the execution and its message church there was a prayer and the delinquents were exhorted to repent.322 From France and Switzerland we hear of ‘l’amende honorable’, sometimes more akin to a confession of sins and a prayer for forgiveness, but primarily a short service of prayer for and blessing of the condemned. It has also been a scene for the criminal to publicly confess his crimes.323 At least in late medieval time they generally repeated confessions written for them, making the scene problematic if they refused to participate.324 Eventually, however, and especially during the eighteenth century l’amende honorable became less of an ecclesiastical and theological ceremony and more of a moral and judicial event directed by the courts.325 Before that, however, it had the symbolic role of the condemned confessing and begging for forgiveness from God, the king and justice in itself, thereby the closeness of these three, or, as Pascal Bastien puts it: ”trinité”, a unity is demonstrated.326 Absolution and thus the forgiveness of God was something most condemned people encountered during their preparations and possibly on the road or at the place of execution. An interesting example of how a message could find its way into liturgy in the Lutheran milieu is to be found in the elaborations done in the area between confession and Absolution. Martin Luther set an example in the form he provided in the Short Catechism, incorporating the question after the confession if the Absolution, given by the priest, is the Absolution of God.327 The short question of Luther, probably aimed to strengthen the faith of the absolved in the Absolution, was however later often replaced by several and more probing questions. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century in liturgies constructed either generally for the execution situation or for a specific case often included among the questions one or several implying or requesting the 322 Laurence 1932 p 186 sq. 323 Prières 1809, McManners 1985 p 381. 324 Cohen 1990 p 289. 325 Doyon et El Kenz 2010 p 266, 276. 326 Bastien 2002 § 26 (internet), ’trinity’. 327 Luther 1986 p 519. 100
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