Wow, that is an excellent and very informative essay.
The Cosel cousin's case was vaguely known to me before, as there's one theory that this is how Flemming & August got their hands on August's marriage pledge - the cousin had kept it for her, was put in trial and one of the conditions for not getting burned and getting prison with an option of buying himself out was that he handed over the promise of marriage.
BTW, I note that FW executing the poor sodomites (both the ones practicising bestiality and the m/m variation) and offering the rich nobility the chance to buy their lives (though with a prison sentence) is one of those things to keep in mind together with his attitude towards Gundling's funeral and the pastors' stand re: same the next time someone praises his tough-but-fair hardcore Protestant Christianity.
Speaking of that:
And on the more chilling and very unusual side of things - not least because lesbian sex was a lot more complicated to judge - a case from 1721, where FW insisted on the death penalty for a woman who had lived as a man, even been a soldier in the War of the Spanish Succession, and had married her partner
Checking the wiki entry you linked, I'd guess she was doubly offensive to him since she kept playing the "repentant sinner", changed faiths, and took Protestants and Catholics alike for what their money was worth when not soldiering (going by the wiki entry, she saw more battlefield action than he ever did). And she used a dildo. He must have felt castrated on every level. Poor woman.
even though those executions were kind of expensive.
This is sadly familiar to me, due to the fact we had a terrible ca. 1000 people death toll in the worst witch craze in my hometown from 1626 - 1630, and after a while, the firewood being expensive became a serious problem - solved by letting the families of the executed pay for it. However, I did not know death through being burned alive (or after a beheading, if FW was feeling merciful) was the standard method of execution for sodomites in a Protestant principality of the 18th century. Keeping in mind that this was when there were a lot of pamphlets talking about the Spanish-Catholic barbarism of their autodafés already.
On a less gruesome note, the article contains so many bestiality details that I repeatedly went "I did not need to know that" inwardly. Poor cows. Poor horses. Whyever weren't there any sheep involved? All the jokes I've come across used sheep.
Re: Sodomy and Death Penalty. (Again.)
The Cosel cousin's case was vaguely known to me before, as there's one theory that this is how Flemming & August got their hands on August's marriage pledge - the cousin had kept it for her, was put in trial and one of the conditions for not getting burned and getting prison with an option of buying himself out was that he handed over the promise of marriage.
BTW, I note that FW executing the poor sodomites (both the ones practicising bestiality and the m/m variation) and offering the rich nobility the chance to buy their lives (though with a prison sentence) is one of those things to keep in mind together with his attitude towards Gundling's funeral and the pastors' stand re: same the next time someone praises his tough-but-fair hardcore Protestant Christianity.
Speaking of that:
And on the more chilling and very unusual side of things - not least because lesbian sex was a lot more complicated to judge - a case from 1721, where FW insisted on the death penalty for a woman who had lived as a man, even been a soldier in the War of the Spanish Succession, and had married her partner
Checking the wiki entry you linked, I'd guess she was doubly offensive to him since she kept playing the "repentant sinner", changed faiths, and took Protestants and Catholics alike for what their money was worth when not soldiering (going by the wiki entry, she saw more battlefield action than he ever did). And she used a dildo. He must have felt castrated on every level. Poor woman.
even though those executions were kind of expensive.
This is sadly familiar to me, due to the fact we had a terrible ca. 1000 people death toll in the worst witch craze in my hometown from 1626 - 1630, and after a while, the firewood being expensive became a serious problem - solved by letting the families of the executed pay for it. However, I did not know death through being burned alive (or after a beheading, if FW was feeling merciful) was the standard method of execution for sodomites in a Protestant principality of the 18th century. Keeping in mind that this was when there were a lot of pamphlets talking about the Spanish-Catholic barbarism of their autodafés already.
On a less gruesome note, the article contains so many bestiality details that I repeatedly went "I did not need to know that" inwardly. Poor cows. Poor horses. Whyever weren't there any sheep involved? All the jokes I've come across used sheep.