Språkvetenskapliga fakulteten, LILAe

Kalendarium

Our understanding of terrorism comes primarily through our perception of terrorist events – but events are complex phenomena, whose meanings depend on attitudes toward acts, agents, agencies, scenes and purposes. François Ravaillac (1578– 1610) was a minor French legal representative and tutor from the provinces who felt called upon to kill his king, Henry IV, for the sake of the cause of Catholics in Europe. Kill the king he did, in the middle of Paris, with a stab to the king’s heart, and the nation was shocked. What now? Ravaillac was immediately apprehended, interrogated, and tortured, but no reason he gave for his treachery was satisfactory. Was there something inside the mind or soul of Ravaillac that could explain it, something Ravaillac was determined to hide? Did he have accomplices? Did he know something other people didn’t? Did he exist in a way that other people didn’t? The interrogation, torture, and brutal execution of Ravaillac – he was humiliated, branded, quartered and torn to pieces, as a mob attacked him – exemplifies the popular strategy of trying to find the meaning of a terrorist act in the person who committed it.