|
"From this evidence and from all we know of
the practice of torture in their own time, one can undoubtedly conclude
that the interpreters of criminal procedure left the theory and practice
of torture much, but much, less barbarous
Alessandro Manzoni, Storia della colonna infame: Testo del 1840, ed. Alberto Chiari and Fausto Ghisalberti(Verona 1963) 702 ― Portrait of Manzoni (1841) by Francesco Hayez (1791-1882), Pinacoteca di Brera, Milano |
1522: Juan Luis Vives (1493-1540), Epistola to Erasmus: The first to call for abolishing torture 1580: Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Essays 1.22; 2.5, 11 1624: Johannes Grevius (de Greve ca. 1580-1630), Tribunal reformatum (Hamburg: 1624) 1632: <Friedrich von Spee, published anonymously>, Cautio criminalis seu de processibus contra sagas liber (Frankfurt am Main: 1632) 1682: Augustin Nicolas, Si la torture est un moyen seur a verifier les crimes secrets: Dissertation morale et juridique (Amsterdam: Chez Abraham Wolfgang, 1682) Mathias Schmoeckel, Humanität und Staatsraison: Die Abschaffung der Folter in Europa und die Entwicklung des gemeinen Strafprozess- und Beweisrechts seit dem hohen Mittelalter (Norm und Struktur: Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, 14. Köln-Weimar-Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2000) especially pp. 93-186. Lisa Silverman, Tortured Subjects: Pain, Truth, and the Body in Early Modern France (Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001) |
than
they found it. Of course it would be absurd to attribute this diminution
of evil to one cause alone, but I think that among the many causes that it
would be reasonable to count the repeated reproofs and warnings, renewed
publicly, century after century, by jurists to whom it is certainly
granted a definite authority over the practice of the courts."