Tale of Two Murders
James R. Farr reveals the Giroux affair not only as a riveting murder mystery but also as an illuminating point of entry into the dynamics of power, justice, and law in seventeenth-century France. Drawing on the voluminous trial records, Farr uses Giroux’s experience in the court system to trace the mechanisms of power—both the formal power vested by law in judicial officials and the informal power exerted by the nobility through patron-client relationships. He does not take a position on Giroux’s guilt or innocence. Instead, he allows readers to draw their own conclusions about who did what to whom on that ill-fated evening in 1638.
James R. Farr is Professor of History at Purdue University. He is the author of Artisans in Europe, 1300–1914; Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy, 1550–1730; and Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550–1650.