Papers by Frans Camphuijsen
In many areas of premodern Europe, the public performance of punishment formed a common aspect of... more In many areas of premodern Europe, the public performance of punishment formed a common aspect of judicial practice. Explanations of these performances and their gradual disappearance since the eighteenth century often focus on changing ideas about the effects and humaneness of punishment. This contribution, however, considers these penal occasions primarily in the context of processes of public communication. Working from a case study of late medieval Utrecht, and building on recent anthropological theories of ritual, it argues for a socio-communicative interpretation of the history of public punishment. By their combination of textual, oral, visual, symbolic and performative aspects into particular ritualised events, penal performances in Utrecht formed a venue for posing and negotiating claims on social truth, rather than simple elements of repression. Such a perspective therefore allows us to consider premodern authorities as actual participants in the societies they tried to regulate. (Available through ACUH website - see URL)
Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 2014
BMGN-Low Countries Historical Review, 2012
verhalenbank.nl
Op een donkere regenachtige avond ziet een automobilist een knap meisje langs de weg staan en haa... more Op een donkere regenachtige avond ziet een automobilist een knap meisje langs de weg staan en haar hand opsteken voor een lift. Hij neemt haar mee en rijdt verder. Ze rilt en lijkt het zo koud te hebben dat hij zijn trui om haar heen slaat.
Conference Presentations by Frans Camphuijsen
By comparing two late medieval law courts, the Council of Utrecht (The Netherlands) and the consi... more By comparing two late medieval law courts, the Council of Utrecht (The Netherlands) and the consistory court of the archbishop of York (England), I will argue for an approach that considers the legal process above all as a communicative process. As I hope to show, such an approach makes it possible to make relevant comparisons between courts functioning in very different legal, social and political contexts.
A short overview of my PhD project: questions, sources, cases, hypotheses, etc.
Drawing on the evidence for the late medieval Council of Utrecht (The Netherlands), I will try to... more Drawing on the evidence for the late medieval Council of Utrecht (The Netherlands), I will try to show how a variety of communicative devices were applied in legal practice in this period, from textual to oral, performative and symbolic message-sending techniques. These devices were used to construct and communicate an idealized image of society and the role of the law court within this society.
Traces the role of judicial performances in the legal process in late medieval Utrecht (The Nethe... more Traces the role of judicial performances in the legal process in late medieval Utrecht (The Netherlands) and its relation to other modes of communication involved in this process. Tries to place this specific case within the broader discussion on public punishment and modernity (Foucault, Spierenburg, etc.).
Ouvrage by Frans Camphuijsen
H - France Review, 2018
There are subjects that fire the imagination to such a degree that one does not automatically exp... more There are subjects that fire the imagination to such a degree that one does not automatically expect to encounter them in the context of a serious academic study. The criminal monk is one of those subjects. Surely, monks hurting or killing their fellow regulars can be no more than a marginal historical phenomenon, mainly limited to the field of fiction? On the contrary, as Élisabeth Lusset shows in her recent book, the definition, persecution, and penalization of criminality among conventuals was a prominent aspect of monastic organizations, which stood at the center of some of the defining tensions within and developments of life in a cloister context
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Papers by Frans Camphuijsen
Conference Presentations by Frans Camphuijsen
Ouvrage by Frans Camphuijsen