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• 29 nov 2012

  30 nov 2012

  Lyon

  Conference, symposium - History

  Martyr Princes

  The posthumous relegitimations of sovereigns sentenced to death (16th-21th centuries)

  “In my end is my beginning ...” : last words attributed to Mary Stuart in the morning of her execution Feb. 7, 1587. Sixty years later, Charles I faced his executioner with dignity and was beheaded. In France, the execution of Louis XVI, and Marie-Antoinette a few months later, also takes place after a trial and in public. Other princes were again put to death after a more or less expedient trial, in order to break down their power into its symbolism, like Maximilian of Austria in Mexico or Tsar Nicolas II, summarily executed with his family after the reading of a death sentence issued by the "Ural Executive Committee". Their death, premeditated, and often public and widely informed, was made necessary towards a political change, but it is precisely by then embodying a political, or even in some cases, a religious cause, that they became martyrs promised to posterity - devoting more to cult than to loyalty – the matter here being to clarify their historical issues.

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