ception was decreasingly less valued by the authorities and intramural executions became more popular,thereby eliminating all public being not admitted. The state provided the execution and sometimes torture and other punishing acts, while the church stood for the liturgy and the theological interpretations of the execution and the executed. For a long time, the executions were thus a joint venture between state and church with coordinated messages of warning and hopefully salvation. When the system was disintegrated, the first victims were the ecclesiastical actions at the site of execution. What remained longest was the preparation of the condemned. As the medieval execution often was difficult to separate from trial and sentencing one can say that the possibility of reasonable time for the preparation was important for the development of the system. Of importance also outside Germany was that the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina of 1532 gave three days for the preparation. At least in the Lutheran areas, also outside Germany, this eventually came to be seen as a minimum. As the history of the preparations differ between different areas it is described starting in the confessions, while the Anglican community is studied separately, as more or less the church of the British Isles, despite the complicated situation there. In the Catholic environment a special feature was the brotherhoods, spreading from Italy, taking as their task to prepare the condemned. In some areas also, especially in Spain and France, the sanctity of the Eucharistic sacrament for a long time, led to the communion of the condemned being denied. Instead the condemned could for example, as in Bologna, kneel on the threshold of a church while Mass was celebrated. Among Lutherans a clearly prolonged and varied time for preparation came to exist, together with conflicts between different views on what a good preparation for death and salvation was, with at least a few in the nineteenth century focusing on the public confession in court as a condition for Absolution. The reformed, especially in Geneva where only hours were given, often had quite short time for preparation. summary 282
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