Nouvelles Nouvelles Podcast 17: Mireille Pardon on Criminal Body in Medieval Flanders

Interviewed and edited by Di Wang

Background music: Pierre-Francisque Caroubel's Galliard performed by the Early Interval Ensemble (Thanks Early Interval Ensemble for permission to use this recording)

Time: October 31, 2025

Di: 

My name is Di Wang. I’m a PhD candidate in the Department of History and a Graduate Research Associate for the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies here at The Ohio State University. 

We are joined today by Dr. Mireille J. Pardon, Assistant Professor at Berea College. Dr. Pardon is a social and cultural historian interested in violence, social control, and judicial ritual in late medieval and early modern Europe. She graduated from Yale University with a PhD in history in 2020 and spent 2017 to 2018 at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven as a Visiting International Scholar, funded by the Belgian-American Educational Foundation Fellowship. 

Her dissertation investigated the changing perception of lethal violence in fifteenth‑century Flemish cities and its effects on judicial practice. She is currently working on a book project tentatively titled The Invention of Homicide: Crime, Honor, and Spectacular Justice in Late Medieval Flanders. 

In addition to her book project, she is interested in how medieval legal systems interacted with non-human animals, the environment, and the boundaries of humanity or inhumanity, as well as how broader concepts of gender and sexuality impacted legal culture. At Berea College, she teaches courses on the medieval world, from travel and translation to crime and confession. She is especially interested in showing students the diversity of medieval society and helping them develop their research and writing skills. 

Today, she is also our speaker here at The OSU. Dr. Pardon, thanks so much for joining us! 

Dr. Pardon: 

Thank you so much for having me! 

Di: 

So, for those listening who are unfamiliar with your work, would you tell us a little bit about your research and your current book project? 

Dr. Pardon: 

Yeah, so my research in general is about medieval judicial practice, and I’m really interested in how law worked on the ground—getting a view of everyday legal practice. What would happen to someone when they were accused of a crime, or when they entered the judicial system, or made their way to conviction, outside of what we just see in law codes and things like that. 

So I’m very interested, from a social history perspective, in what everyday life was like—specifically in late medieval Flemish cities—and how we see that through criminal records. 

In terms of my book project, The Invention of Homicide, I’m interested in this transition from feud‑like understandings of violence, interested in reconciling disputing parties—figuring out a way for the victim or the victim’s family to forgive the perpetrator, working out peace payments, having peace ceremonies together, and an understanding of violence where violence is always seen as harmful to the common good and therefore suitable for public punishment. 

So the question becomes whether killing or injuring someone is an offense against an individual that needs to be resolved through healing community bonds, or whether it’s an offense against the common good of the city, the public peace, or the king’s peace, and therefore something for which an individual needs to be punished. 

This is a very broad transition happening over the course of the Middle Ages—from a more feud‑like society to one with clearer legal rules that is more interested in identifying criminals to punish. But I’m particularly interested in how that is not just a story of rising state power; it’s also a story of changing cultural ideas about violence. 

Di: 

Yeah, that’s really fascinating—thinking about how definitions change over time, both in how things are written in archival sources and how they’re conducted in practice. There can be so many possibilities for interpretation. 

Dr. Pardon: 

Yeah, exactly. I’m especially interested in changing language for killing—for homicide. And sometimes the proposed title of my book can be a little misleading, because it makes people think homicide didn’t exist at all before the fifteenth century. 

What I’m actually talking about is the expansion of the definition of homicide to cover a much larger frame of violent activity. Earlier, only very specific conditions would be termed or thought of as homicide. There were many other times when someone would kill someone and it would be considered self‑defense, which had a very wide definition. 

That definition encompassed many forms of interpersonal disputes that were not considered homicide because people were involved in a fight with each other. Over time, that fades away in favor of a more expansive definition of homicide. 

Di: 

I remember there is a part where you mentioned that a homicide committed intentionally could sometimes be considered less of a crime than suicide. 

Dr. Pardon: 

In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in Flanders, the vast majority of homicide cases were dealt with through purely financial restitution. Someone would owe a payment to the victim’s family and a payment to the state. That was the most common route. 

It’s only in really egregious cases that someone would face a capital trial and, if convicted, be executed. At the same time, this period is very concerned with suicide. Suicide is criminalized, and people are “executed” for suicide at higher rates than for homicide. 

I should probably explain what I mean by an “execution” for suicide, because that’s confusing. Obviously, the person is already dead. But it’s considered an execution in the sense that the executioner is paid to do it, and in legal records it’s called an execution using the same terminology as for living criminals. 

Practically, what happens is that the executioner moves the body to a place where other bodies are displayed—where other posthumous displays are happening. It’s a ritual display of the body, and it’s a very large part of how the judicial system functions. 

Statistically, this happens more often than executions for homicide. 

Di: 

That’s fascinating. What first got you interested in studying violence in the late Middle Ages? 

Dr. Pardon: 

I think initially I was interested in the potential of these records to give us a window into everyday people’s lives. Criminal records allow us to see things we otherwise don’t—why people got upset, why they got angry, what kinds of conflicts they had. 

When I started working in the archives, I was fascinated by all these little micro‑narratives of everyday life. Even when they escalated into violence, I felt like I was getting small windows into people’s lives—often the worst day of their lives—but still a genuine connection to the past. 

I’m also interested in how people think about homicide as a concept versus killing as a physical act. Killing is physical, but homicide or murder is culturally defined. Every society draws lines—self‑defense, war, execution—and those lines tell us a lot about cultural values. 

Di: 

And you also talked about gender and how cases could be interpreted differently. 

Dr. Pardon: 

Yes. Criminal records show very clearly that law isn’t applied equally. In late medieval Flanders, men and women are technically equal under the law, but in practice women are often treated differently. 

Women might be charged alongside a husband or father, or there’s an assumption that a man should have controlled them. But in homicide cases, when women do reach the legal system, they’re executed at higher rates than men. 

This has a lot to do with cultural narratives of honorable masculine violence, which men can draw on and women cannot. Those narratives allow men to claim self‑defense or necessity. Women don’t have access to those same explanations, and so they’re treated more harshly. 

Di: 

I’m also interested in the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. There has been a lot of debate over the specific timing, or if “early modern” existed or not. And I wonder how do you interpret that through your own research? 

Dr. Pardon: 

It’s very murky. I like Jacques Le Goff’s idea of the “Long Middle Ages,” but more seriously, I think reconciliation‑based justice feels medieval, while standardized court systems feel more early modern. The shift is gradual and uneven. 

One thing that always signals “early modern” to me is guns. My records are all knives and swords. When guns start appearing regularly in violent conflicts, that’s when I feel we’re no longer in the Middle Ages. 

Di: 

Could you share an archival surprise? 

Dr. Pardon: 

One big one was not understanding euphemistic language for suicide for a long time. Records would say someone “drowned by desperation,” and I didn’t know what that meant at first. Eventually, I realized it was a common euphemism for suicide. 

Another fascinating find was the ritual burning of fraudulent goods. If a merchant sold fake spices, the goods could be confiscated and ceremonially burned. This was also called an execution, and the executioner was paid for it—doing justice on a barrel of ginger. 

Di: 

Yes, and that’s the ritual aspect you’ll be talking about later today. 

Dr. Pardon: 

Exactly. 

Di: 

Thank you so much, Dr. Pardon. 

Dr. Pardon: 

You’re welcome! 

Di: 

I’m Di Wang. I’ve been interviewing Dr. Mireille Pardon about her work on violence, social control, and judicial ritual in late medieval and early modern Europe. Dr. Pardon, I’m really looking forward to your talk later today. Thank you so much for joining us! 

Dr. Pardon: 

Thank you so much for having me on the podcast!