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WORLD HISTORIES OF CRIME,
CULTURE AND VIOLENCE

Suicide by Proxy in
Early Modern Germany
Crime, Sin and Salvation
Kathy Stuart
World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence

Series Editors
Marianna Muravyeva
University of Helsinki
Helsinki, Finland

Raisa Maria Toivo

Tampere University
Tampere, Finland
Palgrave’s World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence seeks to publish
research monographs, collections of scholarly essays, multi-authored
books, and Palgrave Pivots addressing themes and issues of interdisciplinary
histories of crime, criminal justice, criminal policy, culture and violence
globally and on a wide chronological scale (from the ancient to the modern
period). It focuses on interdisciplinary studies, historically contextualized,
across various cultures and spaces employing a wide range of methodologies
and conceptual frameworks.
 Kathy Stuart

Suicide by Proxy in
Early Modern
Germany
Crime, Sin and Salvation
Kathy Stuart
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA, USA

ISSN 2730-9630     ISSN 2730-9649 (electronic)

World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence
ISBN 978-3-031-25243-3    ISBN 978-3-031-25244-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25244-0

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For Louise
 Acknowledgments

My friends and colleagues have been hearing about Suicide by Proxy for a
long time. Now years of research in two dozen archives and libraries across
Germany and Austria have culminated in this book. Throughout, I enjoyed
comradery and intellectual exchange with Duane Corpis, Allyson
Creasman, Alex Fisher, Helmut Graser, Mark Häberlein, Michaela
Schmölz-Häberlein, Christine Johnson, Hans-Jörg Künast, H. C. Erik
Midelfort, Beth Plummer, Ann Tlusty, and Wolfgang Meyer, members of
our longstanding Augsburg Archivstammtisch. Helmut Graser and Helmut
Zäh helped decipher fragmentary Latin passages.
Conversations with Ann Goldberg, David Luebke, Yair Mintzker, and
David Sabean also informed this project. Joel Harrington shared with me
transcriptions of two early suicides by proxy cases in Nuremberg, and
Martin Scheutz alerted me to cases of suicidal iconoclasm in Vienna’s
house of correction. I hashed out a chapter with James Melton and
Jonathan Strom at the James Allen Vann Seminar at Emory University.
Mary Lindemann helped navigate the Staatsarchiv Hamburg. My col-
leagues at the University of California, Davis, Ali Anooshahr, David Biale,
Corrie Decker, Edward Dickinson, Stacy Fahrenthold, Ellen Hartigan-
O’Connor, Bill Hagen, Katie Harris, Kyu Kim, Lisa Materson, Sally
McKee, Lorena Oropeza, Michael Saler, Daniel Stolzenberg, John
Smolenski, and Baki Tezcan provided community and intellectual sup-
port. A special shout-out to Corrie Decker, Ann Tlusty, and Hans-Jörg
Künast for their detailed feedback on the manuscript. Thank you also to
my students Molly Ingram, Hunter Kiley, Pilar Svendsen, Michael Wheeler,

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

and Collin Wonnacott for their enthusiasm and engagement. A UC

President’s Fellowship and sabbatical leaves enabled me to conduct the
research for this book. Teaching a UC Davis Summer Abroad Program in
Vienna over several years enabled me to retrace the footsteps of some of
the Viennese murderous protagonists who feature in this book, my stu-
dents in tow.
I could not have written this book without the substantive support by
staff in numerous archives and libraries. The Wien Bibliothek stands out
for the helpfulness and efficiency of its staff. Special thanks also to Michaela
Laichmann and Andreas Weigl of the Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv,
Christoph Stöttinger of the Stiftarchiv Lambach, Gergor Gatscher-Riedl
of the Archiv der Marktgemeinde Perchtoldsdorf, and Josef Weichenberger
of the Oberösterreichisches Landesarchiv Linz. Helga Heist, intrepid
researcher of Upper Austrian history, was an invaluable guide. Wolfgang
Meyer and Edeltraud Prestel of the Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg,
Georg Feuerer of the Stadtarchiv Augsburg, and Wilfried Sponsel and
Susanne Faul of the Stadtarchiv Nördlingen helped me unearth obscure
sources and images. Emily Russell and Steven Fassioms, my editors at
Palgrave Macmillan, expertly guided this book through the publication
process.
I had the opportunity to present my research on “Suicide by Proxy” to
a national and even international audience thanks to an invitation by Ira
Glass to participate in an episode on “Loopholes” (#473) on his radio
show This American Life. Serendipitously, two Austrian filmmakers
Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala heard this broadcast. This led to a fruit-
ful and exciting collaboration over several years. They enlisted me as a
historical advisor for their forthcoming feature film, The Devil’s Bath (Des
Teufels Bad) (2023). The film’s protagonist, the fictional suicidal child
murderer Agnes Lizlfellnerin, is a composite of two historical child mur-
derers, Agnes Catherina Schickin (Württemberg, 1704) and Eva
Lizlfellnerin (Upper Austria, 1762), who both appear in the pages of
this book.
Thank you also to my non-historian friends Alain Belkaious, Elke
Berger, Louise Bierig, Anh Bui, Paul Eric Davis, Kristine Fowler, Jeannette
Heulin, Davis Krauter, Dominique Lambert, Jim Mavrikios, Regina and
Josef Merkinger, Cary Norsworthy, Frank Paré, and S. Rope Wolf. And, of
course, Louise Lanoue, my partner in life, to whom this book is dedicated.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix

Over many years I subjected them to innumerable gruesome stories about

suicidal child murderers and host desecrators over drinks, dinners, and
walks. Their curiosity and engaging questions helped me figure out ways
to narrate, explain, and contextualize the horrific crimes committed by
suicidal perpetrators to a broader audience, to make the incomprehensible
comprehensible. That, at least, was my goal.
Portions of Chaps. 1 and 2 have been published in “Suicide by Proxy:
The Unintended Consequences of Public Executions in Eighteenth-­
Century Germany,” Central European History 41 (2008): 413–445.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Liturgies of Suicide by Proxy 37

3 “Fear
 God and the Court, while there is still
Time.” Crime and Zealous Prosecution in Early
Modern Hamburg 91

4 “The
 Unbelievably Frequent Examples of such Murders
Committed solely out of Weariness with Life.”
Hamburg, 1668–1810139

5 Mary
 with the Axe: The Cult of the Injured Icon
in Baroque Vienna209

6 The
 Injured Crucifix: The Emperor’s Conscience
and Prisoners’ Defiance263

7 Crime
 and Justice in a Sacred Landscape: Vienna,
1668–1786329

xi
xii Contents

8 Conclusion:
 The Decline of Suicide by Proxy and its
Historical Effacement395

Bibliography407

Index449
 Abbreviations

AFMV Acta facultatis medicae Vindobonensis

DAW Diözesanarchiv Wien
FÖWAH Fürstliches Oettingen-Wallersteinisches Archiv, Harburg
GNM Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg
HAB Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel
HMW Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien
HRG Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte
HStAD Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden
HStAS Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart
ISG Institut für Stadtgeschichte Frankfurt
ÖNB Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
OÖLA Oberösterreichisches Landesarchiv Linz
ÖWB Oettingen-Wallersteinische Bibliothek
StadtAN Stadtarchiv Nürnberg
StadtBN Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg
StAN Staatsarchiv Nürnberg
StiftAL Stiftsarchiv Lambach
SUBH Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg
SuStBA Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg
UAW Universitätsarchiv Wien
UBA Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg
WB Wien Bibliothek
WD Wiennerisches Diarium
WStLA Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv

xiii
 List of Figures

Image 1.1 Christoph Murer, “Allegory of Good Government with

Innocence,” 1598. Stained glass, Nuremberg. Detail.
Museen der Stadt Nürnberg, Kunstsammlungen. Inv.-Nr.
33 (MM 295). Photo: Richard Krauss 3
Image 1.2 Christoph Murer, “Politia,” 1597. Stained glass,
Nuremberg, Detail. Nuremberg, Museen der Stadt
Nürnberg, Kunstsammlungen. Leihgabe des Freistaats
Bayern. Inv. Nr. 33 (MM 296). Photo Credits:
Kunstsammlungen der Stadt Nürnberg.
Photo: Richard Krauss 5
Image 1.3 Darstellung der Grausamen Mordthat der Maria Anna
Mayrinn ledig Stands 23. Jahr alt von Oberhausen. Munich:
[1783]. Engraving. StadtAA, Strafamt Nr. 162 10
Image 2.1 Urs Graf d. Ä. Richtstätte. Pen and ink drawing. 1512. The
ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna. Inv. Nr. 3050 39
Image 2.2 Hans Bützer’s petition to the Duke of Württemberg.
Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 209 Bü 166 50
Image 2.3 Roman soldier stabbing an Infant. Figurine in “Rinner
Krippe: Bethlehemitischer Kindermord.” Rinn in Tirol, c.
1760. Volkskunde Museum Wien, Vienna. Photo: Birgit &
Peter Kainz, facsimile digital. ÖMV/35.899 56
Image 2.4 Anderl von Rinn. Engraving, 1724. Volkskunde Museum
Wien, Vienna. ÖMV/34.467 61
Image 2.5 Knife. 1731. Stadtarchiv Nördlingen. R 39 F2 Fasc 9
Selbstmord, Ao 1731 78

xv
xvi List of Figures

Image 2.6 InfantICIDa aVgVstUs, Kunstsammlungen und Museen

Augsburg. Inv. Nr. G9740 86
Image 2.7 Die allhier in Augsburg Ao. 1740 d. 14. Martii von seinem
eignen Vatter grausam ermordete Unschuld Maria Magdalen
Bertzin…. Engraving. 1740. Staats- und Stadtbibliothek
Augsburg: Graph 29/120 87
Image 2.8 Hinrichtung der Maria Elisabetha Beckensteinerin…. 20
Martii 1742…. Engraving. 1740. Staats- und
Stadtbibliothek Augsburg: Graph 29/123 88
Image 3.1 “Van pynlikē sakē dat hogeste belangende.” Miniature.
Hamburg Stadtrecht, 1497. Hamburg Staatsarchiv, 111-1
Senat Cl. VII Lit. La Nr. 2 Vol. 1c, f. 250v 100
Image 3.2 “Hamburgum,” Map (Detail), in Georg Braun and Franz
Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, vol. 4. Cologne:
1588. Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg,
Signatur Kt H 202 112
Image 3.3 Execution of Cord Jastram and Hieronimus Schnitger,
1687. Engraving (Detail). “Außführung Cord Jastrams und
Hieronymi Schnitgers.” Hamburg Staatsarchiv, A 320/22 114
Image 4.1 “Method of Punishing the Idle at the Poor House at
Hamburgh.” 1778. Wellcome Collection 43268i 151
Image 4.2 Soldiers disciplined by riding “the wooden horse.”
Engraving. Hanns Friedrich von Fleming, Der Vollkommene
Teutsche Soldat (Leipzig: Johann Christian Martini, 1726),
184–185. ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Rar 9315 153
Image 4.3 Frontispiece. Gerhard Hackmann, Catechismus-Schule:
Darinn Die Jugend in den Häuptstücken unserer wahren
Christlichen Religion/ …unterrichtet wird. Hamburg:
Werner, 1641. Forschungbibliothek Gotha, Signatur Theol
8° 00371/09 156
Image 4.4 Title page. Ausführlicher Bericht/ Derer in Hamburg
hingerichteten Missethäters ([Hamburg], c. 1720). Hamburg
Staatsarchiv, 111-1, Senat, CI.VII, Lit, Mb, No.3, Vol. 1 174
Image 5.1 Trinity Column, Vienna, 1693 (Detail). Photo by author 225
Image 5.2 Emperor Joseph I Venerates the Sacrament, 1701. Engraving
by Christoph Weigel (after Caspar Luyken). The ALBERTINA
Museum, Vienna. Historische Blätter Wien 8, Joseph I 227
 List of Figures  xvii

Image 5.3 “Prospect des Grabens.” Engraving by Georg Daniel

Heumann after Salomon Kleiner, in Salomon Kleiner, Vera
Et Accurata Delineatio Omnium Templorum et Coenobiorum
Quae tam in Caesarea Urbe ac Sede Vienna Austriae, quam
in circumjacentibus Suburbys ejus reperiuntur. Vol. 2,
Abbildung der keysserl. Burg und Lust-Häuser. (Augsburg:
Johann Adreas Pfeffel, 1725), plate 99 230
Image 5.4 Devotional image of the Marian icon Maria Grünberg.
Engraving, early eighteenth century. Das wundertthaetige
Bildnis Maria bei den Franziskanern. Volkskunde Museum
Wien, Vienna. AÖMV13.888 234
Image 5.5 Maria Grünberg, or “Mary with the Axe”, Marian icon
above the high altar in the Franciskanerkircher, Vienna.
Photo by author 235
Image 5.6 Priest leads procession bringing last rites to dying
parishioner. “Prospect des Gräfflich Kaysersteinischen
Hauses” (Detail). Engraving by J. A. Corvinus after Sal.
Kleiner. In Salomon Kleiner, Vera Et Accurata Delineatio
Omnium Templorum et Coenobiorum Quae tam in Caesarea
Urbe ac Sede Vienna Austriae, quam in circumjacentibus
[circumiacentibus] Suburbijs [Suburbiis] ejus [eius]
reperiuntur. Vol 3. Das florirende vermehrte Wien.
(Augsburg: Johann Adreas Pfeffel, 1733), plate 211 240
Image 5.7 “Der aergerlicher Laesterer des Hochheiligsten
Sacraments.” Engraving. In Mathias Fuhrmann, Alt- und
Neues Wien, Oder Dieser Kayserlich- und Ertz-Lands-
Fürstlichen Residentz-Stadt Chronologisch- und Historische
Beschreibung. Vol. 2. (Vienna: Johann Baptist Prasser,
1739), with p. 807 244
Image 5.8 Eygentlicher Bericht/Was massen der getrauffte/ jedoch wider
vom Christenthumb abgefallene Jud/ zu Wien den 22.
Augusti 1642…verurtheilt/…wegen der grausamen
Gotteslästerung/… vollzogen worden. Photo: Wien Museum,
Gerichtswesen 1642, IN52093 M. 790 248
Image 5.9 Zerschneiden Zweymahl die Hl. Hostia… Kaberger-
Ketzerbilder, 18th century. Stiftarchiv Schlierbach, Image
10. Photo: OÖLKG/Ernst Grilnberger 256
Image 5.10 “Abbildung der wunderbaren H. Hostien zu Wolfsberg in
Kaernten.” Engraving. Volkskundemuseum Wien, Vienna,
AÖMV/13.808261
xviii List of Figures

