A Lutheran Plague

Murdering to Die in the Eighteenth Century
Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-90-04-22115-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 55, 226 Seiten, Format (B × H): 165 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 544 g

Reihe: Studies in Central European Histories

To kill someone purely in order to be sentenced to death and then to die at the hands of the executioner! Such murders were alarmingly frequent in eighteenth-century Lutheran Europe. The book traces the complex motives behind these crimes – an investigation that leads not only to the Pietist interest in saving the souls of those sentenced to death but also into some of the central elements of Lutheran soteriology and the idea of capital punishment as being divinely ordained.
The murders prompted special legislation and challenged the religious basis of the death penalty, and the killings and the logic behind them played an important role in debates about capital punishment, following Beccaria.
Although much less frequent than in Lutheran Europe, such crimes are still committed elsewhere in eighteenth-century Europe, and even in the present-day US. Thus they seem to go hand in hand with the death penalty, irrespective of time and space.

Zielgruppe

All those interested in cultural history, the early modern history of Europe, criminal and legal history and history of religion

Autoren/Hrsg.

Krogh, Tyge

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
List of Tables

1. Introduction

PART I: MORPHOLOGY
2. Frequency
3. The Murderers’ Social Situation and Mental State
4. Religious Motives
5. The Authorities and the Murders
6. Pietism and the Murderers
7. Motives
8. Boundaries

PART II: ORIGINS
9. Divine Demands
10. Salvation of the Soul
11. A Lutheran Plague

PART III: DEMISE
12. The Danish Decree of 1767
13. Measures Taken Against the Suicide Murders in Germany
14. The Role of Suicide Murders in the Penal Reform Debates
15. From Salvation to Insanity

16. Conclusion

Appendix: Suicide Murder Cases in Copenhagen, 1697–1789
Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Krogh, Tyge
Tyge Krogh, PhD (1991) Dr. Phil. (2000) in History, University of Copenhagen, is senior researcher at the Danish National Archives. He has published on Danish early modern cultural and criminal history including Oplysningstiden og det magiske. Henrettelser og korporlige straffe i 1700-tallets første halvdel (The Enlightenment and the magical. Executions and corporal punishments in Denmark in the first half of the eighteenth century) (Samleren, Copenhagen, 2000)