Choosing Death: Suicide and Calvinism in Early Modern Geneva: 58 - Brossura

Watt, Jeffrey R.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0943549876 ISBN 13: 9780943549873

Casa editrice: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr, 2001

Riassunto

In this case study of the Republic of Geneva, Jeffrey R. Watt convincingly argues the early modern era marked decisive change in the history of suicide. His analysis of criminal proceedings and death records shows that magistrates of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries often imposed penalties against the bodies and estates of those who took their lives. According to beliefs shared by theologian John Calvin, magistrates, and common folk, self-murder was caused by demon possession. Similar views and practices were found among both Protestants and Catholics throughout Reformation Europe. By contrast, in the late eighteenth century many philosophies defended the right to take one's life under certain circumstances; Geneva’s magistrates in effect decriminalized suicide; and even commoners blamed suicide on mental illness or personal reversals, not on satanic influences.

Watt uses Geneva's uniquely rich and well-organized sources in this first study to provide reliable evidence on suicide rates for premodern Europe. He places his findings within a wide range of historical and sociological scholarship, and while suicide was rare through the seventeenth century, he shows that Geneva experienced an explosion in self-inflicted deaths after 1750. Quite simply, early modern Geneva witnessed nothing less than the birth of modern suicide both in attitudes toward it—thoroughly secularized, medicalized, and stripped of diabolical undertones—and the frequency of it.

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L'autore:

Throughout his research, Jeffrey R. Watt has focused on the intersection between the history of religion and everyday life, studying court records as a window to the popular culture of early modern Europe. His scholarship thus far has concentrated on the impact of the Reformed faith, examining its influence on various aspects of daily life in an attempt to uncover the conjunction of religious, cultural, and social history. His first book, The Making of Modern Marriage: Matrimonial Control and the Rise of Sentiment in Neuchâtel, 1550–1800 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), analyzes the impact of the Reformation on marriage and traces changes in the control of matrimony and in popular attitudes toward marriage during the course of the early modern period. Watt has also published articles on the registers of Geneva’s Consistory during the time of Calvin, examining the Reformed faith’s impact on women, popular religion, and the institutions of marriage and the family. Currently he is editing a book on suicide in early modern Europe and has begun research on the Inquisition in Modena, Italy. Watt received his A.B. from Grove City College in 1980, his M.A. from Ohio University in 1982, and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1987. He is associate professor of history at the University of Mississippi, where he has taught since 1988.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0943549876
• ISBN 13: 9780943549873
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 361