Includes bibliographical references (p. [2136]-222) and index.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Morphology Frequency -- The Murderers’ Social Situation and Mental State -- Religious Motives -- The Authorities and the Murders -- Pietism and the Murderers -- Motives -- Boundaries -- Origins Divine Demands -- Salvation of the Soul -- A Lutheran Plague -- Demise The Danish Decree of 1767 -- Measures Taken Against the Suicide Murders in Germany -- The Role of Suicide Murders in the Penal Reform Debates -- From Salvation to Insanity -- Conclusion -- Appendix: Suicide Murder Cases in Copenhagen, 1697–1789 -- Bibliography -- Index.

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To kill someone purely in order to be sentenced to death and then to die at the hands of the executioner! Such murders were alarmingly frequent in eighteenth-century Lutheran Europe. The book traces the complex motives behind these crimes – an investigation that leads not only to the Pietist interest in saving the souls of those sentenced to death but also into some of the central elements of Lutheran soteriology and the idea of capital punishment as being divinely ordained. The murders prompted special legislation and challenged the religious basis of the death penalty, and the killings and the logic behind them played an important role in debates about capital punishment, following Beccaria. Although much less frequent than in Lutheran Europe, such crimes are still committed elsewhere in eighteenth-century Europe, and even in the present-day US. Thus they seem to go hand in hand with the death penalty, irrespective of time and space. At dræbe nogen alene for at blive dødsdømt og henrettet af bødelen!. Sådanne mord var alarmerende hyppige i 1700-tallets lutherske Europa. Bogen eftersporer de komplekse motiver bag disse forbrydelser - en undersøgelse der fører ikke bare til det pietistiske engagement i at frelse de dødsdømtes sjæle, men også til centrale dele af den lutherske frelseforståelse og til forestillingen om, at dødsstraffene var direkte beordrede af Gud. Bogen har selvmordsmordene i København og den danske stats bekæmpelse af selvmordsmordene som udgangspunkt, men indeholder også et europæisk udblik. Mordene førte til særlig lovgivning og udforderde de religiøst motiverede dødsstraffe. Her blev Danmark foregangsland, da man i 1767 helt ekstraordinært afskaffede dødsstraffen for disse mord. Om end meget sjældnere end i det lutherske Europa ses selvmordsmord også i det øvrige Europa i 1700-tallet såvel som i vore dages USA. De synes således at ledsage dødsstraffen overalt, hvor den er i brug.