The vast conceptual void between the law and the missing discipline of forensic psychiatry during the eighteenth century leaves space for academics of later times to consider or construct certain general concepts or myths about how this void was filled at the time, e.g. pietistic excesses, magical world views and an inexplicable, morbid attraction to the dramatic staging of executions. Our investigation of individual court cases reveals no trace of these or other mythologies.56 introduction the cases referred to, but also debate and legislation, must largely be used and seen as illustratively, without claiming to be a complete study of everything of relevance. The cases mentioned has been found through literature and printed sources, through archival studies, and more or less through chance. Several cases described primarily have been chosen because they are from areas where earlier modern research has rarely studied them. The aim has been that in the patchwork something of a reasonable and credible picture will emerge. Also, the perspective of academic subjects leaves us with something of a patchwork. Fundamental is the history of a crime, but this study also reaches into at least the histories of law and theology. A perspective focusing on academics and ideas also reveals a specific problem as much of the modern research that looks for explanations is based on positions that can be found hundreds of years ago in past research and debate. Modern research reasonably should be freer from the ideas of the Enlightenment. In trying to launch such a novel approach, Tine Reeh and Ralf Hemmingsen question earlier research and in some respect the premises of this study: However, Krogh, being the main object for their critique, has answered them and for example stated that he has not used the word magic and that Reeh and Hemmingsen only have studied twenty-one of his eightythree cases from Copenhagen. He also sees their method, only using the court records, as problematic because of the possible variations in the 56 Reeh and Hemmingsen 2018 p 132. 57 Krogh 2020. 37
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=