@article{1472001,
      author = {Stuart, Kathy,},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1472001},
      title = {Suicide by proxy in early modern Germany : crime, sin and  salvation /},
      abstract = {"With this excellent study, research on suicide by proxy  is taken a step further to constitute a field of research  on its own. The cross-confessional approach between  Lutheran Hamburg and Catholic Vienna, enables the author to  show that this largely forgotten historical phenomenon was  a fluid and malleable practice adopted by perpetrators  according to their local cultural and confessional  context." --Jonas Liliequist, Ume University, Sweden  Suicide by Proxy became a major societal problem after  1650. Suicidal people committed capital crimes with the  explicit goal of earning their executions, as a short-cut  to their salvation. Desiring to die repentantly at the  hands of divinely-instituted government, perpetrators hoped  to escape eternal damnation that befell direct suicides.  Kathy Stuart shows how this crime emerged as an unintended  consequence of aggressive social disciplining campaigns by  confessional states. Paradoxically, suicide by proxy  exposed the limits of early modern state power, as  governments struggled unsuccessfully to suppress the  tactic. Some perpetrators committed arson or blasphemy, or  confessed to long-past crimes, usually infanticide, or  bestiality. Most frequently, however, they murdered young  children, believing that their innocent victims would also  enter paradise. The crime had cross-confessional appeal, as  illustrated in case studies of Lutheran Hamburg and  Catholic Vienna. Kathy Stuart is Associate Professor of  History at the University of California, Davis, USA.},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25244-0},
      recid = {1472001},
      pages = {1 online resource (xx, 466 pages) :},
}