Il grande assurdo: la tortura del testimone nelle pratiche d'età moderna

Modern Age trial documents (16th-18th centuries) represent a largely unexplored segment of late common law literature. Even though legal historiography frequently touched upon this topic (in particular as a result of the recent 'revalorization' of forensic publishing production if compared to academic), systematic and synthetic studies are still absent. It is within this literary genre-excellent synthesis and expression of equilibrium between theory and practice, the true (and thus valid) mirror of the investigation process in a variety of geographical areas (and thus placed within political and institutional backgrounds that are connotative of the diversity of territorial Modern Age experiences)-that the delicate topic of the torturing of witnesses will be reconstructed. In the cognitive and investigative procedure which aims to reconstruct the truth, the witness as a source of proof was put in a situation that was paradoxically similar to that of the accused: his word, in a system of legal evidence, was considered to be of such stringent necessity and unquestionable utility as to justify the use of torture.