Academic literature on the topic 'Procès (Sacrilège)'

Abstract This book has not been a history; the evidence for significant change in attitudes to pollution is too sparse. If we look forward briefly beyond the fourth century, we still find more evidence for continuity than transformation. One familiar figure does, it is true, seem to disappear, that of the polluted murderer. Little is known at all about the legal and social responses to homicide in this period, but it is probable that, if pollution had been much spoken of, it would in some way have intruded upon the sources. The function of ‘purification’, or the restoration of normality by a positive and public act, had been taken over by legal process, and it gradually ceased to be necessary to think of the killer as significantly different from any other malefactor whose offences were dealt with by the courts. Something similar can perhaps be observed in respect of certain forms of sacrilege. In historical times, cutting sacred wood no longer evokes a savage punishment from the gods, as it does in myth, but a comparatively modest fine.1a The gods could afford to be more lenient because they now had precinct governors who provided effective practical protection for their groves.