BRUNI, Francesco, et al.

An interesting legal compendium on presumption of guilt and the justification for torture to extract confessions, first published Rome 1543, and containing the important fifteenth-century treatise of this title by the Italian judge Francesco Bruni (d.1510), first published Siena 1495. Also included here are similar treatises by the medieval Guido da Suzzara (d.1292), with commentary by the editor Ludovico Bolognini (1447-1508), jurist and diplomat, and Baldo Perigli of Perugia (d.c.1511), both of which appeared in this compendium for the first time. 

Bruni’s treatise effectively functions as a guide to judges in criminal trials, especially on the subject of ‘indicia,’ i.e. circumstantial signs or indicators that evidence is true: how to treat indicia contained within witness depositions; on presumption of guilt from indicia as a justification for torture to extract confessions, for example in cases of housebreaking, where the defendant’s running away indicates their guilt; the validity of confessions that are gained from torture as evidence; the conditions under which indicia can be used to condemn the criminal without recourse to torture; and finally, when such evidence is inadmissible or should be quashed.  

Da Suzzara’s work is more specifically on interrogation through torture, which he advocates in both criminal and civil cases, or anywhere where the judge is uncertain of the truth. However, he seems to take a more enlightened attitude to torture, which was commonplace in criminal procedure in the period and even in canon law, and generally sees it as a last resort to be used as little as is necessary. Bolognini in his commentary seems broadly to share this philosophy, though it leads him to some sinister conclusions: when there are several defendants of mixed gender, the woman should be tortured before the man, because women have ‘moveable and unstable hearts’ and will confess more quickly under duress. Similarly, if torturing a father and son, you must torture the son in sight of the father, because this will be to him the worse torture and is therefore more efficient. Bolognini is also eager to qualify Da Suzzara’s point that old people and certain privileged persons, such as soldiers, doctors, priests or city counsellors, must not be submitted to torture; in cases of capital charges such as lèse majesté or heresy, Bolognini argues, they can and should be tortured. Bolognini is makes the interesting point that mental torture, caused by incarceration, for example, must be considered as much a ‘torment’ as physical punishments that cause damage to the body. The final work is a brief tract by Baldo Perigli which touches on the reliability of confessions extracted under torture and the circumstances under which such confessions can be revoked as false on appeal.

Jean-Baptiste de Blye (b.c.1629), a French lawyer, was appointed First President of the sovereign council of Tournai in 1668. He was the first to report on cases decided by the council, noting cases that he deemed interesting enough and producing two volumes of reports first published in the C18th.