This religious framing of the execution ritual meant that the poor sinner’s death was a good death, even a blessed death in Christian eschatology. The poor sinner entered eternity cleansed of sin, unlike regular Christians who had to fear a hasty and untimely death. This cultural context explains how murder could become an instrument of salvation for suicidal individuals.896 “Women were the targets of morals campaigns and moral panics from the mid-sixteenth through the mid-eighteenth century. The Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation contributed to the transformation from sin to crime of sexual offenses such as fornication and prostitution. Governments began prosecuting infanticide with great severity around 1560, at the same time as the European witch-hunt accelerated. This growing moral rigorism had a particular impact on women.”894 the explanations of the acts To study the crimes and the reactions against them she has chosen two cities, Hamburg and Vienna. In them she finds high numbers of crimes that to a rather strong likelihood were committed in order to be executed. The cities also shared the same correspondence between a firm confession, Lutheran or Catholic, and a strong government. In both cases the “cities implemented similar policies that produced similar results.”895 Stuart, however, also makes a connection between the theological elements and suicide, a word she uses throughout her book: Even though she uses ’suicide’, she still sees a clear spiritual motivation, the wish to go to heaven, for many of the crimes. I wonder and doubt if those perpetrators would accept that they were suicidal? Naturally, there is a close connection between many murders and the theological ideas of those murderers. Odd and moving is the confession of a mother having suffocated her two infant children while saying the same trinitarian phrase they had been baptised with.897 Also, according to Lind, the cutting of the throat could be related to sacrificial rituals in the Bible. Those using this method for their suicides or for their murders, and it was, according to Lind, especially common at least for ’religiöse 894 Stuart 2023 p 9 sqq (quotation p 10). 895 Stuart 2023 p 33 sq (quotation p 34). 896 Stuart 2023 p 19. 897 Pfister 1820 p 503: ”Während ich das Kind umbrachte, sprach ich immer recht andächtig: ”Im Namen des Vaters, des Sohnes und des heiligen Geistes!”” 251
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