In the General historyby Alfonso amnestyan explanation is given on the said term, which is the etymological form of the word amnesty. It is said that the Athenian general Thrasybulus, after having expelled the thirty tyrants from Athens, ordered that none of those who had given them their support should be condemned. to this “They called it amnesty in their language and it is said in Spanish as well as oluidança because through this posture they help them forget all past enmities.”
Amnesty comes to us from the Greek ἀμνηστία (amnesty), “oblivion”, in Latin, and is linked to amnesiaof close origin and meaning.
There will be few texts allowing us to read the word before the 19th century. In fact, Rafael Lapesa considers it a neologism of little use even in the 16th century, and he sees this as the reason why Agustín de Zárate accompanied it with its vulgar equivalent “law of forgetting”. However, in every century there has been an author who used it (Fernández de Heredia in the 14th century, the anonymous The capitulations for the deliverance of Granada in the 15th century, Andrés de Poza in the 16th century, Pellicer de Ossau in the 17th century, Feijoo in the 18th century…).
Despite the scarcity of documents prior to the 19th century, it had to be established in the language, since the Dictionary of authorities of the RAE, the first lexicographic mention of the word, in 1726, indicates that it is the usual form, to the great dismay of academics, who qualify it amnestywith e, and which they define as “the forgetting of past hurts, the forgiveness and general absolution of them”, adding: “It is an old-fashioned word […] and it is commonly called amnestyalthough very bad. Perhaps this rejection is the reason why the amnesty form does not have an independent article in this dictionary until the next edition of 1770.
From the 19th century we will find abundant evidence of the term amnesty; and not only in Spanish, but also in French, English, Italian, German, Dutch…, perhaps due to the social unrest around the French Revolution.
The 19th century was a politically very turbulent century, a reason which justifies the increase in the number of writings, such as letters, press articles, decrees, penal codes, constitutions, etc., in which the word is used. During this century, numerous amnesties have been decreed (both in Spain and in the American territory), most of them of a political nature, others being granted for births, royal marriages, etc., although “until in the 19th century, it is difficult to clearly distinguish amnesties from pardons, because a very varied terminology is used” (E. Linde Paniagua, Social conflicts in the history of Spain).
For his part, the Dictionary of the Academy, over the course of its successive editions, has made amendments to specify who grants amnesty (“a sovereign”, “who has the power to make laws”…), who benefits from it (whether individual or general), which crimes it depends (common or political) on whether the beneficiaries share the same type of crime, etc. But in the last two editions, very open definitions were chosen, which leave these details elliptical, and the cancellation of the sentence is understood in the expressions “legal forgetfulness” or “forgiveness” with which the definitions begin: “forgetfulness legality of crimes. , which extinguishes the responsibility of their authors” (2001); “Forgiveness of certain types of crimes, which extinguishes the responsibility of their perpetrators” (2014).
Until the 1950s, virtually no literary works could be found in the linguistic corpus in which the voice was read. amnestyexcept for Tyrant Flags de Valle-Inclán and some others. On the other hand, in the second half of this century, the word continued to occupy the pages, in Spain and in the American countries, of constitutions and history books, but it now appears that it appears above all in the works of fiction. Some Spanish projects recreate the atmosphere of Franco’s political persecution. In the last third of the century, after the death of the dictator, society demanded amnesty and the press was full of writings in which the voice was omnipresent.
Future researchers of this term will experience a spike in usage, easily explainable, in these years in which we find ourselves.
