Torture in early modern Europe was, at least in theory, a heavily regulated part of the judicial process. It required well-educated magistrates, judges, and executioners to follow strict evidentiary and procedural standards. Significant care was necessary to ensure a subject’s probable guilt before subjecting them to what could be physically ruinous tortures. Of course, these standards were often not followed and sometimes blatantly disregarded, most famously during the early modern witch panics. Yet these strict rules were also often diligently respected, even if judges followed them in ways that seem anathema today. Other elements of trial could be brutal, as well.

This session, chaired by Dr. Sigrun Haude, Professor at the University of Cincinnati, includes three papers covering different aspects of early modern criminal prosecution. It should appeal to historians of crime, prosecution, violence, political culture, and law. W. David Myers, Professor of History at Fordham University, examines early forensic medicine in the context of women’s reproductive crimes, such as infanticide. Without witnesses, it was important to find other forms of evidence before torture could be applied, and early forensic practices were used to test whether, for example, a woman had been pregnant. Myers surveys literature of forensic medicine in Italy and Germany, procedural manuals for midwives, and German criminal records to determine how courts and inquisitors employed and understood such knowledge.

Dr. Stephen A. Lazer, Assistant Teaching Professor at Arizona State University, discusses the importance of prosecutorial and criminal narratives through the early eighteenth century trial regarding a brutal murder outside Basel in Switzerland. Basel’s magistrates ordered that the two primary suspects be tortured yet, while both confessed to the murder, their stories did not match up. Despite their confessions, they endured further rounds of torture. This paper investigates why the torture of both continued after their confessions and why achieving a single, unified narrative mattered to the magistrates.

Dr. Yair Mintzker, Professor at Princeton University, focuses on the figure of Dr. Philipp Friedrich Jäger, the main inquisitor during the trial of Joseph Süss Oppenheimer in the 1730s in Württemberg. Mintzker will show how Jäger’s upbringing, particularly his classical education, influenced Oppenheimer’s final verdict. Jäger modelled the verdict not after the Bible or medieval blood libels, but above all after Cicero’s speeches against Catiline. Together, these panels reveal several of the many interconnected ways in which early modern prosecutions used knowledge and violence to achieve what was, to their minds, justice. This panel will be sponsored by the Central European History Society in honor of Dr. Mary Lindemann, 2020 President of the American Historical Association.