A connection to Christianity, and maybe in other cultures to other religions, is beyond doubt adding a transcendent perspective to death, but to single out just one specific movement is to exceedingly narrow the connection. The relevance to the crimes we here are interested in probably primarily lies in the connection of Christian faith and people being killed through the planned killing of the execution. The connection exists between the execution of Christ, the killings of Christian martyrs, the violent killing of somebody seemingly well prepared for eternity, in the midst of society, through the execution, and, often, a murder hopefully delivering both the victim and the perpetrator, the latter through the execution, to God. Eventually the development of the rules and views on insanity in criminal cases grew in importance. With the professionalisation of the medical profession and the rise of psychiatry, the role of insanity in criminal law and process was increasingly recognised in most countries. Insanity in the medical, and, eventually, the judicial sense was something else and more than ’stark raving mad’. In some respects this development also resulted in something of a ’black hole’ – when cases in reality were transferred to the psychiatrists the interest of courts and legislators declined. Here the specific diagnosis and terminology are of less importance, they were both developing and could also be influenced from the rules and terminology of the legislation which the psychiatrical profession had to some extent to mould their findings after to make them relevant and understandable.909 Michel Foucault interestingly suggests it fell to psychiatrists to deliver a motive for the crimes where no motives first could be found and traces, concerning France, the psychiatric intervention in criminal law and praxis to the first decades of the nineteenth century and to some significant The psychiatrical perspective the explanations of the acts 909 See the questions in Moll 1825 p 345 sq. 255
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