a mostly german debate on conversion and salvation tance of late repentance” is to pervert the promise of salvation and mercy. Thus, an argument has been provided for continuing sinning, leading to damnation.705 From much the same time, however, there are stories from Norwich in 1818 and 1822 about chaplains who even moments before the hanging urged the condemned, who were adamant they were innocent of the crimes, to confess their guilt of the crime they had been sentenced for.706 Was their focus possibly fixed on the immortal souls of the condemned, or on the sanctity of justice or, possibly, on the reaction of the attending public? Ideas akin to those of Steinbart have also been heard in the Catholic milieu. In January 1584 in a discussion in an Augustinian convent near Venice abrother talked about two hangings he had seen in Padua. Another brother, Luigi da Barga, vigorously stated that such executions were righteous, but also that the church disallowed prayers for the condemned. He was opposed by other brothers and the case came before the inquisitor Angelo de Faenza who heard statements and then checked the source referred to by brother Luigi and found him guilty of stirring unrest due to his wrong understanding of acanon from the synod in Tribur in 895 which stated that one should not pray for a robber that had died while committing his crime, which also was a mortal sin. A criminal surviving and waiting for execution was in another reality, and could receive communion. Adriano Prosperi sees this as one example of how problematic the relationships between sin and crime, and between spiritual and legal condemnation, had been through the centuries for the church. He notes that Luigi da Barga was an Augustinian and that another Augustinian, Martin Luther, when commenting on the peasant risings, according to Prosperi, ”promised them the death of both body and soul”.707 Although the view presented by Luigi, together with the almost perpetual conflict about the condemned receiving the Eucharist, shows that influences could have come from many places, it is more probable that Steinbart found inspiration in his own, adopted, Reformed and neolog705 Courtney 1818 p 7. 706 Walliss 2013 p 42. 707 Prosperi 2008 p 103 sqq (quotation p 108). 198
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