Image 6.1 Jüdische neue Zeitung vom Marsch aus Wien… (s.l., s.d).
Vertreibung der Juden aus Wien 1670. Copperplate
Engraving. Photo: Wien Museum. In. Nr. 199198 265
Image 6.2 Emperor Leopold I’s signature under the imperial privilege
founding the house of correction, 1671. Wiener Stadt und
Landesarchiv, Hauptarchivsakten, Privilegien 77, f. 13 266
Image 6.3 Apotheosis of Emperor Leopold I. Frontispiece to 1671
imperial privilege authorizing the founding of the house of
correction. Wiener Stadt und Landesarchiv,
Hauptarchivsakten, Privilegien 77 267
Image 6.4 Vienna’s House of Correction. Water coloring, c. 1850.
Photo: Wien Museum. In. Nr. 15069, C. N. 231 (=
Leopoldgasse Nr. 32) (Das alte Zuchthaus) 272
Image 6.5 Execution of Catherina Jacobin, Vienna, 1769. Engraving.
In Todesurtheil einer ledigen Weibperson, Namens Catherina
J…. Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, C-39975/1769 283
Image 6.6 The ravenstone outside the Scottish Gate, c. 1760.
Anonymous Pen and Ink Drawing. The ALBERTINA
Museum, Inv. 7377, Ansichten (Vues) Wien, äussere
Bezirke 2: Das Hochgericht gegen die Rossau hin 294
Image 6.7 Drawing of instruments of execution included in court
records concerning Joseph Zeitler, executed 1719 in the
territory of the Benedictine Abbey of Lambach for church
robbery. Stiftarchiv Lambach, Criminalia 377, Joseph
Zeitler, 1719 304
Image 6.8 Nicolaus Starck’s signature under his Urfehde of 17
December 1756. Wiener Stadt und Landesarchiv,
Handschriften A 19, fol. 142r 309
Image 6.9 Depiction of blasphemy in Joos de Damhouder, Praxis
rerum criminalium: Gründlicher Bericht und anweisung,
Welcher massen in Rechtfärtigung Peinlicher sachen, nach
gemeynen beschribenen Rechten vor und in Gerichten
ordentlich zuhandeln (Franckfurt am Mayn: Johann Wolfius,
1571), 102v. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, 4
Crim. 41 323
Image 6.10 Depiction of blasphemy in Joos de Damhouder, Praxis
rerum criminalium: Gründlicher Bericht und anweisung,
Welcher massen in Rechtfärtigung Peinlicher sachen, nach
gemeynen beschribenen Rechten vor und in Gerichten
ordentlich zuhandeln (Franckfurt am Mayn: Nicolaus
Basseus, 1581), 92. Staatliche Bibliothek Regensburg,
999/2 Jur.353. 324
 List of Figures  xix

Image 7.1 Edict on Child Murders. “Wie es mit Bestrafung des

Kinder-Mords zu halten,” 22 March 1706. Archiv der
Marktgemeinde Perchtoldsdorf, Patente, Karton 344 339
Image 7.2 Anonymous photo of the “Wheel Cross” (Räderkreuz),
Column with Pieta adjacent to execution site on the
Wienerberg, taken 1868 prior to its demolition.
“Mariensäule an der Triesterstraße vor der
Matzleinsdorfer[linie] b[eim] Richtplatz.” Photo: Wien
Museum, Inv. Nr. 78.369/1, 10 341
Image 7.3 Parcel map showing execution sites on the Vienna
Mountain, c. 1730. Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Pläne
und Karten: Sammelband, P1, Pläne und Karten, 50,
Gegend vor der Martleinsdorfer Linie 343
Image 7.4 Execution of Catherina Jacobin, Vienna, 1769. Engraving.
In Todesurtheil einer ledigen Weibperson, Namens Catherina
J…. Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, C-39975/1769 349
Image 7.5 Frontispiece, in “Verzeichnis deren von einer Hochlöblichen
Privilegierten Kays. Königl. Todtenbruderschaft
übernohmenen Malleficanten.” Wienbibliothek im Rathaus,
HIN-19008362
Image 7.6 Frontispiece, in Probatica Piscina del Purgatorio Situata Fra
Li Sacri Monti Austriaci (Vienna: Maria Rittia Vedova,
1638). National Library of the Czech Republic, Prague,
Shelf Mark 36 E 000081 365
Image 7.7 Execution Procession departing from Vienna’s prison,
Engraving by Johann August Corvinus after Salomon
Kleiner, in Salomon Kleiner, Vera Et Accurata Delineatio
Omnium Templorum et Coenobiorum Quae tam in Caesarea
Urbe ac Sede Vienna Austriae, quam in circumjacentibus
Suburbys ejus reperiuntur, vol. 1. (Augsburg: Johann Adreas
Pfeffel, 1724), plate 41 373
Image 7.8 “Wahrhafte Bildnuß Francisci Nadasti wegen
aufrührerischem Meineid in dem Rathaus zu Wien enthaupt
den 30. April 1671.” Engraving (Detail). Photo: Wien
Museum. Inv. Nr. 37988 378
xx List of Figures

Image 7.9 Procession of a Confraternity. “Prospect des Hoch-Gräffl.

Traunischen Gebäudes in der Herren-Gassen.” Engraving
by J. A. Corvinus after Sal. Kleiner. In Salomon Kleiner,
Vera Et Accurata Delineatio Omnium Templorum et
Coenobiorum Quae tam in Caesarea Urbe ac Sede Vienna
Austriae, quam in circumjacentibus [circumiacentibus]
Suburbijs [Suburbiis] ejus [eius] reperiuntur. Vol 3. Das
florirende vermehrte Wien. (Augsburg: Johann Adreas
Pfeffel, 1733), plate 202 380
Image 7.10 The Poor Sinners’ Graveyard. “Prospect des Bürgerl.
Hospitals-Gotts-Acker nebst der Capelle St. Rochi, vor dem
Kärnter Thor. a. S. Caroli Borromaei Kirche.” Engraving by
J. A. Corvinus after Sal. Kleiner. In Salomon Kleiner, Vera
Et Accurata Delineatio Omnium Templorum et Coenobiorum
Quae tam in Caesarea Urbe ac Sede Vienna Austriae, quam
in circumjacentibus [circumiacentibus] Suburbijs [Suburbiis]
ejus [eius] reperiuntur. Vol. 4. Des florirenden vermehrten
Wiens fernere Befolgung. Plate 47 382
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In 1598 the Swiss artist Christoph Murer completed a stained-glass win-

dow for the city hall of the Lutheran free imperial city of Nuremberg. An
allegory of good government, it was one in a cycle of four windows com-
missioned by Nuremberg’s patrician city councilors. This window and its
companion pieces fell within the genre of “Images of Justice” that hung in
court rooms and city council chambers throughout Europe. City govern-
ments commissioned the art works and set the iconographical program to
communicate their ideology of governance.1 Murer’s windows expressed
the self-image of Nuremberg councilmen as benevolent and vigilant city
fathers and protectors of the innocent. The 1598 window centers on a
naked, golden-haired, baby boy chained to a marble slab, resembling a
sacrificial altar.2 The boy, a personification of Innocence, is under threat by
a knife-wielding Jew to his left, clearly identified by the circular badge on
his shoulder. This was the yellow circle, the traditional stigma symbol Jews
were required to wear since the late Middle Ages. To the baby’s right is an

1
Katja Sperling, “Christoph Murers Glasgemälde für den Rat und für Patrizierfamilien der
Stadt Nürnberg.” (Master’s thesis, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg,
1991), 61. On “Images of Justice,” see Wolfgang Schild, “Gerechtigkeitsbilder,” in Recht
und Gerechtigkeit im Spiegel der europäischen Kunst, eds. Wolfgang Pleister and Wolfgang
Schild (Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1988), 86-171.
2
Charles Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in sixteenth-century
Europe (London: Routledge, 2007), 233.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
K. Stuart, Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany, World
Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25244-0_1
2 K. STUART

old hag, the stereotypical witch, topless, her withered breasts sagging, her
unkempt hair hanging freely. The witch grabs the child by the hair, hold-
ing him prone for the Jew’s knife. Behind the witch, a soldier thrusts his
halberd toward the child. These are the vices of avarice (the Jew), envy
(the witch), and war (the soldier). The Jew represented more than avarice,
of course. To any early modern viewer, the Jew with a knife evoked the
specter of Jewish ritual murder. This was an iconography with which
Murer’s Nuremberg patrons were thoroughly familiar. Perhaps the most
iconic representation of Jewish ritual murder ever created was produced in
Nuremberg just over a century earlier. Schedel’s World Chronicle, pub-
lished 1493, includes a richly detailed image of the alleged martyrdom of
Simon of Trent in 1475, the case after which all subsequent accusations of
Jewish ritual murder were modeled.3
Murer’s work portrays an infernal alliance between the blood-thirsty
Jew and the child-murdering witch. Behind the aggressors to the left, a
crowned figure, a negligent king, shirks his responsibility as ruler by cover-
ing his eyes so as not to see the horrible scene unfolding before him. He
too will be held to account for his dereliction of duty. Truth thrones above
this scene. She holds a book with the words “The Word of God endures
forever” (Isaiah 40:8), the bible verse that became the logo of the
Protestant Reformation.4 This was a declaration of Nuremberg’s Lutheran
identity. Truth is assisted by Justice, sword, scales and orb in hand, and by
Peace, who stand to the left and right of the city’s coat of arms. The
virtues collectively represent the wise governance of Nuremberg’s city

3
Hartmut Schedel, Weltchronik (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493), fol. 254r. This
image can be viewed in high resolution in color, digitized at the Germanisches
Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg: http://dlib.gnm.de/item/2Inc266/568/html. On the
paradigmatic significance of the Simon of Trent case, see Magda Teter, Blood Libel: On the
Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2020), 43-151.
Wolfgang Treue, Der Trienter Judenprozess: Voraussetzungen, Abläufe, Auswirkungen
(1475-1588) (Hannover: Hahn, 1996). R. Po-Chia Hsia, Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual
Murder Trial (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992).
4
F. J. Stopp, “Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum. The Dissemination of a Reformation
Slogan, 1522-1904,” in Essays in German Culture and Society, eds. Siegbert S. Prawer,
R. Hinton Thomas and Leonard Forster (London: Institute of Germanic Studies, 1969),
123-235.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

Image 1.1 Christoph Murer, “Allegory of Good Government with Innocence,”

1598. Stained glass, Nuremberg. Detail. Museen der Stadt Nürnberg,
Kunstsammlungen. Inv.-Nr. 33 (MM 295). Photo: Richard Krauss

fathers.5 Innocence, the baby under assault, symbolizes the Christ Child,
as did the male child victims in representations of Jewish ritual murder6
(Image 1.1).
In the 1590s, when Nuremberg commissioned this window, large
witch-hunts were taking place in surrounding regions, in Bavaria and in
the Franconian hinterland and the nearby Catholic Prince-Bishoprics of
Würzburg and Bamberg. Nuremberg remained impervious to the witch-­
hunt just beyond its borders, however. Nuremberg, along with several
other free imperial cities, experienced what historian Alison Rowlands calls

5
The crowned figure “looks through his fingers” (durch die Finger sehen), a German figure
of speech that means to willfully turn a blind eye to wrongdoing. The text in the book that
Truth holds reads: Verbu(m) Dom(ini) manet in aeternum. A text inset reads: “The innocent
heart and the age known for its purity, becomes everywhere the prey of the furies of war,
avarice and envy. But you, truth, certainly see everything, even if the prince shuts his eyes.”
Thea Vignau-Wilberg, “Zur Entstehung zweier Emblemata von Christoph Murer,” Anzeiger
des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, (1977): 85-94. Thea Vignau-Wolberg, Christoph Murer
und die “XL Emblemata Miscella Nova” (Bern: Benteli Verlag, 1982), 218-221, 271-272.
6
R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder. Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 55.
4 K. STUART

a “restrained pattern of witch-hunting.”7 The city executed no one for

witchcraft during the most intense phase of the European witch-hunt in
the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.8
Nuremberg was similarly uninterested in prosecuting Jewish ritual
murder. Even as the city’s printing presses profited from texts and images
that propagated the blood libel, Nuremberg’s leading Protestant reformer
and theological adviser to the city council Andreas Osiander authored an
anonymous treatise defending Jews against the blood libel. Osiander’s
Whether it is True and Believable that Jews secretly Kill Christian Children
and Use their Blood (c. 1530), was instrumental in debunking ritual mur-
der charges against Jews. Osiander contributed to a “disenchantment” of
the ritual murder discourse, R. Po-Chia Hsia argues: “Osiander’s defense
of the Jews fundamentally undermined the structure of ritual murder dis-
course. The faith in a ‘true religion’ and the exposition of ‘the magic and
superstitions’ of the Roman church were intellectual commonplaces of all
reformers.” Consequently, for Protestant intellectuals “the charges of
magic and murder” related to the blood libel “would gradually fade into a
distant echo.”9
When Nuremberg’s councilors commissioned Murer’s glass window
featuring the murderous assault upon Innocence by a Jew and a witch,
they were relatively unconcerned by threats posed by any actual witches or
Jews. The figures were tropes, archetypes of evil that Nuremberg’s godly
government would vanquish. A second window in Murer’s cycle drove
7
Alison Rowlands, Witchcraft Narratives in Germany: Rothenburg, 1561–1652
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 1. For the early sixteenth century Laura
Stokes observes that “the only general statement which can be made about the Nuremberg
council’s propensity to punish witchcraft was that it chose not to do so.” Laura Stokes,
Demons of Urban Reform: Early European Witch Trials and Criminal Justice, 1430–1530
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 52.
8
The total number of executions in Nuremberg territory between 1590 and 1622 that had
any connection at all to witchcraft was three. In 1590 Nuremberg executed an itinerant
executioner’s assistant, Friedrich Stigler, for defaming Nuremberg citizens’ wives as witches
and for superstitious practices. In 1617 and 1622 Nuremberg executed two other men for
an accumulation of capital offenses that included magic. Helmut H. Kunstmann, Zauberwahn
und Hexenprozeß in der Reichstadt Nürnberg (Nuremberg: Stadtarchiv Nürnberg, 1970),
74-78, 92-93. Frantz Schmidt, The Executioner’s Journal: Meister Frantz Schmidt of the
Imperial City of Nuremberg, trans. Joel Harrington (Charlottesville: University of Virginia
Press, 2016), 108.
9
Andreas Osiander, Ob es war vn[d] glaublich sey, daß die Juden der Christen kinder heym-
lich erwürgen, vnd jr blut gebrauchen: ein treffenliche schrifft, auff eines yeden vrteyl gestelt.
([Nuremberg]: [Petreius], ca. 1530). Hsia, Myth, 143.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

