the execution and its message was announced three days in advance to the condemned, the executioner, and the parish priest simultaneously.221 Moments before the execution extreme unction was given.222 The rule had spread also outside the empire, for example in Vicenza, which however laid under the rule of the emperor, in 1751, three days were given from the proclamation of the sentence to the condemned to the execution.223 In France, or at least in Paris, the relationship of the clergy to society and primarily the authorities had often influenced their actions. During the torturous execution of the regicide Jean-François Ravaillac in Paris onMay 27th 1610, the prime concern of the attending priests seems to have been to obtain a confession including the names of accomplices, thus serving the interest of the state. As his crime was lese-majesty against the king and as he insisted he had been alone in his crime, Absolution was first refused him. The confessors, however, eventually agreed to give him a conditional Absolution, with the condition that his confession was true. The work of the confessors was seriously disturbed by the crowd. When they earlier had planned to pray for Ravaillac, cries that they should not pray for him stopped them. When Ravaillac himself invited the crowd to sing theSalve Regina, they refused and shouted that he was as damned as Judas. This behaviour of the Parisian crowd, ordinarily sympathetic to the condemned, was most unusual.224 The refusal of Absolution and then granting it conditionally may not have been unique to the execution of Ravaillac. A Parisian source from the same time suggest that a difference existed between priests on this point: Capuchins were quick to absolve, while the doctors of the Sorbonne, who in Paris often served as confessors, worked closely with the authorities, and were chosen without consulting the condemned, could set the naming of accomplices as a condition for Absolution.225 Also, at this time, communion was still explicitly forbidden.226 221 Griesebner 2011 p 210. 222 Griesebner 2011 p 218. 223 Puppi 1991 p 47, 50. 224 Chevallier 1989 p 236 sq, L'Estoile 1881 p 238 sq, 413, Puppi 1991 p 37. 225 Bastien 2005 p 285 sq, Anchel 1933 p 147. 226 Bastien 2005 p 299 sq. 79
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