venetian law

Cases in which women appeared as the accused in various types of judicial, non-judicial and quasi- judicial proceedings throughout the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period attract much attention nowadays of not only scientists, but also a much wider public. The interest in such cases is almost always accompanied by strong emotions of the persons who read them without a critical approach or lacking the appropriate knowledge and understanding – because they are about women who were in a difficult position in such cases. The a priori qualification that women were allegedly in a legally subjugated position throughout history further heightens the emotional attitude. The base emotions are usually additionally stoked by frequently completely unjustified linking of the Church with the proceedings in which a woman is recklessly blamed or denied legal subjectivity. With no contextual consideration, critical approach or objective analogy whatsoever, even without any desire for them, one can easily find in such cases an argument to justify contemporary ideological aspirations of individuals or social groups. Those ubiquitous trends and subjectivisations immediately preclude any possibility of examining the cases of women as the accused in institutionalised or extrainstitutional proceedings conducted against them in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period with objectivity, honesty, critical thinking, context and, above all, jurisprudence – on the basis of facts, whatever they are. Should, moreover, such accused women be ascribed the properties of a witch, sorceress, herbalist, stregha etc. without critical thinking – or even if it is merely hinted at – any hope of an objective and honest scientific examination as well as the understanding of the fact so that they can be based on facts is lost. In the first months of 2018 in Motovun, the authors of this book first learned about the proceedings against Diletta from a document dating back to 1271 (kept at the Venetian State Archives), and were asked for an opinion. They immediately called for great caution as well as an objective and contextual approach to the archival source. Those present (Municipal Mayor of Motovun Tomislav Pahović, David Matković, and the famed researcher Livio Prodan), approached the document and the position of the accused (a woman called Diletta) with care and insight, so that no conclusions were drawn hastily, but with the understanding that the archival source should first be thoroughly analysed using scientific methods, and that it is only afterwards that conclusions could be drawn.

Process, sorcery, Motovun, Roman law, Canon law, customary law, Venetian law

nije evidentirano