Thread by @chimaihueze

In the 1700s, it was thought that suicide led to hell.

So, instead of taking their own life, suicide candidates would kill a child or some other random person, in the hope that they would receive a death penalty.

Eighteenth century Danes were more religious than modern Danes. And according to the church, killing yourself meant you would end up in hell.
On the other hand, if you repented your horrible deeds just before the execution, you received a direct ticket to heaven.

This view is based on Martin Luther’s conception of Christianity.

“Luther believed that we received redemption by conceding our own sinfulness and by sincerely repenting our sins and believing in God,”.

The final moment of life was the most important one in which to repent your sins and to affirm your faith in God – because then you couldn’t commit any more sins, he explains.

So if someone with a death sentence showed sincere repentance, it was thought that the soul would receive redemption.

The wave of suicide murders swept across all Evangelical Lutheran countries in Europe. This is how Denmark pioneered the abolition of the death penalty.

Unlike the Catholic Church, Lutherans read the laws of the Pentateuch very literally – and these laws prescribed the death penalty for murder.

When God demanded the death penalty, there wasn’t much to discuss for the pious Danish authorities.

This put Denmark – and other Evangelical Lutheran countries – in a very special situation:

-On the one hand, murderers should be executed.

-On the other hand, murderers who repented their sins could escape the torments of hell.

This made it attractive for suicide candidates to become murderers.

When the suicide killings had been ravaging for several years, it came up to the Danish judiciary that something was completely wrong.

Officials realized that the country's penalties did not work, but on the contrary, the reason was that random innocent people were killed by suicide killers.

The state was deeply concerned. So they reacted by legislating that suicide killers should have the hardest known death penalty in Denmark's history. Suicide killers should be whipped, knuckled and smashed.

Military courts sentenced suicide murderers to a weekly whipping for nine weeks leading up to the execution.

When the day arrived, the executioner would use a large wagon wheel to smash as many bones as possible in the soldier's body and then fix him to the wheel where he was

left to die from his injuries.

Civil courts sentenced suicide murderers to be pinched five times with red-hot tongs on their way from the prison to the scaffold.

Then their hands were chopped off, followed by the head, after which the dead body was displayed on a big wheel as a warning to others

Although the penalties for these murders were on the harsh side, they didn’t seem to help much.

People believed that execution was a safe way to salvation. Although the punishments for suicide became insane hard they just helped the person.

In the population, that execution was seen as the safest way to the salvation of souls.

Songs were written and preformed, telling how the murderers were excited to be executed.

They looked forward to coming up to heaven and in white clothes sitting in front of God's throne.

The view was that the more painful you experienced in connection with execution, the more sure you were in a place in heaven.

As the harsh penalties failed to solve the problem, it was suggested that perhaps abolishing the death penalty altogether could do the trick.

This, however, flew in the face of what the Lutheran countries had been enforcing for more than 200 years, arguing that it was God’s will that suicide murderers should be executed.
As a result, the proposal was initially rejected by theologians, lawyers and the government alike.

Nevertheless, the number of suicide murders just kept on growing.

But when, a decade later, in 1767, the death penalty was finally abolished, convicted suicide murderers were instead whipped once a year and were given the toughest and most degrading work tasks on offer.

And this was what finally put an end to the suicide murders.

Thanks for reading 🤗