Image 1.2 Christoph Murer, “Politia,” 1597. Stained glass, Nuremberg, Detail.
Nuremberg, Museen der Stadt Nürnberg, Kunstsammlungen. Leihgabe des
Freistaats Bayern. Inv. Nr. 33 (MM 296). Photo Credits: Kunstsammlungen der
Stadt Nürnberg. Photo: Richard Krauss

home this point. The image shows a crowned woman sitting on a throne.
In her right hand she cups her bared breast, from which an arc of breast
milk jets forth onto the Nuremberg citizenry kneeling in prayer, women
and children featuring prominently among them [Image 1.2]. The arc of
breast milk was a symbol of mercy, but this was not Maria Lactans, the
lactating Virgin Mary who appeared in ecstatic visions of Catholic saints as
well as in images of judgment, where Mary held her bared breast to inspire
mercy toward sinful humanity.10 This was Politia (the state), a more appro-
priate figure in a Lutheran allegory of good government. The mercy she

10
Jutta Sperling, “Squeezing, Squirting, Spilling Milk: The Lactation of Saint Bernard and
the Flemish Madonna Lactans (ca. 1430-1530),” Renaissance Quarterly 17 (2018):
868-918. Susan Marti and Daniela Mondini, “”Ich manen dich der brüsten min, Das du
dem sünder wellest milte sin!”: Marienbrüste und Marienmilch im Heilsgeschehen,” in
Himmel, Hölle, Fegefeuer. Das Jenseits im Mittelalter, ed. Peter Jezler (Munich: Wilhelm Fink
Verlag, 1994), 79-90.
6 K. STUART

exercises toward the pious citizenry is balanced by severity toward male-

factors. In her left hand she holds a sword and whip over a group of pris-
oners being led away in chains, including a turbaned Turk, who like the
witch and the Jew was another stereotypical evildoer of the early modern
age. A text insert made the moral message explicit: “May the good be
rewarded. May the evil receive the punishment they deserve. The republic
will stand according to these laws, or fall.”11 This axiom was drawn from
Romans 13. The same chapter continues: “For he [i.e., governmental
authority] is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid;
for he does not bear the sword in vain.”12
Nuremberg implemented this governing philosophy with uncompro-
mising rigor. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the city
administered criminal justice with unprecedented severity. These policies
yielded results the councilmen never imagined, however. The symbolic
violence represented in Murer’s stained-glass windows became reality, as
Nuremberg’s city fathers were confronted with a new kind of ritual mur-
der committed by more mundane killers, their own Lutheran subjects.
The city council commissioned these allegories of good government
during the tenure of Nuremberg’s master executioner Frantz Schmidt.
Schmidt kept a diary in which he documented the executions and other
bodily punishments he performed on behalf of the city during his thirty-­
nine years of service, from 1578 to 1617. “Nuremberg’s average execu-
tion rate of nine per year during Meister Frantz’s lifetime (in a city of forty
thousand),” Joel Harrington writes, “was the highest per capita of any city
in the empire.”13 These years also saw a dramatic increase in the number
of women executed in Nuremberg. As the overall number of executions
rose, the proportion of women among executed felons rose to a higher

Katja Sperling, “Christoph Murers Glasgemälde,” 30-34, 50-52.

11

Romans 13, 4-5, New King James Version.

12

13
Joel Harrington’s edition of Schmidt’s diary opens an invaluable window onto the day-
to-day administration of criminal justice in the city during Schmidt’s tenure. Schmidt,
Journal, xxviii. On Schmidt’s life and career see also Joel Harrington, The Faithful
Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century (New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013). On the increase in the number of executions in
Nuremberg during these years, see Richard van Dülmen, Theatre of Horror: Crime and
Punishment in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 140, and Friedrich
von Hagen and Michael Diefenbacher, Die Henker von Nürnberg und ihre Opfer: Folter und
Hinrichtungen in den Nürnberger Ratsverlässen 1501 bis 1806 (Nuremberg: Stadtarchiv, 2010).
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

level than ever before.14 Anna Strölin, beheaded in 1580, and Anna Freyin,
beheaded in 1584, were among them.15
On November 12, 1580, Anna Strölin, a forty-five-year-old married
peasant woman from the village of Walkersbrunn within Nuremberg’s ter-
ritory, home alone with two young sons, murdered the older boy, six years
old, by striking him repeatedly on the head and chest with a hatchet. The
arresting official reported that she had murdered her son “at the instiga-
tion of the evil enemy.” Councilmen administering her criminal trial asked:
why did she so gruesomely murder her own flesh and blood? Strölin’s only
explanation was that the idea came to her to quickly kill her child so that
she too could die. She requested that authorities “do justice onto her
soon.”16 A legal brief on the case explicitly identified “weariness with life”
(taedio vitae) as the murder motive. Legal advisers considered a finding of
insanity, but ultimately found her criminally culpable.17 The city council
pronounced her death sentence on December 3, 1580, just over two
weeks after the murder. Her beheading took place three days later, as exe-
cutioner Meister Frantz recorded in his diary.18
Four years later Nuremberg was confronted with a similar case. On the
night of October 30, 1584, Anna Freyin, wife of a Nuremberg cloth-­
cutter and citizen, appeared at city hall and alerted the sentry on duty that
she had just pushed her two-year-old son into a well near the Franciscan
church. Freyin was taken to the dungeon, and her son’s body retrieved
from the well. She told her interrogators that three years earlier she had
committed adultery with a journeyman cutler, who absconded when she
became pregnant with the boy she had just killed. Her husband believed
the baby was his. Recently she had given birth to a second baby, conceived

14
Peter Schuster, Verbrecher, Opfer, Heilige eine Geschichte des Tötens 1200-1700 (Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta, 2015), 45-46.
15
Thank you to Joel Harrington for sharing his transcriptions of the Strölin and Freyin cases.
16
The local Pfleger reported that Strölin had murdered her son “aus verreizung des bösen
feindts.” StAN, Bestand 60A, Ratsverläße, 1456, fol. 56v, November 12, 1580. Strölin testi-
fied that she “hab halt bey Ir gedacht, sie wöll dz kind flu[p] erschlagen damit sie nur auch
vom brot komme, und pitt man woll Ir nur baldt Ir Recht thun.” Interrogators followed up:
“Weil sie dann fürgebe, sie hab darum dz kind erschlagen, damit sie nur auch hinweg
komme,” then she must have some other misdeed burdening her conscience, which Strölin
denied. StAN, 52b-209, fol. 235r-236v.
17
Rechtsanwalt Bode, “Die Kindestötung und ihre Bestrafung im Nürnberg des
Mittelalters,” Archiv für Strafrecht und Strafprozess, 61 (1914): 445-448. Bode provides
excerpts of two legal expert opinions on this case.
18
Schmidt, Journal, 11-12.
8 K. STUART

with her husband, who died after six weeks. Since then she felt “afflic-
tions.” A kind of demonic entity moved about her chamber, urging her to
throw her two-year-old son in the water. “And so, the evil enemy seduced
her, and she threw her little son into the well,” she testified. “She would
like to die, if only she knew that she would not go to hell for it.”19 In
Freyin’s case, too, the court briefly considered a finding of insanity, but
followed legal expert opinion instead: “since this woman herself desires to
die, if only she knew that she would be saved and not damned, the council
should have her beheaded out of mercy, and in the meantime have minis-
ters earnestly comfort her with God’s word, so that she has true repen-
tance for her sins and will be prevented from falling into despair.”20 Freyin
was beheaded on November 17, 1584.
These two child murders are the earliest instances that I have been able
to identify of a new type of crime that became more common in the sev-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries, in Nuremberg as well as in other cities
and territories in the Holy Roman Empire, in Lutheran states like
Nuremberg and in Catholic cities and territories as well, most notably the
Archduchies of Austria and the city of Vienna in particular. Governments
soon realized that murders of the kind committed by Strölin and Freyin
were part of a recognizable pattern. Around 1700, governments began to
develop legislation to curtail the practice, and by the second half of the
eighteenth century such murders became a frequent topic in newly formed
legal and medical forensic journals. German jurists called this type of
homicide “indirect suicide,”21 or “Murder out of Weariness with Life.”22 I
call it suicide by proxy, in order to emphasize the transactional nature of
these crimes. Perpetrators of suicide by proxy committed murder with the
intention of “earning” their own death, as they offered up their

19
“hab sie stets dacht, es gehe etwas in Irer kammern umb, das zu Ir sagte, sie solt das kind
ins wasser werffen, daher hab sie der böse feind als verführt, das sie hab dasselbe Ir söhnle in
den prunnen geworffen.” “wöll sie gern sterben, wann sie nur wusste, das sie nit in die höll
derwegen keme.” StAN, 52b-210, Achtbuch, 1581-1588, 146v-147v.
20
Quoted in Bode, “Kindstötung,” 445.
21
“Mittelbarer Selbstmord.” Karl Ferdinand Hommel, Rhapsodia quaestionum in foro quo-
tidie obvenientium, neque tamen legibus decisarum, vol. 5 (Bayreuth: Joh. And. Lubeccium,
1779), 1449-1456.
22
“Mord aus Lebensüberdruß.” Anonym, “Die Dorothee Catharina Wilhelmine
Kramerinn tödtet ein fremdes Kind aus Ueberdruß des Lebens,” Annalen der Gesetzgebung
und Rechtsgelehrsamket, 9 (1792): 3-19.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

child-victim and themselves.23 They claimed their execution as an entitle-

ment. Their plan was to avoid the eternal damnation that befell direct
suicides. Sometimes such suicidal individuals also committed other capital
crimes, such as arson, or confessed to crimes they had not committed, or
for which there was no corroborating evidence, usually classic infanticide,
that is, the murder of a newborn infant by its unwed mother,24 or bestiali-
ty.25 The most frequent form of suicide by proxy, however, involved mur-
der. Such killers typically chose children as their victims. They believed, as
the eighteenth-century jurist Karl Ferdinand Hommel explained, that the
“child they murdered, having not yet sinned, would also attain salvation,
and be spared the damnation it might have earned at an older age.”26
Women made up a clear majority of these killers, a pattern Hommel
also observed. The perpetrators were “usually weak females of poor educa-
tion,” he wrote.27 The gender profile of these murderers is one of the
central problematics of this book. Suicide by proxy was an effect, I argue,
of how the early modern governments exercised domination over their

23
Such child murderers often used the word verdienen, which can be rendered in English
as “to earn” or “to deserve.” Essentially, they were claiming their “just deserts.” The suicidal
child murderer Agnes Catherina Schickin, for example, said: “Man solle ihr nur thun, was sie
verdient habe, wolle alles von Herzen gern leiden.” HStAS, A 209/1806, Agnes Catherina
Schickin, 1704.
24
Throughout, I refer to the murder of a newborn infant by its unwed mother as “classic
infanticide” in order to clearly distinguish it from child murders associated with suicide by
proxy. Article 131 of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, the paradigmatic imperial criminal
law code issued by Charles V in 1532, defined infanticide as the murder of newborn infants
by their unwed mothers, or also by married women or widows who had committed adultery
“for the purpose of concealing their sexual immorality.” Other kinds of child killings, includ-
ing those committed by married women against their legitimate offspring, were prosecuted
as murder or manslaughter according to Article 137 of the Carolina on “The Punishment of
Murderers and Manslaughterers” (Straff der mörder und todtschleger …). Otto Ulbricht,
Kindsmord und Aufklärung in Deutschland (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1990), 17-18.
25
For an example of such a sodomy self-accusation, see the case of Hans Unruhe in 1715,
discussed in Johann Christian Fritsch, Seltsame jedoch wahrhafftige Theologische/Juristische/
Medizinische und Physicalische Geschichten, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Brauns sel.
Erben, 1733), 351-416. For an example of suicide by proxy through arson, see E. F. Klein,
“Ueber die Brandstiftung der Eva Veronika Chillin, nebst einigen in die Gesetzgebung ein-
schlagenden Bemerkungen, 1) über die Verbrechen, welche aus Ueberdruß des Lebens
begangen warden …,” Annalen der Gesetzgebung und Rechtsgelehrsamkeit 7 (1791): 3-14.
26
“daß das von ihnen … ermordete fremde Kind, da es noch keine Sünde gethan, ebener-
maßen die Seeligkeit erlange, oder der Verdamnis, die es bei erwachsenen Jahren sich zuz-
iehen könnte, entrissen werde.” Hommel, Rhapsodia, vol. 5, 1449-1456.
27
Hommel, Rhapsodia, 117-120.
10 K. STUART

Image 1.3 Darstellung der Grausamen Mordthat der Maria Anna Mayrinn
ledig Stands 23. Jahr alt von Oberhausen. Munich: [1783]. Engraving. StadtAA,
Strafamt Nr. 162

subjects, and how common people experienced and responded to govern-

mental authority. Suicide by proxy held such appeal for women because
they bore the brunt of social disciplining initiatives of the early modern
state. Women were the targets of morals campaigns and moral panics from
the mid-sixteenth through the mid-eighteenth century. The Protestant
Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation contributed to the trans-
formation from sin to crime of sexual offenses such as fornication and
prostitution. Governments began prosecuting infanticide with great sever-
ity around 1560, at the same time as the European witch-hunt acceler-
ated. This growing moral rigorism had a particular impact on women.
Suicide by proxy was a psychological response, I argue here, to such
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

unrelenting discipline. I develop this point by embedding the practice of

suicide by proxy in the more general history of criminal justice in two cit-
ies, Lutheran Hamburg and Catholic Vienna, with brief excursions to
Lutheran Nuremberg as well. The gender profile of perpetrators was simi-
lar across confessions, as were the general contours of the crime.
These crimes unfolded in a stereotypical sequence of events. Often after
a series of unsuccessful suicide attempts, perpetrators of suicide by proxy
arrived at the decision to commit a murder. Sometimes they killed their
own children, as Strölin and Freyin did, but often they murdered children
unrelated to them. Some perpetrators selected a specific child as their vic-
tim. Others chose a victim quite at random. In 1709, a Nuremberg butch-
er’s daughter, Christina Forgerin, developed “weariness with her life.” For
three weeks she harbored the intention to kill “the next best child” who
crossed her path. She finally carried out her plan by cutting the throat of a
nine-year-old girl. Twelve days later she was beheaded after prior severing
of her hand.28
Typically, such killers presented themselves at the local jail or at the
town hall immediately after the deed and alerted startled authorities to
their crime [Image 1.3]. Like Freyin before her, Forgerin went straight to
city hall after the murder. Their confessions were spontaneous and unco-
erced. None of the confessions of Nuremberg’ suicidal murderers were
extracted by judicial torture, unlike contemporaneous cases of classic
infanticide, where Nuremberg authorities routinely applied judicial tor-
ture, or contemporaneous cases of witchcraft in Nuremberg’s vicinity. The
perpetrators made the motive of the killings explicit, and explained why
they chose murder over suicide. In the evening of September 26, 1691,
Magdalena Wölffin, daughter of a Nuremberg furrier and citizen, pre-
sented herself at the dungeon, demanding to be let in. She had just mur-
dered a little girl. She did not know whose child it was. Earlier in the day
she had attempted to drown herself in a pond beyond the city walls. “But
then, considering that it would cost her salvation, she repented this

28
Forgerin confessed “daß [sie] durch einen … geschöpften Verdruß ihres Lebens, von
dreyen Wochen her, den bösen Vorsaz gefasset, das nechste beste kind anzufallen, und umbs
leben zu bringen.” She committed the murder March 14, 1709, and was executed on March
26. StAN, Nürnberger Amts- und Standbücher 225, Malefizurtheilsbuch, March 26, 1709,
ff. 57r-58r.
12 K. STUART

intention,” and returned to town.29 There she encountered two young

beggar girls, who were minding a baby girl. The moment she laid eyes on
the little girl, she decided to kill her. She used a ruse to convince the beg-
gar girls to hand over the baby. She carried the girl outside the city walls
and strangled her. Three weeks after the murder, on October 15, 1691,
Magdalena Wölffin was beheaded after prior amputation of the hand.
Wölffin’s statement that suicide would have “cost her salvation”
reflected the conviction among common people, Protestants and Catholics
alike, that suicides went to the devil. This had been Catholic doctrine since
St. Augustine established that the fifth commandment “Thou shalt not
kill” applied to suicide as well as murder. Like murder, suicide was a “mor-
tal sin.” Unlike “venial” sins that could be expiated in purgatory, the guilt
attached to mortal sins could only be absolved through the sacrament of
confession. Since this was no longer available to suicides, they were con-
signed to eternal damnation. Suicides were denied sacraments and sacra-
mentals, such as a funeral mass and burial in consecrated ground, since
such “means of grace” were pointless in their case. If suicides were mistak-
enly buried in consecrated ground, the remains had to be removed and
reburied elsewhere. The graveyard had to be reconsecrated.30
Official Lutheran pronouncements were less categorical. Protestants
abandoned the concept of mortal sin. Distinguishing between greater and
lesser sins made no sense in Lutheran theology since all sin was the expres-
sion of human nature utterly corrupted by the fall and would result in
damnation unless God granted the sinner grace.31 The suicide died unre-
pentantly in the act of sinning, so it was likely that he or she died an unjus-
tified sinner outside of the state of grace. Nonetheless, damnation was not
assured. Catholics expected believers to be able to resist diabolical tempta-
tions to suicide, but for Lutherans Satan had become a more formidable
29
“doch in Erwegung, Sie dörffte dadurch umb ihre Seeligkeit kommen, ihr solchen
Vorsaz habe reuen lassen, dahero sich widerumb in die Statt begeben.” “da sie dann, so baldt
sie dieses kindt gesehen, bey sich gedacht habe, sie wollte solches, wann sie es hätte, umb-
bringen.” StAN, Amts- und Standbücher 225, Malefizurtheilsbuch, fol. 15v-17r.
30
Vera Lind, Selbstmord in der Frühen Neuzeit: Diskurs, Lebenswelt, und kultureller Wandel
am Beispiel der Herzogtümer Schleswig und Holstein (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1999), 21-22. Jürgen Dieselhorst, “Die Bestrafung der Selbstmörder im Territorium der
Reichsstadt Nürnberg,” Mitteilung des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 44 (1953):
67-73. Marzio Barbagli, Farewell to the World: A History of Suicide (Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press, 2015), 40-45.
31
Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991),
112-115.
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

foe. “I do not agree,” Luther wrote, “that those who kill themselves are
simply damned, for this reason, that they do not do it gladly, but are rather
overpowered by the power of the devil, like one who is murdered in the
woods by a robber.” Luther described suicides more as Satan’s victims
than willing accomplices, holding out the possibility that God could for-
give them and they might yet be saved. God’s judgment in these matters
was inscrutable.
Luther did not want his lenient views on suicide to become public
knowledge, however. “Common people should not be told [that suicides
do not necessarily go to hell], so that Satan is not given the chance of caus-
ing a blood bath, and I approve of the strict observance of those political
ceremonies by which [the body] is dragged through the threshold, etc.”
Here Luther was endorsing the rites of desecration to which bodies of
suicides were traditionally subjected by secular authorities in both Catholic
and Protestant territories (hence “political ceremonies”), but he viewed
such measures as a means of deterrence rather than as a reflection of the
suicide’s spiritual status.32 Lutherans did refuse to bury suicides in grave-
yards. However, Lutherans regarded funeral ceremonies an aid for the
living rather than for the dead, who were beyond human help. Lutherans
no longer consecrated cemeteries, a rite they abolished along with all other
sacramentals. Therefore, exclusion from the graveyard did not constitute
a denial of the “means of grace” as it did for Catholics. Rather, it was a
defamatory punishment and measure of church discipline. Of course, it
was deeply stigmatizing in an honor-obsessed society.33
In both Protestant and Catholic cities and territories the disposal of the
suicide’s remains was the responsibility of secular authorities, a task they
conferred upon the dishonorable professions of executioner and skinner.
In Nuremberg it was customary until the early sixteenth century to cart
the body on a hurdle, with the head dangling over the back, to the execu-
tion site or to a crossroads beyond the city wall and burn it. Nuremberg
discontinued burning of suicides in the 1530s, but the executioner’s men

32
H.C. Erik Midelfort, “Religious Melancholy and Suicide: On the Reformation Origins
of a Sociological Stereotype,” Graven Images 3 (1996): 42. On Luther’s nuanced position
on suicides, see also Alexander Kästner, Tödliche Geschichte(n): Selbsttötungen in Kursachsen
im Spannungsfeld von Normen und Praktiken (1547-1815) (Konstanz: UVK
Verlagsgesellschaft, 2012), 106-119.
33
Dieselhorst, “Bestrafung,” 78-79. Craig M. Koslofsky, “Controlling the Body of the
Suicide in Saxony,” in From Sin to Insanity: Suicide in Early Modern Europe, ed. Jeffrey
R. Watt (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004), 52.
14 K. STUART

routinely interred suicides at the foot of the gallows in a shallow grave in

a so-called donkey’s burial until the late eighteenth century.34 In Catholic
Bavaria the executioner or skinner buried suicides “at a secluded place
where neither man nor beast treads.” Other options were cremation, dis-
posal in a river, or burial beneath the gallows.35 In bi-confessional Augsburg
suicides were nailed into a barrel and cast in the river Lech.36 In Lutheran
Wurttemberg the executioner or skinner buried the suicide either in a
desolate location or, if the suicide had a particularly bad reputation in life,
underneath the gallows.37 In Lutheran Schleswig and Holstein the execu-
tioner buried suicides in a field or with animal carrion. In the Catholic
Austrian Archduchies, the executioner disposed of suicide corpses like the
remains of “unreasoning animals” in carrion pits.38 The transport of the
body to the burial site sometimes involved additional apotropaic measures
designed to prevent the suicide’s return as a malicious revenant. To pre-
vent the suicide from finding his or her way home, the body was removed
through a hole dug underneath the threshold rather than through the
door, a procedure ecclesiastical and secular authorities tolerated though
they did not officially authorize it.39 In Nuremberg the bodies of suicides
were lowered out of windows to avoid carrying the body across the

34
Dieselhorst, “Bestrafung,” 63, 96, 161. Mary Lindemann, “Armen- und Eselbegräbnis
in der europäischen Frühneuzeit,” in Studien zur Thematik des Todes im 16. Jahrhundert, ed.
Paul Richard Blum (Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek, 1983), 125-140.
35
David Lederer, Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe: A Bavarian
Beacon (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 261.
36
SuStBA, 2° Cod Aug 247, Bürgermeister Amtsinstruktion, II, 1653, fo. 58. David
Lederer, “Wieder ein Faß aus Augsburg…” Suizid in der frühneuzeitlichen Lechmetropole,”
Mitteilungen. Institut für Kulturgeschichte der Universität Augsburg (2005), 47-72.
37
Karin Schmidt-Kohberg, “‘und hat sich selbesten an einen Strickhalfter hingehenckt …’
Selbstmord im Herzogtum Württemberg im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert,” in Zauberer—
Selbstmörder—Schatzsucher: Magische Kultur und behördliche Kontrolle im frühneuzeitlichen
Württemberg, ed. Johannes Dillinger (Trier: Kliomedia, 2003), 142.
38
Evelyne Luef, “A Matter of Life and Death: Suicide in Early Modern Austria and Sweden
(ca. 1650–1750),” (Doctoral Thesis, University of Vienna, 2016), 116.
39
Lind, Selbstmord, 33-34.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

threshold.40 Similar precautions and rites of desecration were common

throughout Europe.41
Not all suicides were subjected to these penalties by church and state.
These measures applied only to “willful,” “intentional” suicides, not to
the “melancholy” and mentally ill. Canon Law exempted suicides who
were mentally disturbed from church penalties in the late twelfth century,
a policy the Lutheran Church continued.42 Secular authorities generally
followed suit. Catholic Bavaria, Lutheran Wurttemberg, Lutheran
Electoral Saxony, the Catholic Archduchies of Austria, the Lutheran free
imperial city of Nuremberg and Hamburg and bi-confessional Augsburg
all followed an essentially identical policy. The authorities conducted an
investigation into the suicide’s prior circumstances and motives, inter-
viewing his or her priest or pastor, family, neighbors, and witnesses. If they
concluded that the suicide was mentally infirm at the time of the deed, he
or she received a Christian burial within the graveyard, although usually in
the form of a “quiet” burial at night without funeral procession or tolling
of bells.43
Granting melancholy suicides a Christian burial posed significant prac-
tical problems for authorities and for the community, however.
Governments investigated prior conduct of the suicide, and the act itself,
in order to determine whether the suicide was criminally culpable or a
victim of melancholy. These inquiries could take weeks. During this time
the body often remained where it was found. Decomposition and stench

40
Dieselhorst, “Bestrafung,” 63.
41
Michael MacDonald and Terence Murphy, Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern
England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 44-49. R. A. Houston, Punishing the
Dead? Suicide, Lordship, and Community in Britain, 1500-1530 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 189-225. Riikka Miettinen, Suicide, Law, and Community in Early Modern
Sweden (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 47, 284-288. On fear of haunting,
63-65. Barbagli, Farewell, 36-40. Lieven Vandekerckhove, On Punishment: The Confrontation
of Suicide in Old Europe (Leuven: Universitaire Pers, 2000), 43-68.
42
Schmidt-Kohberg, “Selbstmord,” 138.
43
For Bavaria, Lederer, Madness, 242-258. For Wurttemberg, Schmidt-Kohberg,
“Selbstmord,” 142-143. For Electoral Saxony, Kästner, Tödliche Geschichte(n), 192-204. For
the Austrian Archduchies, Luef, “Matter of Life and Death,” 39. For Nuremberg, Dieselhorst,
“Bestrafung,” 125. For Hamburg, see Chap. 3. For Augsburg, Kathy Stuart, Defiled Trades
and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), 197-198.
16 K. STUART

posed threats to hygiene and inconvenienced neighbors.44 If authorities

made the determination that a suicide was melancholic and therefore eli-
gible for a Christian burial, other problems arose. First, there was the
question of transport. The removal of a malicious suicide was the respon-
sibility of the executioner and his men, but melancholic suicides were
spared the executioner’s dishonoring touch. The body of a suicide,
whether malicious or melancholic, was a source of contagious dishonor,
however, so finding people willing to handle the removal was an intracta-
ble problem. In Augsburg people who carried the bodies of melancholic
suicides wore masks to conceal their identities, but even so authorities
trying to organize the burial of a melancholy suicide in 1761 had such a
difficult time finding honorable people willing to do this work that by the
time they finally managed to arrange transport “the body smelled foul and
was practically flowing apart.”45
Questions of disgust and dishonor aside, the bodies of suicides posed
supernatural danger. This might be expected for the bodies of “inten-
tional” suicides who were presumably damned, but it applied to the bod-
ies of melancholy suicides as well. In Nuremberg the bodies of suicides
granted a Christian burial were lifted over the cemetery wall, rather than
carried through the gate, yet another apotropaic measure against mali-
cious revenants.46 The problems did not end once the body was in the
cemetery. By granting a Christian burial to melancholy suicides, secular
authorities sometimes provoked popular uprisings in which common peo-
ple took up arms to prevent the burial of the suicide in the local graveyard.
Such graveyard revolts occurred in Catholic and Lutheran areas in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Riots occurred in Catholic Bavaria
and Upper Austria, in Lutheran Wurttemberg and the Reformed
Principality of Lippe, posing a significant challenge, as David Lederer
observes, to “the authority of the state both judicially and in terms of the
sovereign monopoly of violence.”47 The distinction between melancholy

