Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/mjrl3uox29
„Let the corpse of the rebel be the most beautiful scent in the State“: the concept of the crime of lèse-majesté in the trial to Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan
Nella Lonza
orcid.org/0000-0002-6387-1036
; Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts The Institute of Historical Sciences in Dubrovnik
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Grounded on the proceedings of the 1670-1671 trial to Croatian magnates Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan, this paper explores how the framing of their deeds as the crime of lèse-majesté impacted the composition of the court, the evidence, the position of the defendants, and the capital sentences pronounced.
Special attention is paid to the legal procedure of proscription, developed in the early stage of this trial. It is demonstrated that is was adopted in the anti-magnate struggle of the royal power in different European countries of the period, and that it was embedded in the earlier practice in the Croatian area, too.
Contrary to the literature which tended to interpret the trial to Zrinski and Frankopan as a notoriously illegal scheme imposed by the royal power, this paper argues that the procedure respected the legal framework of the procedure for the cases labelled as lèse-majesté, which know many exceptions and particularities, if compared with the regular model of criminal trial. In fact, the lawsuit against the Croatian magnates mirrored the standpoints of the most authoritative legal writings of the time, and the practice experimented elsewhere.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
333140
URI
Publication date:
1.7.2025.
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