A Lutheran Plague: Murdering to Die in the Eighteenth Century

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.

At dræbe nogen alene for at blive d¢dsd¢mt og henrettet af b¢delen!. Sådanne mord var alarmerende hyppige i 1700-tallets lutherske Europa. Bogen eftersporer de komplekse motiver bag disse forbrydelser - en unders¢gelse der f¢rer ikke bare til det pietistiske engagement i at frelse de d¢dsd¢mtes sjæle, men også til centrale dele af den lutherske frelseforståelse og til forestillingen om, at d¢dsstraffene var direkte beordrede af Gud.
Bogen har selvmordsmordene i K¢benhavn og den danske stats bekæmpelse af selvmordsmordene som udgangspunkt, men indeholder også et europæisk udblik. Mordene f¢rte til særlig lovgivning og udforderde de religi¢st motiverede d¢dsstraffe. Her blev Danmark foregangsland, da man i 1767 helt ekstraordinært afskaffede d¢dsstraffen for disse mord.
Om end meget sjældnere end i det lutherske Europa ses selvmordsmord også i det ¢vrige Europa i 1700-tallet såvel som i vore dages USA. De synes således at ledsage d¢dsstraffen overalt, hvor den er i brug.