From Sin to Insanity

In the broadest treatment yet of suicide in Europe during the period 1500–1800, 11 authors combine elements of social, cultural, legal, and intellectual history to trace important changes in the ways Europeans experienced and understood voluntary death. Well into the seventeenth century, Europeans viewed suicide as a terrible crime and an unforgivable sin resulting from demonic temptation. By the late eighteenth century, however, suicide was rarely subject to judicial penalties, and society tended to blame self-inflicted death on insanity rather than on the devil. From Sin to Insanity shows that early modern Europe witnessed nothing less than the birth of modern suicide: increasing in frequency, self-inflicted death became decriminalized, secularized, and medicalized, viewed as a regrettable but not shameful result of reversals in fortune or physical or mental infirmity. The ten chapters focus on suicide cases and attitudes toward self-murder from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries in geographical settings as diverse as Scandinavia and Hungary, France and Germany, England and Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands.

"It is rare that a collection of essays is so well focused and well presented. The authors explore uncharted territory, studying parts of Europe that previously attracted no modern social histories of suicide. Their groundbreaking analyses suggest how rich the subject and the materials really are. In each case new sources the authors have uncovered suggest fresh approaches and questions.", "Suicide—once seen as a dreadful act of despair or, less commonly, a heroic sacrifice—remains the subject of intense contemporary debate. In this compelling collection of essays, Watt and his colleagues offer a deft exploration of the meaning of self-inflicted death for people of every station across preindustrial Europe. In the process, they meticulously illuminate the origins of modern perceptions and concerns.", "The fact that From Sin to Insanity assembles so much information in a single volume makes it unique. Up to now, anyone wishing to read up on the history of suicide in this period had to consult specialized studies targeting a single country or area. This collection makes available for the first time a comprehensive overview of attitudes toward suicide in most of Western Europe, at a pivotal time in history."

Jeffrey R. Watt is Professor of History at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of The Making of Modern Marriage: Matrimonial Control and the Rise of Sentiment in Neucâhtel, 1550-1800 (also from Cornell) and Choosing Death: Suicide and Calvinism in Early Modern Geneva and the editor of The Long Reformation.