Article
French
ID: <
10.4000/clio.18666>
·
DOI: <
10.4000/clio.18666>
Abstract
Based on the very full records of penal justice in Bologna in the late Middle Ages (the libri malficiorum), this article focuses on acts of sexual violence inflicted by men on girls and women, and positions rape within a range of sexist and sexual acts of aggression. Firstly, it identifies the social status of both accused and victims, and offers an analysis of the stereotypical legal language used to describe this kind of crime, the act of rape itself being defined as “carnal knowledge of a woman by force and against her will and using violence”. The article then provides a survey of the entire range of psychological, physical and sexual attacks perpetrated against women, before and after the act of forced and violent intercourse. Beforehand, these include: forced entry to the victim’s home; the uttering of sexist and sexual insults; threats; physical violence (throwing the victim to the ground, dragging her by her hair; striking her); forcing her out of the home to the place where the rape was committed, etc. The aftermath of rape included opprobrium, harassment of the victim and her family; the necessity for the victim to be able to prove her lack of consent, and the difficulty of bringing a case to court. The article concludes by considering those who suffered the consequences of the crime, and the penalties imposed on perpetrators, which were in the main relatively light. Re-situating rape in a long sequence of violence and humiliation undergone by women forces the historian to reconsider, with reference to a given period, what we mean by « sexual violence ».