Sodomy and Criminal Justice in the Parlement of Paris, ca. 1540–ca. 1700

D u r i n g a s e r i e s o f i n t e r r o g a t i o n s in late 1588, the magistrates of the criminal chamber of the Parlement of Paris tried Alexandre Jouan on appeal from the subordinate court of the Châtelet in Paris for the “extraordinary crime” and the “sin” of “sodomy.” Noël Biresse, who had been driving his cart outside Paris by the gate of Saint-Antoine, testified that he saw Jouan, a merchant who sold ashes, “lying with a baker in the ditch, on top of the man, with his shirt pulled off.” At first Biresse “thought Jouan was with a wench, and he wanted to see what they were doing, but when they stood up he realized that it was a man who took a handful of grass to wipe himself down after he had been underneath this man [Jouan].” Under torture on the rack Jouan cried out, “Jesus, Mary, Saint Nicolas, my God, misericord!” and “I’m breaking, kill me!,” but he continued to deny the charge of sodomy. Finally, the Parlement sent Jouan back to the Châtelet, from which he was to be released unless more information came to light that proved his guilt.1 Jouan’s case demonstrates some of the intractable difficulties involved in prosecuting sodomy through the inquisitorial procedures of criminal justice in sixteenthand seventeenth-century France. In Jouan’s case, the