La pena di morte e il riscatto delle anime in età moderna. A proposito di Delitto e perdono di Adriano Prosperi
Storicamente. 2014;10(1) DOI 10.12977/stor564
Journal Title: Storicamente
ISSN: 2282-6033 (Print); 1825-411X (Online)
Publisher: BraDypUS
Society/Institution: University of Bologna
LCC Subject Category: History (General) and history of Europe: History (General)
Country of publisher: Italy
Language of fulltext: French, Portuguese, English, Spanish; Castilian, Italian
Full-text formats available: PDF, HTML
AUTHORS
Cesarina Casanova
(Univ. di Bologna, Dipartimento di Storia Culture Civiltà, P.zza S.Giovanni in Monte 2, Bologna, I-40124, Italy)
EDITORIAL INFORMATION
Time From Submission to Publication: 9 weeks
Abstract | Full Text
At the beginning of Delitto e perdono Adriano Prosperi recalls the killing of Osama Bin Laden, regarded as an act of justice by the American people and its president. Then, his book goes on spurring useful remarks about the history of the idea of conviction to death as a repair. One of the main threads of western thought about capital punishment can be found in contrasting vengeance and mercy from XI century, when Christ’s sacrifice became the ideal link for most criminal codes. In fact, every executed man could hope for God’s forgiveness and for his own soul’s salvation at the foot of the Cross. Face to the advices of Confortatori, which until XIX century escorted all men sentenced to death to the scaffold, almost none refused to agree to religious solace, and so the execution proceeding became a sacramental act.