Humanities & Social Sciences
Crime and Forgiveness
The Death Penalty in the Mental Horizon of Christian Europe (14th–18th Century)
by Adriano Prosperi
Description
During the centuries of the ‘long Middle Ages’, a great public spectacle gradually acquired a structure: death by justice. In the night between the 1st and 2nd May 2011, the President of the United States Barack Obama made a special appearance on television and announced to the nation and the world the death of Osama bin Laden. His first words were: ‘Justice has been done’ – ‘justice’, which in Italian has the same etymological root as the verb ‘giustiziare’, to execute. This single sentence brings out the fundamental question underlying the function of justice: is it a physical elimination of the criminal or a punishment which enables that person to repent and achieve moral regeneration? Is it an act of revenge or forgiveness?
In the light of this history, Adriano Prosperi investigates the complex links with condemned people which our culture gradually established, until it eventually arrived at a Christianization of death as punishment: a public spectacle where the Christian cross occupies a central place in a great, cruel festival, and where the offering up of the criminal’s life was celebrated on the scaffold as a way of expiating the individual’s sins and purifying the community from evil.
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Rights already sold in USA (Harvard University Press)
Author Biography
Adriano Prosperi, after completing his education in Pisa, at the University and Scuola Normale, taught Early Modern History at the Universities of Bologna and Pisa. In 2003 he was appointed professor of Early Modern History at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.
His interests lay especially in the History of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, with special reference to the Council of Trent, the Inquisition, Catholic Missions and theological doctrines.
He has developed a new field of located interest that can be located between anthropology and historiography, the disciplines on death and the self, with special focus on the history of the death penalty in Ancien Regime Europe. Since 1989 he has been a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Rome).
Foreign translations: Crime and Forgiveness. Christianizing Execution in Medieval Europe (Harvard University Press), Infanticide, Secular Justice, and Religious Debate in Early Modern Europe (Brepols), Dar a alma (Companhia das Letras), Die Gabe der Seele (Suhrkamp Verlag), El Concilio de Trento (Junta de Castilla y Leon), Justice Blindfolded. The Historical Course of an Image (Brill).
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View all titlesBibliographic Information
- Publisher Giulio Einaudi Editore
- Publication Date November 2013
- Orginal LanguageItalian
- ISBN/Identifier 9788806209193
- Publication Country or regionItaly
- FormatHardback
- Primary Price 35 EUR
- Pages577
- ReadershipGeneral
- Publish StatusPublished
- Original Language TitleDelitto e perdono: la pena di morte nell’orizzonte mentale dell’Europa cristiana. XIV-XVIII secolo
- Copyright Year2013
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