Pastoral care in the shadows of the High-Court. Edition and analysis of the handwritten records from a Lutheran diacon around 1600.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Peter Schuster
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: from 2017 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 368299051

Caring for the souls of those sentenced to death was one of the most prominent fields of contestation in the early confessional debates in the Reich. Its critical evaluation, especially the evaluation of the attitude of the clergy of all confessions towards their pastoral work, has not been at the centre of historical research so far, apart from a few case studies.In the archives of the Germanic National museum in Nuremberg lie the handwritten records of Johannes Hagendorn, a Lutheran deacon who was responsible for the pastoral care of those sentenced to death from 1605-1620. Therefore, it is not surprising that there were quite a few attempts at editing the text of Hagendorn over the last decades. It is the aim of the envisioned project to realize the edition and make the records of Johannes Hagendorn accessible to a broader scientific audience. Furthermore, the project will look at Hagendorns text in a comparative perspective. For this purpose, one of the most important documents of the Jesuit pastoral care, the records of Pedro de Leon, who was a Jesuit pastor cared for 300 men sentenced to death in Sivilla between 1578 and 1616, will be analysed alongside the records of Hagendorn. Although Pedro de Leons diary has already been edited in 1981, it has so far been ignored by researchers working in the field of the history of criminal law. Both traditions are similar in multiple ways, but at the same time point to evidently confessional differences in the perception and interpretation of the authority as well as the sentenced men and the authors own role as pastors and caretakers. Hagendorns journal is highly relevant for numerous research areas in premodern history. The project will focus on the evaluation and analysis of the text in the context of the history of criminality [delinquency] and criminal law. His writings prove the unconditional approval of the death penalty by the protestant church as well as the fact that they only cared for those threatened with torturesome punishment. As a pastor, he was closer to the contemned than anybody else. Alongside details about the penal system, Hagendorns text offers insight into the level of education, the prison conditions, the mental state as well as the behavior and the spiritual needs of the prisoners. He describes the role of the pastor within the penal system that often surmounted their actual duties. Furthermore, he offers insight into the communicative processes during torturesome interrogations, in which he himself, as a well as the judicial persons and relatives of the prisoners took part. In this way, the journal of Johannes Hagendorn brings us close to the torture and pain of the condemned men than any other document of the time.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants