Popular festivity or state ceremonial? The ritual of public execution according to two bourgeois of Paris (1718-1789)

In the light of the accounts of the lawyer Edmond-Jean-Francois Barbier (16 89-1771) and of the bookseller Simeon-Prosper Hardy (1729-1806), each of wh om chronicled daily life in the French capital during the greater part of t he eighteenth century (from the regency of Philippe d'Orleans to the stormi ng of the Bastille), the author means to define, beyond the principles of r etribution and of the exemplary nature of criminal law, the ritual of publi c execution as it was staged in Paris. This study intends to demonstrate th at the execution of criminals, characteristic of a model of power that wish ed to see itself represented, corresponded much more to a state ceremonial than to a penal ritual or a popular festivity and perhaps constituted the r eversed image of the political liturgies studied by the American 'neoceremo nialist' school of historians.