Dubious Authoritative Opinion: the “Justification” of Jean Petit and his Critics

Abstract

The article is devoted to the treatise “Justification of the Duke of Burgundy” by Jean Petit (1408) and to the peculiarities of his criticism by French intellectuals of the first third of the 15th century. The author of the article pays special attention to the concept of the «legitimate murder» formulated by Jean Petit, with which he tried to explain and excuse the actions of his master Jean the Fearless, who ordered the assassination of Duke Louis of Orleans in 1407. French humanists, including Jean Gerson, Pierre d’Ailly, Nicolas de Clamange and Alain Chartier, not only rejected this pseudo-legal theory, but also put forward their own concept of the «murder by necessity», with which they tried to justify the murder of Jean the Fearless himself in 1419 as a man who had lost his mind, turned into a beast, and therefore into a tyrant and a devil.