Marvelous Effects and Hidden Means: Justice and Magic in Early Modern France

ABSTRACT Even as the Valois and Bourbon kings rationalized the institutions of absolute rule, the majority of their subjects continued to participate in a shared culture of magic that was tightly entwined with religious faith. Privileged and underprivileged alike maintained that sacred and supernatural forces could, and did, intervene in the natural world. This article seeks to explore some of the key ways in which those beliefs functioned within the judicial arena. It will contend that France’s highly regarded judicial system was effective because it instrumentalized such understandings. The article will examine the magico-religious powers accorded the central figures in the judicial system—the magistrate, the executioner, and the criminal—and argue that beliefs about the supernatural and the sacred made operative the most prestigious criminal courts of early modern France, and in so doing, enhanced the power of the absolutist state.