the execution and its message duced and therefore the prisoner was informed of the imminent execution at the last possible moment. This trend, which reduced the time available to prepare the condemned, ideally to a minimum, came to influence the situation in many countries.215 The shortened time of preparation could be argued to be a humanitarian act.216 Even though the idea was to treat the condemned in a humane way, the implications were that the state takes no responsibility for the eternal salvation of the condemned.217 Rather the state embraced an agnostic or atheistic point of view with the consequential understanding of the condemned as probably lacking or not interested in any faith. Life waiting for a certain, punctual, and unnatural death can from this perspective hardly be seen as anything but a torturous wait for the inevitable. Nothing could then be won by prolonging their suffering, waiting for the end of life. This inheritance of secularisation from the revolution was not the sole development even in France. After the Bourbon Restoration what Anne Carol calls ”une politique de christianisation” for decades was implemented in the prisons and gaols. The institutions with more than one hundred prisoners were to have its own priest while the smaller ones would be served by another priest. Eventually all imprisoned were to attends the services, probably Masses, held by the priest.218 Carol describes the aim of the work with the condemned at this time as led by tradition and repetition. The example of those travelling the same route before were to be followed, to achieve salvation and a ʼchristianʼ execution.219 In neighbouring Belgium the situation seems to have been less complicated. When Franciscus Kol was executed in Antwerp in 1856, all prisoners were present at the Mass and Kol received communion.220 The CCCcame to set its mark in the Catholic German-speaking regions. In Perchtoldsdorf in Lower Austria in 1771, the date of execution 215 See e g Massoneau 1900 p 111 sq, 119, 146 sq, 183, Ladame 1909 p 16 sqq, Spielman 1976 p 685 sq, Carlé 1980 p 94, Babington 1983 p 5, 17, 46, Evans 1984 p 232. 216 See e g Ebert 1909 p 9. 217 See also Stuart 2023 p 390 on an imperial decree from 1770. 218 Carol 2017 p 40, 132. ’A politic of christianisation’. (Quotation p 132) 219 Carol 2017 p 212 sq. 220 Het Vaderland 10 May 1856. 78
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