Tout se joue au dernier moment. Tout peut être sauvé ou perdu dans les ultimes instants de la vie. Cela vaut même pour les criminels. D’ailleurs nous sommes tous, plus au moins, des criminels. Nous sommes tous des condamnés à mort, en raison du péché originel. Celui qui va être exécuté ne diffère donc pas fondamentalement des autres pécheurs.25 introduction tions and reactions to the crime, where its existence as a crime followed on from the views of those who identified it. Any crime where the longing to be executed was part of its definition, there must be an interest in its origin, end, and limits and even the circumstances under which it was constructed as a crime. The focus is thus not the true motives of the perpetrators, but their motives as perceived by others. By prioritising motive as it was interpreted and reacted to at the time, the number of crimes and the temporal and geographical differences are not a central concern, other than when crimes were influenced by the circumstances of legislation and practice. Statistics and crime figures are therefore rare in this study. The ideas behind the motives for the crimes – their context and history – cannot be ignored.Although this study to a large extent concerns countries with predominantly Christian confessors, crimes in order to be executed were not limited to any one confession or religion, nor was there any obvious dogmatic reason why it should be so. Perhaps the most appropriate perspective to apply to the question should be neither theological nor legal, but cultural, understood at its loosest including theology and law, in which psychiatry could be an aspect of the story. If so, it would not only be an all-embracing perspective, but a changing one too. For example, around 1750 theology became less important in judgements and mercy in Denmark.24 The theological aspects of these discussions might also have a period when its importance increased before it retreated, however. Jean Delumeau has expressed a change in the late medieval period from the position that the condemned would probably be a citizen of hell to: 24 Reeh 2017 p 124. 25 ’Everything is at stake at the final moment. Everybody can be saved or lost in the last instants of life. So is it for criminals too. Further, we are all more or less criminal. We are all 26
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