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Violent Death in Roman Egypt
From the documentation available for the Roman province of Egypt (30 BC – beginning of the fourth century AD), the article proposes to examine the notion of “violent death” in Roman antiquity and to understand what forms of violence are at stake. The study is limited to individual deaths. It excludes the deaths which have a collective dimension and which result from a voluntary massacre of part of the population. The first part is devoted to the clues to identify a violent death. Some causes of death are explicitly mentioned in the sources, while sometimes only specific terms implicitly indicate a violent death. The scientific analysis of bodies also helps to highlight deadly blows. Death is violent when it comes too early, prematurely, when it is due to an accident or violence and when it is felt and perceived as such. A second part addresses the significance of these violent deaths. Indeed, these are, to some extent, an indicator of the prevailing violence in the Roman province of Egypt. They are the mirror of sometimes conflicting interpersonal relationships. Their mention in the administrative and judicial documentation confirms the State's attention to them. Their management by power is a means for Rome to fully affirm its presence, its control and its function as maintainer of public order. Finally, the report to the those dead of violent death reflects a particular collective imagination. On the one hand, the dead are likely to come back to haunt the living. On the other hand, individuals who resort to magic use them as a medium to achieve their ends.

Educational Choices of French Parlements Families in Early Modern France (xviith-xviiith centuries)The article focuses on the educational strategies of the French Parlements families in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is mainly based on narratives of training, delivered by the individuals themselves or their biographers. The collection of more than seventy Parisian and provincial individual trajectories allows to adopt the family point of view and illustrates the multiple choices which were offered to a social group where the statutory requirements were light – councillors passed on the office to their son –, but where the social and family expectations were often very high. If the reproduction of the paternal situation was the most common and was generally wished by the family, many children chose a different path. Unsurprisingly, those who continued the family tradition benefited from an education associating domestic training, college of humanities and university, to take their law degrees. But what specifically characterizes this social group, relative to similar groups, and what the article emphasizes, it is the very strong investment in the education, with attendance at numerous establishments by students ; the explicit taste for the the most fashionable institutions (the Jesuits, and then the boarding schools) ; and finally the willingness to complete school or university education by preceptorship or private lessons, to produce accomplished magistrates with a solid legal culture, but also capable of shining through their speeches or their chosen social relationships. If the specificities of these particular culture have already been stressed on several times, this article seeks to highlight the means of its construction.

To Give Life and Kill the Institutions. The Congregations under the Verdict of the Council of State
The Congregational dispute was one of the most violent episodes in the secular clash of the Third Republic. It was mainly settled by the law of 1 July 1901 whose application was entrusted to the Council of State (Conseil d'État). The analysis of its general assembly highlights, grounded on the combination of members' positions and biographical data, the confrontation of two camps. Catholic defenders of congregations use “legal fiction” strategies to maintain the existence of religious companies. The Council of State, although subject to a duty of reserve and to an obligation of neutrality, became for a few years a discreet political arena. This politicization is limited by the sense of duty of high civil servants who manage to reconcile the demands of their service with an hidden opposition. This survey stresses some of the features of a Catholic interpretation of the law, which seeks to recognize the spontaneous life of institutions instead of coercing it. It also shows the strategies of an institution to maintain itself in a hostile political context. The Council has found its balance within the new republican institutions by arranging the cohabitation of the new republican law with the law of the preceding political regimes. The Conseil d'État was responsible for deciding on the life or death of religious institutions, and organizes its own survival by taking life sparingly and seeking harmony of jurisprudence everywhere.

The Hostility of the SFIO Socialist Party towards the Senate Revealed by Robert Fuzier's Satirical Drawnings for the Daily Newspaper Le Populaire (1931-1939) The satirical work conceived from 1931 to 1939 by the cartoonist Robert Fuzier for the daily newspaper of the Socialist Party (SFIO), Le Populaire, is very revealing of the critical attitude of the French Socialists towards the Senate of that time. It shows that the SFIO activists, much more concerned about the issue of the High-Assembly than is generally considered, take every opportunity to express their opposition to an institution whose conservatism, mode of election and exorbitant powers they do not accept, especially when the lefts are in power. However, its critical scope differs according to whether one considers the period of the “neo-Cartel of the lefts”, of 1932 and 1933, or that of the Popular Front, from 1936 to 1938. In 1932 and 1933, in a context where the Socialists provide to the governments formed by the Radicals only one “support without participation” extremely limited, Fuzier derides the obstruction of the senators with strength, but without excessive malice, avoiding humbling them. But the victory of the Popular Front in the 1936 elections significantly changed the situation. The Socialists are now directly confronted with the Senate, which blocks or distorts their plans for reform, and causes the fall of the first and second Blum governments. From then on, the draftsman engages in a full-scale and uncompromising attack. He presents the High-Assembly as the opponent of universal suffrage, denounces the inability of its residents to fulfill their mission, and no longer recognizes the respectability of its leaders. Nevertheless, his work bears witness to the realism of the SFIO. It does not plead for the suppression, but for the reform of the institution. A solution that the Socialists will contribute to make prevail during the constitutional debates of 1946.

André Wurmser Literacy Critic or How to Be Communist Intellectual This article examines the literary criticism work of André Wurmser in two periodicals, Les Lettres françaises and L'Humanité, but also in two of his books dedicated to literary criticism production, La Comédie inhumaine and Conseils de révision. The purpose of this paper is to view the work of a communist intellectual from the angle of his production of a knowledge (in this present instance it happens to be a work of literary criticism) and not from the angle of his political commitment. The article distingues two periods in André Wurmser's work as a literary reviewer. The first period runs from 1948 to the mid-1950s. This period, set in a harsh political context, displaying an ideological narrow-mindedness, is marked by a plain assimilation of both books and authors : literary works and writers are thus thought and reviewed in strict accordance with communist and realistic socialist ideological frameworks ; in this period, the tone is willingly polemical and has an editorial touch. After 1958 mainly, the criticism work reveals to be less polemical, less controversial (even though this new tendency seems to be less obvious in L'Humanité from 1972 to 1984). However, even if André Wurmser softens his ideological approach, the “orthodox thought” of books and authors, the militant and editorial posture are still at work, most certainly in a less stiff and harsh way. The whole study of this material draws the precise limits of the sphere of activity of a communist intellectual and also gives an account of his literary appetence ; it portrays André Wurmser's taste for realism, his deep concerns for the society of his time and the world around him, it shows a way of thinking opposed to formalism.