Gender, childhood and sexual violence in the judicial archives of fifteenth-century Bologna
The transcription, translation and study of the preliminary summing-up (relatio), found in the judicial record (liber maleficiorum) of a minor law case in Bologna, dating from 1435, makes it possible to compare attitudes towards sexual abuse perpetrated by men against girls and boys. To express a se...
Enregistré dans:
| Dans: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/cliowgh, |
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| Auteur principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Langue: | Anglais |
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Clio
2022
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| Accès en ligne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | The transcription, translation and study of the preliminary summing-up (relatio), found in the judicial record (liber maleficiorum) of a minor law case in Bologna, dating from 1435, makes it possible to compare attitudes towards sexual abuse perpetrated by men against girls and boys. To express a sexual assault on a girl, the notary uses the same words as those used to designate the rape of a woman. To describe violence against a boy, he uses the vocabulary of sodomy. This finding shows that in the late Middle Ages, it is penetration which creates the sexual act, and that what the texts describe as vicium sodomiticum can often have the modern sense of “paedophilia” when the case concerns boys. |
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