Um das Leben würfeln
Losentscheidung, Kriegsrecht und inszenierte Willkür in der Frühen Neuzeit
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4548385 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Historisches Seminar Domplatz 20–22, D-48 143 Münster Deutschland), Barbara Stollberg‐rilinger (University of Münster, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 182-209 |
| Publication date | 2014-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Historische Anthropologie (BOOK_SERIES) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0942-8704 • E-ISSN: 2194-4032 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.7788/ha-2014-0203 |
| OpenAlex | W2019857175 |
| Language | DE |
| Citations received | 3 |
Scholarly literature of the Early Modern period often mentions that soldiers who had committed a collective crime, such as mutiny or desertion, had to toss a dice in order to decide whether they were to be executed or saved. The article asks to what extent such decision by lot really was a military practice. It begins by reconstructing the context of the theological and legal debates dealing with the general issue of decision by lot, traces the reception of the ancient Roman praxis of ‚decimatio‘ by the late humanism, and shows that it was implemented into positive military law all over Europa in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War. Evidence for cases in which individuals were in fact gambling for their life is, however, hard to come by. Only very few, spectacular cases have so far been documented. For these cases, it can be shown that the decision by lot did not have a religious meaning and that it always remained contested as well. It thus turns out that the practice of the ‚Decimatio‘ embodied an economic as well as a psychological, but not a legal rationality: Justitia does not throw the dice – she levels a scale
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Dice · Epistemology · Humanism · Mutiny · Political science · Praxis · Rationality · Sociology · Witness · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,38 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2025 (8) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |