“Bruno and Jean”, by Pauline Valade, Actes Sud, 344 p., 22.50 euros, digital 17 euros.
On July 6, 1750, in the Place de Grève, in Paris (the current place of the Hôtel-de-Ville), Bruno Lenoir, a 20-year-old shoemaker, and Jean Diot, a servant of about 40 years old, were strangled. later burned for “the crime of sodomy.” Six months earlier, the two men had been arrested, drunk, on Montorgueil Street, “in an indecent position and in a reprehensible manner”according to the report prepared by the police. His execution was the last death sentence for homosexuality in France before the crime of sodomy was abolished in 1791.
This execution, Pauline Valade, 18th century specialist.my century, tells “The World of Books” that he found out for the first time in 2016, while reading a text by the memoirist Edmond Jean François Barbier (1689-1771). “Turning a page, I discover the brief mention of this execution, but above all the vagueness that surrounds it.explains the historian. I am struck by a phrase by Barbier that explains that the sentencing sentence was not shouted publicly because it was necessary to avoid naming the crime. But at this point I still don’t have time to delve into this enigma. »
A year later, while walking through Paris, Pauline Valade accidentally found footprints of Bruno Lenoir and Jean Diot. At the intersection of Montorgueil and Bachaumont streets, where they were arrested, he discovered a plaque placed in 2014 in memory of the two men. This discovery sparks his curiosity, but he still doesn’t know how to approach the subject. You must first compare the files. “I told myself there was something to write about this story.she says. I took my time. He no longer wanted to read the works of historians: he wanted to be free of all knowledge. I wanted to go meet these ordinary people who have left almost no trace. »
In the Paris Archives he discovered the documents that attest to the matter: minutes, interrogation reports, Parliament archives… But all this information does not explain the death penalty. Because homosexuals benefited from relative leniency on the part of the judicial system of the time. Most of the time they were released at the end of a “volubility”, a moral lesson.
A “social novel”
Returning to the side of historians, he observes that there are few studies on this drama, apart from a book by Maurice Lever (The Pyres of SodomFayard, 1985), which places this episode in that of homosexual persecution. “I realized there was a huge gap. Only fiction could fill that void. »
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