Suicide by proxy in early modern Germany : crime, sin and salvation / Kathy Stuart.
Stuart, Kathy, author.
2023
HV6973
Available Online

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Title Suicide by proxy in early modern Germany : crime, sin and salvation / Kathy Stuart.
Author Stuart, Kathy, author.
ISBN 9783031252440 (electronic bk.)
3031252446 (electronic bk.)
9783031252433
3031252438
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25244-0
Published Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, [2023]
Copyright ©2023
Language English
Description 1 online resource (xx, 466 pages) : illustrations.
Other Standard Identifiers 10.1007/978-3-031-25244-0 doi
Call Number HV6973
Dewey Decimal Classification 364.150943
Summary "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.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description Online resource; title from PDF title page (SpringerLink, viewed August 1, 2023).
Series World histories of crime, culture and violence.
Available in Other Form Print version: 9783031252433
Linked Resources Online Access
Record Appears in Online Resources > Ebooks
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Intro
Acknowledgments
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Liturgies of Suicide by Proxy
The Art of Child Sacrifice
Catholics and Protestants
A Crime of Women
Rationality, Instrumentality, Ritual, and Sacrifice
Chapter 3: "Fear God and the Court, while there is still Time." Crime and Zealous Prosecution in Early Modern Hamburg
The City
Crime and Punishment in Hamburg
A New Rationale for Murder: Precursors
Invoking Divine Intervention: The "Ordeal of the Bier" and the "Justice of the Street"

Conclusion: The Stage Is Set
Chapter 4: "The Unbelievably Frequent Examples of such Murders Committed solely out of Weariness with Life." Hamburg, 1668-1810
Direct Suicide: Ongoing Desecrations and an Emerging Insanity Defense in Select Cases
Case Numbers Rise
The House of Correction
The Spinnhouse
1697: Female Inmates Form a Murder Plot
1698-1699: Child Murders in Prison and in the Streets
The Early Eighteenth Century
Legislation Fails to Stop the Killings
1737: Direct Suicide-Official Mercy vs. Popular Taboo
1740: Senators' Discomfort with a Traditional Ritual

1750-1784: Child Murders Continue, Despite Official Leniency Toward Direct Suicide
1784: Desacralization and Deritualization
Late Cases: Child Murder as a Suicidal Reflex
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Mary with the Axe: The Cult of the Injured Icon in Baroque Vienna
Pietas Austriaca
Vulnerable and Potentially Miraculous
Eucharistic Devotions in Popular Practice
Host Desecration in History and Memory: The Usual Suspects
Chapter 6: The Injured Crucifix: The Emperor's Conscience and Prisoners' Defiance
Governmental Responses

A Theological-Judicial Loophole Allows a Change in Government Tactics
Nicolaus Stark (c. 1729-1757)
An Ongoing Problem?
Gender and Age of Suicidal Blasphemers
History and Memory
Chapter 7: Crime and Justice in a Sacred Landscape: Vienna, 1668-1786
Early Cases
Susanna Weiglhofferin (c. 1679-1704): Murder as Pilgrimage?
The Government Responds, and Fails to End the Killings
Unmoored, Dispossessed, Out for Revenge: Women Vagrants as Serial Killers?
Execution Rates and Gender
Sharing in a Blessed Death: Leveraging Salvation on the Ravenstone

"How to Comfort Poor Sinners, who will be executed for their Misdeeds, and dispose them well for Death."
From Mount Calvary to Poor-Sinners' Graveyard
An Ideological Imperative: Eliciting the Poor Sinner's Compliance
The Demise of Old-Regime Criminal Justice
Chapter 8: Conclusion: The Decline of Suicide by Proxy and its Historical Effacement
Bibliography
Manuscript Sources
Archiv der Marktgemeinde Perchtoldsdorf (AMP)
Bayerisches Staatsarchiv Nürnberg (StAN)
Diözesanarchiv Wien (DAW)
Fürstlich Oettingen-Wallersteinisches Archiv (FÖWAH)

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