44
Luef, “Matter,” 103-108. Similarly, in late seventeenth-century Sweden the bodies of
suicides were left where they were found for months, or years (!), until the sanity or insanity
of the suicide was adjudicated. In an extreme example adjudicated in 1683, a woman was left
hanging in her sauna for six years. Evelyn Luef and Riikka Miettinen, “Fear and Loating?
Suicide and the Treatment o the Corpse in Early Modern Austria and Sweden,” Frühneuzeit-
Info, 23 (2012): 109. Miettinen, Suicide, 45-46.
45
Stuart, Defiled Trades, 243.
46
Dieselhorst, “Bestrafung,” 63-64.
47
Lederer, Madness, 249.
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

and willful suicide that determined how church and state dealt with the
body was irrelevant to common people, who feared that the presence of
any suicide in the churchyard would bring disaster to their community in
the form of hail storms and the destruction of crops.48 The fact that
Protestant cemeteries were no longer consecrated did not lessen the cos-
mological danger posed by the burial of suicides from the point of view of
Protestant common folk.
It is impossible to disentangle secular concerns of social stigma and
dishonor, from religious concerns about salvation and damnation, from
cosmological dangers posed by the quintessential bad death of suicide.
They reinforced one another and together contributed to a prohibition of
suicide so powerful, that suicide became literally unthinkable for many
desperate individuals who wanted to put an end to their lives. This
remained so, long after defaming punishments for suicides had fallen into
disuse and suicide had been effectively decriminalized. In 1808 Burckhardt
Schulz, a locksmith from Trarbach near Koblenz, beat his two-year-old
granddaughter to death with an axe as she lay in her crib. He did it, Schulz
explained, “for no other reason than because he did not know any other
way to leave the world.”49
If suicide was taboo, why was murder a better strategic choice to end
one’s life while also achieving salvation? In his Praxis Rerum Criminalium
(1554), a handbook on criminal law, Joos de Damhouder, a Flemish
Catholic jurist observed: “He who kills himself sins far more than he who
kills another; for in the latter case he only kills his neighbor’s body, but
cannot harm his soul. But he who kills himself indisputably loses both
body and soul.”50 The renowned Lutheran Saxon jurist Benedict Carpzov
made this same point in his Practica Nova Imperialis Saxonica Rerum
Criminalium, perhaps the most influential legal text in early modern
48
For Bavaria, see David Lederer, “Aufruhr auf dem Friedhof. Pfarrer, Gemeinde, und
Selbstmord im frühneuzeitlichen Bayern,” in Trauer, Verzweiflung, Anfechtung. Selbstmord
und Selbsmordversuche in mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Gesellschaften, ed. Gabriela
Signori (Tübingen: edition diskord, 1994), 189-209. For Upper Austria, see Luef, “Matter,”
124. For Wurttemberg, Schmidt-Kohberg, Selbstmord,” 144-159. For Lippe, Michael
Frank, “Die fehlende Geduld Hiobs. Suizid und Gesellschaft in der Grafschaft Lippe
(1600-1800),” in Trauer, ed. Signori, 152-188.
49
Anon., “Mord aus Melancholie,” Annalen der Gesetzgebung Napoleons, ed. Franz Georg
Joseph von Lassaulx (Koblenz: Pauli und Compagnie, 1808), vol. 2, 261-263, p. 262.
50
The quote is from the German translation. Joost de Damhouder, Praxis Rerum
Criminalium. Gründliche und rechte Underweysung … in Rechtfertigung Peinlicher Sachen
(Frankfurt am Main: Basseus, 1575), 580.
18 K. STUART

German criminal jurisprudence, first published in 163551 Then the

Catholic jurist Damhouder’s dictum was reprinted verbatim and without
comment the 1743 article on suicide published in Zedlers Universal-­
Lexikon, produced in the Protestant publishing house of August Hermann
Franke’s Hallische Stiftungen.52 Despite the reluctance of Lutheran theo-
logians to make definitive pronouncements about the spiritual status of
suicides, educated Catholics and Protestants assumed that suicides went to
hell, a belief that was unquestioned among common people. Murder was
the lesser evil. It was not outlandish, then, for suicidal individuals to
believe that they might achieve death and avoid the eternal damnation
that followed from suicide by committing murder.
The logic of the crime was based upon the role that the ritual of public
execution played in popular imagination and in judicial practice. Catholic
and Protestant governments were enormously invested in ensuring that
the felons they dispatched might die in a state of grace. Condemned crimi-
nals were known as “poor sinners.” After their sentencing, they were
intensely ministered to by clergymen, who heard the poor sinner’s confes-
sion, granted absolution, and offered the Eucharist. This procedure did
not vary significantly among denominations. Though officially shorn of
sacramental status in Lutheran theology, participating in the ritual of con-
fession and absolution remained a prerequisite to partaking of the
Eucharist,53 and Lutheran parishioners continued to experience absolu-
tion as an opus operatum,54 theological objections notwithstanding.
Confession and absolution remained central to the dramaturgy of execu-
tions and Protestant and Catholic lands.
Catholic and Lutheran clergymen encouraged poor sinners to believe
that if their repentance was genuine and heartfelt, Christ’s grace would
not be denied to them. No matter how heinous the crime, repentance

51
“Qui seipsum occidit & animam suam & corpus nefandè perdit, adeoque magis peccat,
quam si alium occidat.” Benedict Carpzov, Practica Nova Imperialis Saxonica Rerum
Criminalium (Leipzig: Christian Kirchner, 1669), Pars I, Quest II, 4.
52
“Selbst-Mordt,” in Johann Heinrich Zedler, Grosses Universal-Lexikon aller
Wissenschaften und Künste, vol. 36 (Halle and Leipzig: Johann Heinrich Zedler, 1743),
1604. Zedlers Universal-Lexikon is available online at http://mdz10.bib-bvb.de/~zedler/
zedler2007/index.html.
53
Susan Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern
Germany (London: Routledge, 1997), 96-99.
54
Hans-Christoph Rublack, “Lutherische Beichte und Sozialdisziplinierung,” Archiv für
Reformationsgeschichte 84 (1993): 147.
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

brought absolution. This religious framing of the execution ritual meant

that the poor sinner’s death was a good death, even a blessed death in
Christian eschatology. The poor sinner entered eternity cleansed of sin,
unlike regular Christians who had to fear a hasty and untimely death. This
cultural context explains how murder could become an instrument of sal-
vation for suicidal individuals.55
Despite the social logic of the crime, it was shocking to early modern
contemporaries, as it is to modern sensibility, that perpetrators of suicide
by proxy sought to avoid eternal damnation that would follow from sui-
cide by committing the mortal sin of murder—and not just any murder,
but the murder of a child, a particularly innocent and helpless victim. As
shown in the Nuremberg allegory of good government, child murder was
a crime often attributed to the worst enemies of Christendom, Jews, and
witches.56 The juxtaposition between the horror crime that suicidal perpe-
trators chose to commit and the salvation they sought is a quintessential
characteristic of suicide by proxy. And yet, as we shall see, perpetrators
committed a crime that many contemporaries understood as “reasonable,”57
even “natural.”58 One task of this book will be to explain why suicidal
child murderers’ confessions frequently evoked public sympathy, under-
standing, even admiration—and why they inspired imitators.
Suicide by proxy was not a marginal phenomenon. I have documented
ninety-five cases in Catholic Vienna between 1668 and 1783. In Vienna
suicide by proxy took two forms, suicidal child murder and, in a

55
On the religious framing of the execution ritual see Richard J. Evans, Rituals of
Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-1987 (Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996), 65-108; Stuart, Defiled Trades, 149-185; Jürgen Martschukat,
Inszeniertes Töten: Eine Geschichte der Todesstrafe vom 17. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne:
Böhlau, 2000), 12-53. Gerhard Ammerer and Christoph Brandhuber, Schwert und Galgen.
Geschichte der Todesstrafe in Salzburg (Salzburg: Verlag Anton Pustet, 2018), 84-86. Schuster,
Verbrecher, 55-111. For a similar dynamic in Counter-Reformation Italy, see Adriano
Prosperi, Infanticide, Secular Justice, and Religious Debate in Early Modern Europe
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), Chapters 18 and 19.
56
Otto Ulbricht, Kindsmord und Aufklärung, 22; Hsia, Myth; Charles Zika, “Cannibalism
and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Reading the Visual Images,” History Workshop
Journal 11 (1997): 77-105.
57
Johann Hieronymus Hermann, Sammlung allerhand auserlesener Responsorum, vol. 1
(Jena: Joh. Volckm. Marggrafen, 1730), Responsum CXXV, 478.
58
Klein, “Brandstiftung,” 11.
20 K. STUART

specifically Catholic variant, suicidal iconoclasm, the destruction of cruci-

fixes or host desecration, which were capital offenses.59 The Lutheran city
of Hamburg prosecuted at least ninety-eight people for suicidal child mur-
der or attempted murder between 1662 and 1809. In some years, execu-
tions in Hamburg for suicide by proxy outnumbered executions for all
other offenses. Even though cases of classic infanticide, understood as the
murder of newborns by their unwed mothers, outnumbered suicidal child
murders in the city by a substantial margin, executions for suicide by proxy
significantly outnumbered executions for infanticide, because of a high
rate of unsolved neonaticide cases.60 Nuremberg prosecuted twelve cases
of suicide by proxy between 1691 and 1745, in addition to the two early
killings in 1580 and 1584.61 In Augsburg, a bi-confessional city, five sui-
cidal murders62 and one attempted murder63 took place between 1740 and

59
See Chaps. 5–7. Susanne Hehenberger, “’Die beleidigte Ehre GOttes auf das empfind-
lichste zu rächen, in allweg gesonnen.’ Blasphemie und Sakrileg im 18. Jahrhundert,” in
Wien und seine WiennerInnen. Ein historischer Streifzug durch Wien über die Jahrhunderte.
Festschrift für Karl Vocelka zum 60. Geburtstag, eds. Martin Scheutz and Vlasta Valeš (Vienna:
Böhlau Verlag, 2008), 179-201.
60
See Chaps. 3–4.
61
The cases of Anna Strölin (1580), Anna Freyin (1584), Maria Magdalena Wölffin (1691)
and Christina Forgerin (1709) are discussed above. Further cases were Maria Helena Längin
(1691), StAN, Amts- und Standbücher 225, Malefizurtheilsbuch, ff. 12r-13v; Agnes Maria
Fellnerin (1693), Rare Book & Manuscript Library University of Pennsylvania Ms. Codex
1199, May 12, 1693, f. 49r. Anna Margaretha Stöblin (1700), UBA, OWB, Handschriften,
III. 3. Fol. 24, ff. 443r-445r. Susanna Wernerin (1701), StAN, Amts- und Standbücher 225,
Malefizurtheilsbuch, ff. 41v-42r. Ambrosi Christoph Dörr (1702), Ibid., ff. 45r-45v.
Magdalena Wilhelmin (1703), Ibid., ff. 46r-46v. Margaretha Heßmännin (1710), Ibid., f.
58v. Maria Eleonora Schönin (1716), UBA, OWB, III. 3. F. 24, 517-525. Regina Wegfrizen
(1744), StadtAN, B 14/IV Nr. 533. Bluturtheil. Susanna Brennerin (1745), GNM,
Handschriften, R. 3108: August 5, 1745, unpaginated. The same case also in StadtBN, Amb
307 2°, Malefizbuch, 5. Aug. 1745, unpaginated.
62
StadtAA, Strafamt 162, Johann Bausch, “Vezeichnis der Maleficanten,” May 31, 1740,
Jeremias Bertz; March 20, 1742, Elisabeth Beckensteinerin; March 10, 1750, Catherina
Wenzerin. SuStBA, 4 S 567-17, Peinliches Urtheil … über Maria Anna Lauterin, … wegen
der an Aloysius Pankratius Reich … verübter Mordthat, den 17. October 1772, ergangen …
(n.p, n.d); SuStBA, 4 S 567-22: Peinliches Urtheil … über Maria Anna Mayrinn … wegen
einer and einem dreijährigen Mädchen vorsäzlich verübten Mordthat den 8 Febr. 1783. ergan-
gen … (n.p, n.d).
63
StadtAA, Strafamt 167, Verbrecherbuch 1700-1806, p. 310, November 20, 1773,
Gruberin.
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

1783. There were four additional likely cases,64 and in a related phenom-
enon, two people accused themselves of child murder, but the authorities
were not persuaded by their confessions.65 In Berlin (mostly Lutheran),
contemporary publications tell of forty-three suicidal murders that took
place between 1706 and 1799.66
The phenomenon of suicide by proxy was not limited to cities or towns,
but occurred in the countryside as well. Thirty-seven cases have been doc-
umented in the mostly rural Lutheran territories of Schleswig and Holstein
between 1600 and 1820.67 Wurttemberg peasants committed at least
seven such murders between 1612 and 1723.68 Cases of suicide by proxy
occurred in villages in Brandenburg (Lutheran),69 Silesia (confessionally

64
Killings of children that were not classic infanticide, and were not accidental, but where
the sources do not record the killers’ motive. StadtAA, Strafamt 167, Verbrecherbuch,
1700-1806, p. 265, September 14, 1745, Oriana Magdalena Schiedlin, and p. 307, February
29, 1772, Maria Johanna Christiana Hörmännin; StStBA, Graphic 29/126, Wahrhaffter
Entwurff einer … Mordthat, so ein … Handelsman mit Namen Bogner den 21. Mart. Anno
1747 vrybet, in deme er sein eigenes halbjähriges Kindt, … mit einem Messer, und also aller
väterlichen Liebe vergessen ermordet. (n.p, n.d); Samuel Valentin, Ein … Rath der … Stadt
Augsburg hat hiemit zu Urthel und Recht erkannt, daß Samstag den 11. January 1772,
Leonhard Fels … wegen begangener Mord-That an seinem leiblichen Sohn … mit dem Schwerdt
und blutiger Hand vom Leben zum Tod gebracht werden solle (Augsburg: Brinhaußer, n.d).
65
StadtAA, Strafamt 167, Verbrecherbuch, 1700-1806, p. 304, April 9, 1771, Rosina
Sternin, and p. 367, September 27, 1791, Peter Wechsler.
66
For example, the case of Anne Rosine Dunkel, 1794, reported in E.F. Klein, “Selbstmord
durch Tödtung anderer; dargestellet in der Unstersuchungssache wider die Anne Rosine
Dunkel,” Annalen der Gesetzgebung und Rechtsgelehrsamkeit, 14 (1796): 220-248. See also
Chap. 8.
67
Vera Lind documented twenty-three cases. Lind, Selbstmord, 191. Tyge Krogh identified
an additional fourteen cases. Krogh, Lutheran Plague, 19.
68
HStAS, A 209/576, Barbara Seegräberin, 1612; A 209 /166, Hans Bützer, 1678; A
209/1179, Margaretha Mayrin, 1703; A 209/1806, Agnes Catherina Schickin, 1704; A
209/1576, Hans Jacob Reylen, 1710; A 209/1773, Ursula Waser, 1723, and Anna
Catherina Fischlerin, prior to 1723.
69
Anon., “Maria Dorothea Bulsinn, eine unglückliche Versmacherinn,” Annalen der
Gesetzgebung und Rechtsgelehrsamkeit 2 (1788): 170-196.
22 K. STUART

mixed),70 Saxony (Lutheran),71 Swabia (confessionally mixed),72 Bavaria

(Catholic),73 in Upper and Lower Austria (Catholic),74 and many other
regions within the Holy Roman Empire. Such murders are also docu-
mented in Hungary in the eighteenth century,75 in Poland in the eigh-
teenth century,76 in England in the eighteenth century,77 and in France in
the early nineteenth century.78 Suicide by proxy cases were widespread in
Scandinavia. Arne Janson has found sixty-two suicidal murders in
Stockholm between 1620 and 1719.79 Jonas Liliequist has documented

