introduction lutely necessary. Randall McGowen notes how theological views are treated by historians of criminal justice: ”They tend to treat them as platitudes, as a verbal formula that casts a veil over the real operation of justice.”46 Similar positions can be found not only in research, but also in the sources. Limited questions also result in limited answers. Sources and research starting from an often secularised understanding of society, morals, and law, while theological factors are mostly ignored, will also be discussed.47 Therefore to some extent, but not more, the position of theological perspectives in this study is a reaction to how these perspectives have been treated or not treated in some earlier studies. In addressing these questions, there is help to be found in an idea launched by Inger Hammar in her research. In historical research she found an understanding she called religion blindness. Fundamentally such a point of view is immanent and often sees religion as something private and not publicly relevant. Therefore, analysis on such a ground has focused more on motives and ideas inside this world rather than of the next.48 Fundamental for this is the idea, dominating in many fields since the mid-twentieth century, that religion became private and lost all its public roles and therefore interest – an overwhelming secularisation. Theology has thus been treated as not fully scientific or not fully suitable for historical studies, whether from a clear atheistic position or not, and these ideas have spread to much research.49 A greater understanding of orthodox or traditional approaches to the theological factors promises to be profitable, especially in their contrast to the secularising ideas of strands of the Enlightenment. Another possible objection against the value of studying this problem at all could be to see it as peripheral and as a subject far from central themes in the study of society and its history. Andrea Zorzi has defended the study of the history of capital punishment as a place where the history 46 McGowen 1988 p 64. 47 See e g Gudenrath 1792. 48 Hammar 1998 particularly p 4 sqq, Hammar 1999 p 32. This subject came to be studied and debated much in Nordic research in the following years, see e g Werner 2012 p 3. 49 Jansson and Falk 2017. 33
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