Folia Theologica et Canonica 10. 32/24 (2021)
Ius canonicum
142 ELEMER BALOGH diction extended to only three localities: Beilngries, Eichstätt and Berching. From here on, more and more villages were conquered by the Bavarian princes, as the most striking sign of independent provincial lordship was the possession and exercise of (in Hungarian: ‘pallosjog’; in German: ‘Fraisch’). Criminal justice thus also served to demonstrate sovereign provincial lordship, in which the princes sometimes showed unexpected hardness from an ecclesiastical provincial lord. Bishop of Eichstätt, who studied in Bologna and Padua, IV. Frederick (Graf von Oettingen) captured the leaders of the Waldensian heretics expelled from France and sent ten of them to the bonfire after cruel torture (1394). He also beheaded 22 citizens of Kerreiden (1408) because they joined Swabian cities, and a similar fate befell 18 citizens of Spalt in the same year. The contemporary secular criminal procedure law was also authoritative by the episcopal criminal court. Emperor Frederick III. urged the bishop of Eichstätt (1474) not to judge in the future on the basis of the testimony of formerly ordinary jurors (Übersiebnung), but to place the emphasis on obtaining the material evidence, during which the accused was tortured. With this, the torture was also established in the court of Eichstätt, which was abolished in Bavaria only in Napoleonic times (1807).7 Episcopal judges condemned all cases that could be linked to sin at all - that is, almost everything. However, in accordance with general practice, judgments handed down had to be enforced by secular courts and authorities: „Die Kirche dürstet nicht nach Blut.” The substantive criminal law of the episcopal see in Eichstätt was quite similar to the secular one, and the punishments did not diifer significantly. The ordinary punishment (poena ordinaria) was the death penalty, which could be simple (hanging, beheading) or qualified (burial alive, death by fire, breaking on the wheel, etc.), depending on the circumstances. Extraordinary punishments (poena extraordinaria) were quite mild, such as stigmatization, crippling, caning, expulsion. Imprisonment was unknown in the modem sense, possibly ‘investigative detention’. From the beginning of the 15th century, in particular, many witch trials took place in Eichstätt, which gained new impetus in the wake of the bull, Summis desiderantes affectibus by Pope Innocent III (1484) In Eichstätt, the first documented witch trial was conducted in 1411, and the last “anno 1723, den 20. November, ist ein Hexenmädlein von Buchdorf mit dem Schwert gericht worden, und der Leib verbrennt.” The practice in Eichstätt following the assassination is remarkable. The agreement and reparation that replaced the ancient revenge persisted for a very long time, essentially until the introduction of Carolina (1532). According to 7 The first abolition of judicial torture in Germany was by Frederick the Great (1740) and the last abolition was in Gotha; cf. Schmidt, E., Einführung in die Geschichte der deutschen Strafrechtspflege, 281.