70
D. Glawnig, “Fünftes Gutachten ueber den Zustand eines Kindermörders,” in Aufsätze
und Beobachtungen aus der gerichtlichen Arzneywissenschaft, vol. 8, ed. Johann Theodor Pyl
(Berlin: Mylius, 1793), 263-268.
71
HStAD, 10024 Geheimer Rat/ Loc 9703/7, Martha Padigen, 1738. Loc 10118/8,
Annen Marien Rößlerin, 1730. Loc 9723/7, Johann Georg Dinnebieren, 1779. Loc 12333,
Johann Gottfried Gittlern, 1790. StadtAL, Richterstube Strafakten Nr. 719, Johannen
Reginen Reißmannin. 1752.
72
FÖWAH, Criminalsachen Zusum, VI. 115. 11, Katherina Häuslerin, 1786.
73
Felix Anton von Weittenau, Centuria Consiliorum Criminalium (Augsburg: Mathias
Rieger, 1763), 399-406, case of “S.A.,” 1745.
74
OÖLA, HA Puchheim, Schachtel 43, Nr. 32, Eva Lizlfellnerin, 1762; HA Oberwallsee,
Schachtel 24, II, 2/i. Gerichtswesen, Kindesmord 1711-1770, Joseph Vogler, 1770. StiftAK,
GA Gerichtsakten (Kriminal) 1721-1729, Georg Edlauer 1729. StiftAK, GA Gerichtsakten
(Kriminal) 1741-1750, 1750 Sebastian Schachermayr 1750. StiftAK, GA Gerichtsakten
(Kriminal) 1751-1760, Maria Anna Quittnerin 1756. StiftAK, XVII/5 Gerichtsakten, 18.
Jhdt. Johann Zwirnsberger, 1758. Griesebner, Konkurrierende Wahrheiten, 218-222. AMP,
Kriminalakten 90/2, 1719 Maria Anna Umgeherin, 1719.
75
A woman in Temeswar murdered her three-year-old child and turned herself in to
authorities. Augsburgische Ordinari Postzeitung, February 21, 1781.
76
On September 14, 1754 a gardener in Warsaw cut the throat of his baby, and turned
himself in at city hall. He was weary of his life because of debt. Reported in Staats-Relation
Derer neuesten Europäischen Nachrichten, Nr. CXVI, 463-464.
77
Craig Koslofsky and Dana Rabin, “The Limits of the State: Suicide, Assassination, and
Execution in Early Modern Europe,” Selbsttötung als kulturelle Praxis. Ansätze eines inter-
kulturellen historischen Vergleichs, eds. Andreas Bähr and Hans Medick (Cologne: Böhlau
Verlag, 2005), 45-63. Amy Milka, “‘Preferring Death’: Suicidal Criminals in Eighteenth-
Century England,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 53 (2020): 685-705.
78
C. A. Diez, Der Selbstmord. Seine Ursachen und Arten vom Standpunkte der Psychologie
dargestellt (Tübingen: H. Laupp’schen Buchhandlung, 1838). Diez cites cases from the
Gazette des Tribunaux (No. 968, Sept 14, 1828) and the works of the French alienist Jean
Etienne Georget (1795-1828).
79
Arne Jansson, “Suicidal Murders in Stockholm,” in Jeffrey R. Watt, From Sin to Insanity:
Suicide in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press), 84. Arne Jansson,
From Swords to Sorrow: Homicide and Suicide in Early Modern Stockholm (Stockholm:
Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1998), 18-21.
Exploring the Variety of Random
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with every tide! This became the universal supply for us and for the
Natives all round the Harbour and for miles inland. Hundreds of
Natives from all parts of Tanna flocked to examine this greatest
wonder they had ever seen—rain rising up out of the earth. I built it
round with a kind of stone brought in my boat from the other side of
the bay; and for many years it was the only fresh water supply for the
Natives all around. Some years later a native Chief sank a well about
a mile nearer the entrance to the Harbour at his own village, and
built it round with the bricks that I had purchased for house-
building; these he grabbed and thus appropriated! Many a vessel,
calling at the Harbour, was glad to get her casks refilled at my well,
and all were apparently more friendly because of it; but the Sinking
of this Well produced no such revolution as on Aniwa,—to be
hereafter related.
For fully three months, all our available time, with all the native
help which I could hire, was spent in erecting a building to serve for
Church and School. It was fifty feet long, by twenty-one feet six
inches broad. The studs were three feet apart, and all fixed by tenon
and mortise into upper and lower wall plates. The beautiful roof of
iron, wood, and sugar-cane leaf, was supported by three massive
pillars of wood, sunk deeply into the ground. The roof extended
about three feet over the wall plates, both to form a verandah and to
carry the rain-drop free beyond the walls. It was made of sugar-cane
leaf and cocoa-nut leaves all around. The floor was laid with white
coral, broken small, and covered with cocoa-nut leaf mats, such as
those on which the Natives sat. Indeed, it was as comfortable a
House of Prayer as any man need wish for in the tropics, though
having only open spaces for doors and windows! I bought the heavy
wood for it on Aneityum—price, fifty pairs of native trousers; and
these again were the gift of my Bible Class in Glasgow, all cut and
sewed by their own hands. I gave also one hundred and thirty yards
of cloth, along with other things, for other needful wood.
My Tannese people at first opposed the erection of a Church. They
did not wish Jehovah to secure a House on their island. On the
opening day, only five men, three women, and three children were
present, besides our Aneityumese Teachers. But after the morning
service, on that day, I visited ten villages, and had worship in each.
The people were generally shy and unfriendly. They said that we
were the cause of the prevailing sickness and fever. They had no idea
of any sickness or death being natural, but believed that all such
events were caused by some one nahaking, i.e., bewitching them.
Hence their incessant feuds; and many were murdered in blind
revenge.
As we were preparing a foundation for the Church, a huge and
singular-looking round stone was dug up, at sight of which the
Tannese stood aghast. The eldest Chief said,—
“Missi, that stone was either brought there by Karapanamun (the
Evil Spirit), or hid there by our great Chief who is dead. That is the
Stone God to which our forefathers offered human sacrifices; these
holes held the blood of the victim till drunk up by the Spirit. The
Spirit of that stone eats up men and women and drinks their blood,
as our fathers taught us. We are in greatest fear!”
A Sacred Man claimed possession, and was exceedingly desirous to
carry it off; but I managed to keep it, and did everything in my power
to show them the absurdity of these foolish notions. Idolatry had not,
indeed, yet fallen throughout Tanna, but one cruel idol, at least, had
to give way for the erection of God’s House on that benighted land.
An ever-memorable event was the printing of my first book in
Tannese. Thomas Binnie, Esq., Glasgow, gave me a printing-press
and a font of type. Printing was one of the things I had never tried,
but having now prepared a booklet in Tannese, I got my press into
order, and began fingering the type. But book-printing turned out to
be for me a much more difficult affair than house-building had been.
Yet by dogged perseverance I succeeded at last. My biggest difficulty
was how to arrange the pages properly! After many failures, I folded
a piece of paper into the number of leaves wanted, cut the corners,
folding them back, and numbering as they would be when correctly
placed in the book; then folding all back without cutting up the sheet,
I found now by these numbers how to arrange the pages in the frame
or case for printing, as indicated on each side. And do you think me
foolish, when I confess that I shouted in an ecstasy of joy when the
first sheet came from the press all correct? It was about one o’clock
in the morning. I was the only white man then on the island, and all
the Natives had been fast asleep for hours! Yet I literally pitched my
hat into the air, and danced like a schoolboy round and round that
printing-press; till I began to think, Am I losing my reason? Would it
not be liker a Missionary to be upon my knees, adoring God for this
first portion of His blessed Word ever printed in this new language?
Friend, bear with me, and believe me, that was as true worship as
ever was David’s dancing before the Ark of his God! Nor think that I
did not, over that first sheet of God’s Word ever printed in the
Tannese tongue, go upon my knees too, and then, and every day
since, plead with the mighty Lord to carry the light and joy of His
own Holy Bible into every dark heart and benighted home on Tanna!
But the Tannese had a superstitious dread of books, and especially of
God’s Book. I afterwards heard that Dr. Turner had printed a small
primer in Tannese, translated by the help of the Samoan Teachers;
but this I never saw till near the close of my work on Tanna. Dr.
Geddie sent me a copy, but it was more Samoan than Tannese,
especially in its spelling, and I could make little or nothing of it.
Shortly after this, I was greatly refreshed by the visit of an
American whaler, the Camden Packet, under Captain Allan. He, his
chief officer, and many of his double company of seamen, were
decided Christians—a great contrast to most of the Traders that had
called at Port Resolution. The Captain cordially invited me on board
to preach and conduct a religious service. That evening I enjoyed
exceedingly—wells in the desert! The Captain introduced me, saying,
—
“This is my ship’s company. My first officer and most of my men
are real Christians, trying to love and serve Jesus Christ. We have
been three years out on this voyage, and are very happy with each
other. You would never hear or see worse on board of this vessel than
you see now. And God has given us gratifying success.”
He afterwards told me that he had a very valuable cargo of sperm
oil on board, the vessel being nearly filled up with it. He was eager to
leave supplies, or do something for me, but I needed nothing that he
could give. His mate, on examining my boat, found a hole in her, and
several planks split and bulged in, as I had gone down on a reef with
her when out on Mission work, and narrowly escaped drowning.
Next morning, the Captain, of his own accord, set his carpenter to
repair the boat, and left it as good as new. Not one farthing of
recompense would any of them take from me; their own Christian
love rewarded them, in the circumstances. I had been longing for a
chance to send it to Sydney for repairs, and felt deeply thankful for
such unexpected and generous aid. The Captain would not admit
that the delay was any loss to him,—his boats spending the day in
purchasing cocoa-nuts and provisions from the Natives for his own
ship. Oh, how the Christlike spirit knits together all true followers of
Christ! What other earthly or human tie could have so bound that
stranger to me? In the heart of Christ we met as brothers.
Dangers again darkened round me. One day, while toiling away at
my house, the war Chief, his brother, and a large party of armed men
surrounded the plot where I was working. They all had muskets,
besides their own native weapons. They watched me for some time in
silence, and then every man levelled a musket straight at my head.
Escape was impossible. Speech would only have increased my
danger. My eyesight came and went for a few moments. I prayed to
my Lord Jesus, either Himself to protect me, or to take me home to
His Glory. I tried to keep working on at my task, as if no one was
near me. In that moment, as never before, the words came to me,
—“Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, I will do it;” and I knew that
I was safe. Retiring a little from their first position, no word having
been spoken, they took up the same attitude somewhat farther off,
and seemed to be urging one another to fire the first shot. But my
dear Lord restrained them once again, and they withdrew, leaving
me with a new cause for trusting Him with all that concerned me for
Time and Eternity. Perils seemed, however, to enclose me on every
hand, and my life was frequently attempted. I had to move about
more cautiously than ever, some days scarcely daring to appear
outside my Mission premises. For I have ever most firmly believed,
and do believe, that only when we use every lawful and possible
means for the preservation of our life, which is God’s second greatest
gift to man (His Son being the first), can we expect God to protect us,
or have we the right to plead His precious promises.
The vessel of one calling himself Prince de Jean Beuve, a French
refugee, who had become a naturalized American, visited Port
Resolution. He said, he had to escape from his own country for
political offences. His large and beautiful ship was fitted up and
armed like a Man-of-war. She was manned chiefly by slaves, whom
he ruled with an iron hand. What a contrast to Captain Allan’s
whaler! Yet he also was very sympathetic and kind to me. Having
heard rumour of my trials and dangers, he came on shore, as soon as
his ship cast anchor, with a body of armed men. He was effusively
polite, with all a Frenchman’s gush and gesticulation, and offered to
do anything possible for me. He would take me to Aneityum or
Sydney or wherever I wished. The ship was his own; he was sailing
chiefly for pleasure, and he had called at our Islands to see if
sufficient trade could be opened up to justify his laying on a line of
steamers to call here in their transit. He urged me, I believe
sincerely, to give him the pleasure of taking me and my belongings to
some place of safety. But I was restrained from leaving, through the
fear that I would never be permitted to return, and that Christ’s work
would suffer. In the still burning hope of being able to lead the
Tannese to love and serve Jesus, I declined with much gratitude his
genuine kindness. He looked truly sorry to leave me in the
circumstances wherein I was placed. After two hours on shore, he
returned to his ship towards evening.
Knowing that the Tannese were threatening to burn my former
house, which I wished to remove to higher ground and add to the
room I now occupied on the hill, I took advantage of the presence of
the Prince’s vessel, and set my Aneityumese Teachers and some
friendly Natives to prepare for the task; but unfortunately, I forgot to
send word to the Frenchman regarding my plans and aims. We
removed the sugar-cane leaf thatch from the roof of the house, and
began burning it on cleared ground, so that I might be able to save
the heavy wood which could not be replaced on Tanna. Our French
friend, on seeing the flames rising up furiously, at once loaded his
heavy guns, and prepared his men for action. Under great
excitement, he came ashore with a large number of armed men,
leaving the rest on board ready at a given signal to protect them with
shot and shell. Leaving one half of those brought on shore to guard
the boats, he came running towards my house, followed by the other
half, wet with perspiration, and crying,—
“Fer are dey? fer are dey? De scoundrels! I vill do for dem, and
protect you. I sall punish dem, de scoundrels!”
He was so excited, he could scarcely compose himself to hear my
explanations, which, when understood, he laughed at heartily. He
again urged me to leave in his vessel; he could not bear me to lead
such a life amongst savages. I explained to him my reasons for not
leaving the island, but these he seemed unable to understand. He put
his men through drill on shore, and left them under officers, ready
for action at a moment’s warning, saying they would all be the better
for a day on shore. He wished to take pot luck with me at our Mission
House of one room for all purposes! My humble dinner and tea must
have been anything but a treat for him, but he seemed to relish the
deliverance for once from all the conventionalisms of the world.
Before he left, he sent of his own accord for all the Chiefs within
reach, and warned them that if they hurt me or took my life, he
would return with his Man-of-war and punish them, by killing
themselves and firing their villages; and that a British Man-of-war
would also come and set their island on fire. They promised all
possible good conduct, being undoubtedly put into great terror. The
kind-hearted Frenchman left, with profuse expressions of admiration
for my courage and of pity for my lot. No doubt he thought me a
foolish dreamer of dreams.
A miserable contrast befell us in the bad impression produced by
the conduct of one of Captain T——’s vessels in the Sydney sandal-
wood trade. Whale-boats had been sent out with Mr. Copeland and
myself from Glasgow, as part of the necessary equipment of every
Missionary on these Islands. Mine being rather large and heavy, I
had sold it to one of T——’s captains; but the other had also been left
to my care. After having used my boat for about twelve months—the
best boat in that trade only being expected to last two years—the
Captain called on Mr. Copeland, and got a note from him to me
regarding the sale of his boat too. He declared, when calling on me,
that Mr. Copeland had authorized him to get his boat from me in
exchange for mine, which he had now been using for a year. I asked
for the letter, and found it to be authority for me to sell his boat for
cash only and at the same price as mine. Captain V—— then raged at
me and stormed, declaring that he would return my old boat, and
take the other in defiance of me. Swearing dreadfully, he made for
his ship, and returned with a large party of men whom he had picked
up amongst the Islands. Collecting also a company of Tannese, and
offering them tobacco, he broke down the fence, burst into the boat-
house, and began to draw out the boat. Here I reached the spot, and
sternly opposed them. He swore and foamed at me, and before the
natives knocked and pulled me about, even kicking at me, though I
evaded his blows. Standing by, I said in Tannese,—
 “You are helping that man to steal my boat; he is stealing it as you
see.”
On hearing this, the Tannese ran away, and his own party alone
could not do it. In great wrath, he went off again to his vessel, and
brought on shore as much tobacco as could be held in a large
handkerchief tied by the four corners; but even for that, our own
Natives refused to help him. He offered it then to a crowd of Inland
savages, gathered at the head of the bay, who, regardless of my
remonstrances, launched the boat, he raging at and all but striking
me. Instead of returning, however, the other boat to the house, he
merely set it adrift from his vessel, and it was carried on to the reef,
where it remained fast, and was knocked about by the waves. After
his vessel left, I, with much difficulty, got it off and brought it to the
boat-house. Imagine, when such was their tyrannical treatment of a
Missionary and a British fellow-subject, how they would act towards
these poor native Islanders.
By the earliest opportunity, I wrote all the facts of the case to his
employer, Captain T—— of Sydney, but got not even a reply, while
Captain V—— continued in their trade, a scourge to these Islands,
and a dishonour to his country and to humanity. Unfriendly Tannese
now said,—
“When a white man from his own country can so pull and knock
the Missionary about and steal his boat and chain without being
punished for it, we also may do as we please!”
I hesitate not to record my conviction that that man’s conduct had
a very bad effect, emboldening them in acts of dishonesty and in
attempts upon my life till the Mission Station was ultimately broken
up. After I had to escape from Tanna, with bare life in my hand, one
of the same Captain’s vessels called at Port Resolution and gave the
Natives about three pounds weight of useless tobacco, purchasable at
Sydney for less than one shilling per pound, to allow them to take
away my boat, with oars, sails, mast, and all other belongings. They
also purchased all the plunder from my house. Both boats were so
large and so strongly built, that by adding a plank or two they turned
them into small-decked schooners, admirably suited for the sandal-
wood traffic round the shores, while larger vessels lay at safe
anchorage to receive what they collected. Once, when Dr. Inglis and I
met in Sydney, we called on Captain T—— and stated the whole case,
asking reasonable payment at least for the boats. He admitted that
the boats had been taken and were in his service, and agreed to pay
us for the boats if we would repay the large sum invested therein by
his Captains. Calling one of his clerks, he instructed him to trace in
the office record how much had been paid to the Tannese for the
Missionary’s boat.
The young man innocently returned the reply, “Three pounds of
tobacco.”
In anger, he said, “I understood that a larger value had been
given!”
The clerk assured him, “That is the only record.”
Captain T——, after discussing the worth of the boat as being about
£80, agreed to give us £60, but in writing out the cheque, threw
down the pen and shouted, “I’ll see you —— first!”
Offering £50, to which we agreed, he again resiled, and declared
he would not give a penny above £30.
We appealed to him to regard this as a debt of honour, and to
cease haggling over the price, as he well knew how we had been
wronged in the matter.
Finally we left him declaring, “I am building similar boats just now
at £25 apiece; I will send you one of them, and you may either take
that or want!”
We left, glad to get away on any terms from such a character; and,
though next year he did send one of his promised boats for me to
Aneityum, yet the conduct of his degraded servants engaged in the
sandal-wood trade had a great share in the guilt of breaking up and
ruining our Mission. Thousands upon thousands were made by it
yearly, so long as it lasted; but it was a trade steeped in human blood
and indescribable vice, nor could God’s blessing rest on them and
their ill-gotten gains. Oh, how often did we pray at that time to be
delivered from the hands of unreasonable and wicked men! Sandal-
wood traders murdered many of the Islanders when robbing them of
their wood, and the Islanders murdered many of them and their
servants in revenge. White men, engaged in the trade, also shot dead
and murdered each other in vicious and drunken quarrels, and not a
few put end to their own lives. I have scarcely known one of them
who did not come to ruin and poverty; the money that came even to
the shipowners was a conspicuous curse. Fools there made a mock at
sin, thinking that no one cared for these poor savages, but their sin
did find them out, and God made good in their experience His own
irrepealable law, “The wages of sin is death.”
Ships, highly insured, were said to be sent into our Island trade to
be deliberately wrecked. One Sabbath evening, towards dark, the
notorious Captain H——, in command of a large ship, allowed her to
drift ashore and be wrecked without any apparent effort to save her.
Next morning, the whole company were wading about in the water
and pretending to have lost everything! The Captain, put in prison
when he returned to Sydney for running away with another man’s
wife and property, imposed on Mr. Copeland and myself, getting all
the biscuits, flour, and blankets we could spare for his destitute and
shipwrecked company. We discovered afterwards that she was lying
on a beautiful bank of sand, only a few yards from the shore, and that
everything contained in her could be easily rescued without danger
to life or limb! What we parted with was almost necessary for our life
and health; of course he gave us an order on Captain T—— for
everything, but not one farthing was ever repaid. At first he made a
pretence of paying the Natives for food received; but afterwards, an
armed band went inland night by night and robbed and plundered
whatever came to hand. The Natives, seeing the food of their children
ruthlessly stolen, were shot down without mercy when they dared to
interfere; and the life of every white man was marked for speedy
revenge. Glad were we when a vessel called, and carried away these
white heathen Savages.
The same Captain T—— also began the shocking Kanaka labour-
traffic to the Colonies, after the sandal-wood trade was exhausted,
which has since destroyed so many thousands of the Natives in what
was nothing less than Colonial slavery, and has largely depopulated
the Islands either directly or indirectly. And yet he wrote, and
published in Sydney, a pamphlet declaring that he and his sandal-
wooders and Kanaka labour collectors had done more to civilize the
Islanders than all our Mission efforts combined. Civilize them,
indeed! By spreading disease and vice, misery and death amongst
them, even at the best; at the worst, slaving many of them till they
perished at their toils, shooting down others under one or other
guilty pretence, and positively sweeping thousands into an untimely
grave. A common cry on their lips was,—
“Let them perish and let the white men occupy these Isles.”
It was such conduct as this, that made the Islanders suspect all
foreigners and hate the white man and seek revenge in robbery and
murder. One Trader, for instance, a sandal-wooder and collector of
Kanakas, living at Port Resolution, abominably ill-used a party of
Natives. They determined in revenge to plunder his store. The cellar
was underneath his house, and he himself slept above the trap-door
by which alone it could be entered. Night and day he was guarded by
armed men, Natives of adjoining islands, and all approaches to his
premises were watched by savage dogs that gave timely warning. He
felt himself secure. But the Tannese actually constructed a tunnel
underground from the bush, through which they rolled away
tobacco, ammunition, etc., and nearly emptied his cellar! My heart
bled to see men so capable and clever thus brutally abused and
demoralized and swept away. By the Gospel, and the civilization
which it brings, they were capable of learning anything and being
trained to a useful and even noble manhood. But all influence that
ever I witnessed from these Traders was degrading, and dead against
the work of our Missions.
The Chief, Nowar Noukamara, usually known as Nowar, was my
best and most-to-be-trusted friend He was one of the nine or ten who
were most favourable to the Mission work, attending the Worship
pretty regularly, conducting it also in their own houses and villages,
and making generally a somewhat unstable profession of
Christianity. One or more of them often accompanied me on
Sabbath, when going to conduct the Worship at inland villages, and
sometimes they protected me from personal injury. This Nowar
influenced the Harbour Chiefs and their people for eight or ten miles
around to get up a great feast in favour of the Worship of Jehovah.
All were personally and specially invited, and it was the largest
Assembly of any kind that I ever witnessed on the Islands.
When all was ready, Nowar sent a party of Chiefs to escort me and
my Aneityumese Teachers to the feast. Fourteen Chiefs, in turn,
made speeches to the assembled multitude; the drift of all being, that
war and fighting be given up on Tanna,—that no more people be
killed by nahak, for witchcraft and sorcery were lies,—that Sacred
Men no longer profess to make wind and rain, famine and plenty,
disease and death,—that the dark heathen talk of Tanna should
cease, that all here present should adopt the Worship of Jehovah as
taught to them by the Missionary and the Aneityumese,—and that all
the banished Tribes should be invited to their own lands to live in
peace! These strange speeches did not draw forth a single opposing
voice. Doubtless these men were in earnest, and had there been one
master mind to rule and mould them, their regeneration had
dawned. Though for the moment a feeling of friendliness prevailed,
the Tannese were unstable as water and easily swayed one way or the
other. They are born talkers, and can and will speechify on all
occasions, but most of it means nothing, bears no fruit.
After these speeches, a scene followed which gradually assumed
shape as an idolatrous ceremonial and greatly horrified me. It was in
connection with the immense quantity of food that had been
prepared for the feast, especially pigs and fowls. A great heap had
been piled up for each Tribe represented, and a handsome portion
also set apart for the Missionary and his Teachers. The ceremony was
this, as nearly as I could follow it. One hundred or so of the leading
men marched into the large cleared space in the centre of the
assembled multitudes, and stood there facing each other in equal
lines, with a man at either end closing up the passage between. At the
middle they stood eight or ten feet apart, gradually nearing till they
almost met at either end. Amid tremendous silence for a few
moments all stood hushed; then every man kneeled on his right
knee, extended his right hand, and bent forward till his face nearly
touched the ground. Thereon the man at the one end began
muttering something, his voice rising ever louder as he rose to his
feet, when it ended in a fearful yell as he stood erect. Next the two
long lines of men, all in a body, went through the same ceremonial,
rising gradually to their feet, with mutterings deepening into a howl,
and heightening into a yell as they stood erect. Finally, the man at
the other end went through the same hideous forms. All this was
thrice deliberately repeated, each time with growing frenzy. And
then, all standing on their feet, they united as with one voice in what
sounded like music running mad up and down the scale, closing with
a long, deep-toned, hollow howl as of souls in pain. With smiles of
joy, the men then all shook hands with each other. Nowar and
another Chief briefly spoke, and the food was then divided and
exchanged, a principal man of each Tribe standing by to receive and
watch his portion.
At this stage, Nowar and Nerwangi, as leaders, addressed the
Teachers and the Missionary to this effect:—
“This feast is held to move all the Chiefs and People here to give up
fighting, to become friends, and to worship your Jehovah God. We
wish you to remain, and to teach us all good conduct. As an evidence
of our sincerity, and of our love, we have prepared this pile of food
for you.”
In reply, I addressed the whole multitude, saying how pleased I
was with their speeches and with the resolutions and promises which
they all had made. I further urged them to stick fast by these, and
that grand fruits would arise to their island, to themselves and to
their children.
Having finished a brief address, I then walked forward to the very
middle of the circle, and laid down before them a bundle of stripes of
red calico and pieces of white calico, a number of fish-hooks, knives,
etc. etc., requesting the two Chiefs to divide my offering of goodwill
among the Tribes assembled, and also the pile of food presented to
us, as a token of my love and friendship to them all.
Their insisting upon me taking their present of food, laid upon me
an unpleasant and dangerous necessity of explaining my refusal. I
again thanked them very warmly, and explained that, as they had in
my presence given away all their food to an Idol God and asked his
blessing on it as a sacrifice, even to Karapanamun, the great Evil
Spirit, my people and I durst not and could not eat of it, for that
would be to have fellowship with their Idols and to dishonour
Jehovah God. Christians could acknowledge only the one true and
living God, and ask His blessing on their food, and offer it and
themselves in thanksgiving unto Him, but unto no cruel or evil
Spirit. Yet I explained to them how much I thanked them, and how I
loved them just as much as if we had eaten all their gifts, and how it
would please us to see them all, along with my own gifts, divided
amongst their Tribes.
Not without some doubt, and under considerable trial, did I take
this apparently unfriendly attitude. But I feared to seem even to
approve of any act of devil-worship, or to confirm them in it, being
there to discourage all such scenes, and to lead them to acknowledge
only the true God. I felt as if guilty and as if the hat were rising from
my head, when I heard them imprecating and appeasing their God,
without being able to show them the God of Love and the better way
into His presence through Jesus Christ. My opportunity to do so
arose over the refusal of the food offered unto Idols, and I told them
of the claims of Jehovah, the jealous God, who would not share His
worship with any other. But all the time I felt this qualm,—that it
were better to eat food with men who acknowledged some God and
asked his blessing than with those white Heathens at home, who
asked the blessing of no God, nor thanked Him, in this worse than
the dog which licks the hand that feeds it! Nowar and Nerwangi
explained in great orations what I meant, and how I wished all to be
divided amongst the assembled Tribes to show my love. With this, all
seemed highly satisfied.
Heathen dances were now entered upon, their paint and feathers
and ornaments adding to the wildness of the scene. The men seemed
to dance in an inside ring, and the women in an outside ring, at a
considerable distance from each other. Music was supplied by
singing and clapping of hands. The order was perfect, and the figures
highly intricate. But I have never been able to associate dancing with
things lovely and of good report! After the dancing, all retired to the
bush, and a kind of sham fight followed on the public cleared ground.
A host of painted savages rushed in and took possession with songs
and shoutings. From the bush, on the opposite side, the chanting of
women was heard in the distance, louder and louder as they
approached. Snatching from a burning fire flaming sticks, they
rushed on the men with these, beating them and throwing burning
pieces of wood among them, till with deafening yells amongst
