From Sin to Insanity: Suicide in Early Modern Europe / Edition 1

by Jeffrey Watt

Overview

In the broadest treatment yet of suicide in Europe during the period 1500–1800, 11 authors combine elements of social, cultural, legal, and intellectual history to trace important changes in the ways Europeans experienced and understood voluntary death. Well into the seventeenth century, Europeans viewed suicide as a terrible crime and an unforgivable sin resulting from demonic temptation. By the late eighteenth century, however, suicide was rarely subject to judicial penalties, and society tended to blame self-inflicted death on insanity rather than on the devil.

From Sin to Insanity shows that early modern Europe witnessed nothing less than the birth of modern suicide: increasing in frequency, self-inflicted death became decriminalized, secularized, and medicalized, viewed as a regrettable but not shameful result of reversals in fortune or physical or mental infirmity. The ten chapters focus on suicide cases and attitudes toward self-murder from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries in geographical settings as diverse as Scandinavia and Hungary, France and Germany, England and Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801442780
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	09/03/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.94(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jeffrey R. Watt is Professor of History at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of The Making of Modern Marriage: Matrimonial Control and the Rise of Sentiment in Neucâhtel, 1550-1800 (also from Cornell) and Choosing Death: Suicide and Calvinism in Early Modern Geneva and the editor of The Long Reformation.

Table of Contents

	List of Illustrations	vii
	List of Tables	ix
	Introduction: Toward a History of Suicide in Early Modern Europe	1
1	The Judicial Treatment of Suicide in Amsterdam	9
2	Suicide and the Vicar General in London: A Mystery Solved?	25
3	Controlling the Body of the Suicide in Saxony	48
4	The Suicidal Mind and Body: Examples from Northern Germany	64
5	Suicidal Murders in Stockholm	81
6	Amoivalence toward Suicide in Golden Age Spain	100
7	Honfibu: Nationhood, Manhood, and the Culture of Self-Sacrifice in Hungary	116
8	Suicide, Gender, and Religion: The Case of Geneva	138
9	Suicide in Paris, 1775	158
10	The Suicide of Sir Samuel Romilly: Apotheosis or Outrage?	175
	Acknowledgments	189
	Notes	191
	Contributors	231
	Index	233

What People are Saying About This

Carlos M. N. Eire

"The fact that From Sin to Insanity assembles so much information in a single volume makes it unique. Up to now, anyone wishing to read up on the history of suicide in this period had to consult specialized studies targeting a single country or area. This collection makes available for the first time a comprehensive overview of attitudes toward suicide in most of Western Europe, at a pivotal time in history."

Raymond A. Mentzer

"Suicide—once seen as a dreadful act of despair or, less commonly, a heroic sacrifice—remains the subject of intense contemporary debate. In this compelling collection of essays, Watt and his colleagues offer a deft exploration of the meaning of self-inflicted death for people of every station across preindustrial Europe. In the process, they meticulously illuminate the origins of modern perceptions and concerns."

H. C. Erik Midelfort

"It is rare that a collection of essays is so well focused and well presented. The authors explore uncharted territory, studying parts of Europe that previously attracted no modern social histories of suicide. Their groundbreaking analyses suggest how rich the subject and the materials really are. In each case new sources the authors have uncovered suggest fresh approaches and questions."

Editorial Reviews

"It is rare that a collection of essays is so well focused and well presented. The authors explore uncharted territory, studying parts of Europe that previously attracted no modern social histories of suicide. Their groundbreaking analyses suggest how rich the subject and the materials really are. In each case new sources the authors have uncovered suggest fresh approaches and questions."

H. C. Erik Midelfort

"Suicide—once seen as a dreadful act of despair or, less commonly, a heroic sacrifice—remains the subject of intense contemporary debate. In this compelling collection of essays, Watt and his colleagues offer a deft exploration of the meaning of self-inflicted death for people of every station across preindustrial Europe. In the process, they meticulously illuminate the origins of modern perceptions and concerns."

Raymond A. Mentzer

"The fact that From Sin to Insanity assembles so much information in a single volume makes it unique. Up to now, anyone wishing to read up on the history of suicide in this period had to consult specialized studies targeting a single country or area. This collection makes available for the first time a comprehensive overview of attitudes toward suicide in most of Western Europe, at a pivotal time in history."

Carlos M. N. Eire

"Suicide—once seen as a dreadful act of despair or, less commonly, a heroic sacrifice—remains the subject of intense contemporary debate. In this compelling collection of essays, Watt and his colleagues offer a deft exploration of the meaning of self-inflicted death for people of every station across preindustrial Europe. In the process, they meticulously illuminate the origins of modern perceptions and concerns."—Raymond A. Mentzer, Daniel J. Krumm Family Professor of Reformation Studies, University of Iowa

"The fact that From Sin to Insanity assembles so much information in a single volume makes it unique. Up to now, anyone wishing to read up on the history of suicide in this period had to consult specialized studies targeting a single country or area. This collection makes available for the first time a comprehensive overview of attitudes toward suicide in most of Western Europe, at a pivotal time in history."—Carlos M. N. Eire, Yale University, author of From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain

"It is rare that a collection of essays is so well focused and well presented. The authors explore uncharted territory, studying parts of Europe that previously attracted no modern social histories of suicide. Their groundbreaking analyses suggest how rich the subject and the materials really are. In each case new sources the authors have uncovered suggest fresh approaches and questions."—H. C. Erik Midelfort, University of Virginia, author of A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany

From the Publisher