15 - Justice(s)
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Eric Wenzel
Questioning the question. Judicial torture as a ’media’ issue at the eve of the Revolution
Le Temps des médias n°15, automne 2010, p. 169-179.
The notorious ’question’, i.e. judicial torture, that was part and parcel of the Ancien Régime criminal procedure, which on the eve of the Revolution had become a merely dormant practice having incorporated all the strictures levelled by philosophers and lawyers in favour of a reform of justice, paradoxically became the subject of ’media hype’ as testified by lampoons, leaflets, testimony literature, judicial memoirs, trial accounts and so on. The question became an important issue with public opinion. Some saw tortured criminals as victims of judicial violence, whereas certain magistrates tried to demonstrate that this violence was legitimate and administered humanely to hardened criminals. In this political strife, the recourse to image prevailed since it embodied the fantasies surrounding torture (such as its allegedly ecclesiastical origins), while allowing those defending the King’s justice to show a limited and controlled violence.