Suicide as a Transgression of Norm Suicide Within the Context of Religious, Criminal and Medical Norm from the 1600s to the 1800s Suicide as a Transgression of Norm : Suicide Within the Context of Religious, Criminal and Medical Norm from the 1600s to the 1800s
Abstract
The paper explores the issue of suicide as a transgression of contemporary norm, focusing especially on the Czech lands. It strives to identify the norms which a suicide was believed to transgress, and the extent to which the criminal and legal norm was in fact determined by a complex of many diverse norms, up until the late 1700s.
Such norms determined the method of disposal of the dead body, which was denied burial in consecrated ground (ecclesiastical/canonical norm), and sometimes even subjected to various humiliating practices, which resembled dissociative rituals used to dispose of "the unclean dead," or rituals involving elements of protective magic against vampires (customary norm). The gradual decriminalization of suicide in the 18th century was a result of the general tendency toward rationalization and secularization, but also of the "medicalization" of criminal proceedings, considering that since the late 1700s, medical professionals began to be used as experts who determined the suicide's (in)sanity, thus establishing a new type of "norm."