From b4ba96063fab8173bd479d4eae7f94cb08cb2e4f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: cyfraeviolae Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2024 21:04:46 -0400 Subject: return --- return-of-martin-guerre.md | 54 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 54 insertions(+) create mode 100644 return-of-martin-guerre.md diff --git a/return-of-martin-guerre.md b/return-of-martin-guerre.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..92bc410 --- /dev/null +++ b/return-of-martin-guerre.md @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +# The Return of Martin Guerre +## Natalie Zemon Davis + +- "Clandestine marriage" +- Marriage in canon law defined by consent of partners and their consent alone - ven w/o priests or witnesses present +- Church disapproved but still technically allowed +- Can allow one to think of marriage as something in their (Bertrande & Arnaud) hands to create, rather than an external structure imposed upon them by parents/society/priest +- However under Catholicism still adulterers / would be excommunicated immediately +- Hope from protestantism + - They could tell story/be answerable to god alone and not families/community + - Marriage no longer a sacrament, divorce/remarriage more permissable + - Also a sort of "rebirth" or "conversion" for previously-vice-ridden Arnaud + +- Self-fashioning vs lying + - Self-fashioning - molding speech, manners, gestures, conversation to help advance socially + - When did self-fashioning stop and lying begin? + - Bertrande also self-fashions + - Written about by de Montaigne - maybe Of cripples? + +- Judge in Toulouse - Jean de Coras + - highly educated, prodigy of law, very in love with wife +- Account of trial - "Arrest Memorable" + - Depiction of trial + Annotation +- Tendency to favor keeping marriages/families together when in doubt (law - societal stability over truth?) + - e.g., did not press Bertrande too hard even though her testimony was very suspicious, court believes that she was tricked +- 1557 treatise on clandestine marriages - against them completely, unlike Catholic church + - Protestant view - marriage requiring not priest, but approval of *parents* (as proxy for God) +- sudden return of martin guerre seemed like a protestant-y act of providence/god's grace + - when all the bureaucracy of the courts have failed (and the judicial system being derived from canon law courts of catholicism/vatican) + - in the end we are still fallible, can only rely on providence +- Larger protestant argument, maybe + - Under protestantism + - Marriage of children wouldn't happen + - Bertrande would be given divorce much more readily in absence of husband + - And would have quickly discovered adultery? (how?) +- Though a legal text, Arrest Memorable calls into question the power of law to ascertain truth and dispense justice + - Still shows some doubts Coras had about the case, almost giving Arnaud some credit +- Text (with less than dispassionate commentary) exaggerates Arnaud's memory, makes Bertrande more innocent, adds more crimes to Arnaud + - Emphasize text as a moral story, but with a strangely heroic villain + - No hero at all + - Martin not portrayed in great light, nor any indication that marriage will be happy + - First edition doesn't even include confession, but was added later + +- Michel de Montaigne "Of the Lame" essay (of cripples) +- About why witches should not be burned +- References Martin Guerre, not just superficially +- difficulty of knowing truth and how uncertain human reason is +- "Truth and falsehood have both alike countenances....we beholde them with one same eye" +- Considers that by Coras' account, not enough evidence to make a judgment (maybe only read first version without confession) +- Especially for death penalty, needs luminous, sharp clarity of evidence +- Rebukes Coras for decision, however, Coras himself kept a lot of ambiguity in Arrest Memorable + +- Finally, a question for historians/history books like this one - what is truth, and how can we be sure? + -- cgit v1.2.3