themselves and amidst shouts of laughter from the crowd, they drove
them from the space, and danced thereon and sang a song of victory.
The dancing and fighting, the naked painted figures, and the
constant yells and shoutings gave one a weird sensation, and
suggested strange ideas of Hell broken loose.
The final scene approached, when the men assisted their women to
fill all the allotted food into baskets, to be carried home and eaten
there; for the different Tribes do not sit down together and eat
together as we would do; their coming together is for the purpose of
exchanging and dividing the food presented. And now they broke
into friendly confusion, and freely walked about mingling with each
other; and a kind of savage rehearsal of Jonathan and David took
place. They stripped themselves of their fantastic dresses, their
handsomely woven and twisted grass skirts, leaf skirts, grass and leaf
aprons; they gave away or exchanged all these, and their ornaments
and bows and arrows, besides their less romantic calico and print
dresses more recently acquired. The effusion and ceremonial of the
gifts and exchanges seemed to betoken a loving people; and so they
were for the feast—but that laid not aside a single deadly feud, and
streams of blood and cries of hate would soon efface all traces of this
day.
I had now six Stations, opened up and ministered to by
Aneityumese Teachers, at the leading villages along the coast, and
forming links in a chain towards the other Mission Establishment on
Tanna. And there were villages prepared to receive as many more.
These Teachers had all been cannibals once, yet, with one exception,
they proved themselves to the best of my judgment to be a band of
faithful and devoted followers of Christ. Their names were Abraham,
Kowari, Nomuri, Nerwa, Lazarus, and Eoufati. I visited them
periodically and frequently, encouraging and guiding them, as well
as trying to interest the villagers in their teaching and work. But,
whenever war broke out they had all to return to the Mission House,
and sleep there for safety by night, visiting their Stations, if
practicable, by the light of day. My poor dear Teachers, too, had to
bear persecutions for Jesu’s sake, as the following incident will
sorrowfully prove.
A native woman, with some murderous purpose in her heart,
pretended great friendship to the excellent wife of one of my fellow-
labourers. She was specially effusive in bringing to her dishes of food
from time to time. Having thus gained confidence, she caught a little
black fish of those parts, known to be deadly poisonous, and baked it
up in a mess for the unsuspecting Teacher’s wife. On returning, she
boasted of what she had done, and thereon a friendly neighbour
rushed off to warn the other, but arrived just to learn that the fatal
meal had been taken. Beyond all reach of human skill, this unknown
martyr for Christ died soon after in great agony, and doubtless
received her Master’s reward.
 In helping to open up new Stations, those dear native Teachers
often bore the greatest hardships and indignities with a noble self-
denial and positively wonderful patience. Nothing known to men
under Heaven could have produced their new character and
disposition, except only the grace of God in Christ Jesus. Though still
marred by many of the faults of Heathenism, they were at the roots
of their being literally new creatures, trying, according to their best
light, to live for and to please their new Master, Jesus Christ. This
shone out very conspicuously in these two apostolic souls, Abraham
and Kowari, as leaders among all the devoted band.
Let me recall another occasion, on which I prevented a war. Early
one morning, the savage yells of warring Tribes woke me from sleep.
They had broken into a quarrel about a woman, and were fiercely
engaged with their clubs. According to my custom, I rushed in
amongst them, and, not without much difficulty, was blessed in
separating them before deadly wounds had been given or received.
On this occasion, the Chiefs of both Tribes, being very friendly to me,
drove their people back from each other at my earnest appeals.
Sitting down at length within earshot, they had it out in a wild
scolding match, a contest of lung and tongue. Meanwhile I rested on
a canoe midway betwixt them, in the hope of averting a renewal of
hostilities. By-and-by an old Sacred Man, a Chief called Sapa, with
some touch of savage comedy in his breast, volunteered an episode
which restored good humour to the scene. Leaping up, he came
dancing and singing towards me, and there, to the amusement of all,
re-enacted the quarrel, and mimicked rather cleverly my attempt at
separating the combatants. Smashing at the canoe with his club, he
yelled and knocked down imaginary enemies; then, rushing first at
one party and then at the other, he represented me as appealing and
gesticulating and pushing them afar from each other, till he became
quite exhausted. Thereon he came and planted himself in great glee
beside me, and looked around as if to say,—“You must laugh, for I
have played.” At this very juncture, a loud cry of “Sail O!” broke upon
our ears, and all parties leapt to their feet, and prepared for a new
sensation; for in those climes, everything—war itself—is a smaller
interest than a vessel from the Great Unknown World sailing into
your Harbour.
 Not many days thereafter, a very horrible transaction occurred.
Before daybreak, I heard shot after shot quickly discharged in the
Harbour. One of my Teachers came running, and cried,—
“Missi, six or seven men have been shot dead this morning for a
great feast. It is to reconcile Tribes that have been at war, and to
allow a banished Tribe to return in peace.”
I learned that the leading men had in council agreed upon this
sacrifice, but the name of each victim was kept a secret till the last
moment. The torture of suspense and uncertainty seemed to be
borne by all as part of their appointed lot, nor did they prepare as if
suspecting any dread assault. Before daylight, the Sacred Men
allocated a murderer to the door of each house where a victim slept.
A signal shot was fired; all rushed to their doors, and the doomed
ones were shot and clubbed to death as they attempted to escape.
Their bodies were then borne to a sacred tree, and hung up there by
the hands for a time, as an offering to the Gods. Being taken down,
they were carried ceremoniously and laid out on the shore near my
house, placed under a special guard.
Information had reached me that my Teachers and I were also
destined victims for this same feast, and sure enough we espied a
band of armed men, the killers, despatched towards our premises.
Instantaneously I had the Teachers and their wives and myself
securely locked into the Mission House; and, cut off from all human
hope, we set ourselves to pray to our dear Lord Jesus, either Himself
to protect us or to take us to His glory. All through that morning and
forenoon we heard them tramp-tramping round our house,
whispering to each other, and hovering near window and door. They
knew that there were a double-barrelled fowling-piece and a revolver
on the premises, though they never had seen me use them, and that
may, under God, have held them back in dread. But such a thought
did not enter our souls even in that awful time. I had gone to save,
and not to destroy. It would be easier for me at any time to die than
to kill one of them. Our safety lay in our appeal to that blessed Lord
who had placed us there, and to whom all power had been given in
Heaven and on Earth. He that was with us was more than all that
could be against us. This is strength; this is peace:—to feel, in
entering on every day, that all its duties and trials have been
committed to the Lord Jesus,—that, come what may, He will use us
for His own glory and our real good!
All through that dreadful morning, and far into the afternoon, we
thus abode together, feeling conscious that we were united to this
dear Lord Jesus, and we had sweet communion with Him,
meditating on the wonders of His person and the hopes and glories
of His kingdom. Oh, that all my readers may learn something of this
in their own experience of the Lord! I can wish them nothing more
precious. Towards sundown, constrained by the Invisible One, they
withdrew from our Mission House, and left us once more in peace.
They bore away the slain to be cooked, and distributed amongst the
Tribes, and eaten in their feast of reconciliation; a covenant sealed in
blood, and soon, alas, to be buried in blood again! For many days
thereafter, we had to take unusual care, and not unduly expose
ourselves to danger; for dark characters were seen prowling about in
the bush near at hand, and we knew that our life was the prize. We
took what care we could, and God the Lord did the rest, or rather He
did all—for His wisdom guided us, and His power baffled them.
Shortly thereafter, war was again declared by the Inland people
attacking our Harbour people. It was an old quarrel; and the war was
renewed and continued, long after the cause thereof had passed
away. Going amongst them every day, I did my utmost to stop
hostilities, setting the evils of war before them, and pleading with the
leading men to renounce it. Thereon arose a characteristic incident
of Island and Heathen life. One day I held a Service in the village
where morning after morning their Tribes assembled, and declared
that if they would believe in and follow the Jehovah God, He would
deliver them from all their enemies and lead them into a happy life.
There were present three Sacred Men, Chiefs, of whom the whole
population lived in terror,—brothers or cousins, heroes of traditional
feats, professors of sorcery, and claiming the power of life and death,
health and sickness, rain and drought, according to their will. On
hearing me, these three stood up and declared they did not believe in
Jehovah, nor did they need His help, for they had the power to kill
my life by Nahak (i.e., sorcery or witchcraft), if only they could get
possession of any piece of the fruit or food that I had eaten. This was
an essential condition of their black art; hence the peel of a banana
or an orange, and every broken scrap of food, is gathered up by the
Natives, lest it should fall into the hands of the Sacred Men, and be
used for Nahak. This superstition was the cause of most of the
bloodshed and terror upon Tanna; and being thus challenged, I
asked God’s help, and determined to strike a blow against it. A
woman was standing near with a bunch of native fruit in her hand,
like our plums, called quonquore. I asked her to be pleased to give
me some; and she, holding out a bunch, said,—
“Take freely what you will!”
Calling the attention of all the Assembly to what I was doing, I took
three fruits from the bunch, and taking a bite out of each, I gave
them one after another to the three Sacred Men, and deliberately
said in the hearing of all,—
“You have seen me eat of this fruit, you have seen me give the
remainder to your Sacred Men; they have said they can kill me by
Nahak, but I challenge them to do it if they can, without arrow or
spear, club or musket, for I deny that they have any power against
me or against any one by their Sorcery.”
The challenge was accepted; the Natives looked terror-struck at
the position in which I was placed! The ceremony of Nahak was
usually performed in secret,—the Tannese fleeing in dread, as
Europeans would from the touch of the plague; but I lingered and
eagerly watched their ritual. As the three Chiefs arose, and drew near
to one of the Sacred Trees, to begin their ceremonial, the Natives fled
in terror, crying,—
“Missi, away! Alas, Missi!”
But I held on at my post of observation. Amidst wavings and
incantations, they rolled up the pieces of the fruit from which I had
eaten, in certain leaves of this Sacred Tree into a shape like a waxen
candle; then they kindled a sacred fire near the root, and continued
their mutterings, gradually burning a little more and a little more of
the candle-shaped things, wheeling them round their heads, blowing
upon them with their breaths, waving them in the air, and glancing
wildly at me as if expecting my sudden destruction. Wondering
whether after all they did not believe their own lie, for they seemed to
be in dead earnest, I, more eager than ever to break the chains of
such vile superstition, urged them again and again, crying,—
 “Be quick! Stir up your Gods to help you! I am not killed yet; I am
perfectly well!”
At last they stood up and said,—
“We must delay till we have called all our Sacred Men. We will kill
Missi before his next Sabbath comes round. Let all watch, for he will
soon die and that without fail.”
I replied, “Very good! I challenge all your Priests to unite and kill
me by Sorcery or Nahak. If on Sabbath next I come again to your
village in health, you will all admit that your Gods have no power
over me, and that I am protected by the true and living Jehovah
God!”
For every day throughout the remainder of that week, the Conchs
were sounded, and over that side of the island all their Sacred Men
were at work trying to kill me by their arts. Now and again
messengers arrived from every quarter of the island, inquiring
anxiously after my health, and wondering if I was not feeling sick,
and great excitement prevailed amongst the poor deluded idolaters.
Sabbath dawned upon me peacefully, and I went to that village in
more than my usual health and strength. Large numbers assembled,
and when I appeared they looked at each other in terror, as if it could
not really be I, myself, still spared and well. Entering into the public
ground, I saluted them to this effect,—
“My love to you all, my friends! I have come again to talk to you
about the Jehovah God and His Worship.”
The three Sacred Men, on being asked, admitted that they had
tried to kill me by Nahak, but had failed; and on being questioned,
why they had failed, they gave the acute and subtle reply, that I also
was myself a Sacred Man, and that my God being the stronger had
protected me from their Gods. Addressing the multitude, I answered
thus,—
“Yea, truly; my Jehovah God is stronger than your Gods. He
protected me, and helped me; for He is the only living and true God,
the only God that can hear or answer any prayer from the children of
men. Your Gods cannot hear prayers, but my God can and will hear
and answer you, if you will give heart and life to Him, and love and
serve Him only. This is my God, and He is also your friend if you will
hear and follow His voice.”
 Having said this, I sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and
addressed them,—
“Come and sit down all around me, and I will talk to you about the
love and mercy of my God, and teach you how to worship and please
Him.”
Two of the Sacred Men then sat down, and all the people gathered
round and seated themselves very quietly. I tried to present to them
ideas of sin, and of salvation through Jesus Christ, as revealed to us
in the Holy Scriptures.
The third Sacred Man, the highest in rank, a man of great stature
and uncommon strength, had meantime gone off for his warrior’s
spear, and returned brandishing it in the air and poising it at me. I
said to the people,—
“Of course he can kill me with his spear, but he undertook to kill
me by Nahak or Sorcery, and promised not to use against me any
weapons of war; and if you let him kill me now, you will kill your
friend, one who lives among you and only tries to do you good, as you
all know so well. I know that if you kill me thus, my God will be angry
and will punish you.”
Thereon I seated myself calmly in the midst of the crowd, while he
leaped about in rage, scolding his brothers and all who were present
for listening to me. The other Sacred Men, however, took my side,
and, as many of the people also were friendly to me and stood closely
packed around me, he did not throw his spear. To allay the tumult
and obviate further bloodshed, I offered to leave with my Teachers at
once, and, in doing so, I ardently pled with them to live at peace.
Though we got safely home, that old Sacred Man seemed still to
hunger after my blood. For weeks thereafter, go where I would, he
would suddenly appear on the path behind me, poising in his right
hand that same Goliath spear. God only kept it from being thrown,
and I, using every lawful precaution, had all the same to attend to my
work, as if no enemy were there, leaving all other results in the hands
of Jesus. This whole incident did, doubtless, shake the prejudices of
many as to Sorcery; but few even of converted Natives ever get
entirely clear of the dread of Nahak.
If not truly converted, the two Priests were fast friends of mine
from that day, as also another leading man in the same district. They
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