Bar test
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The Bahrprobe (also Bahrrecht and Scheines Recht , lat. Ius cruentationis "bleeding right") was a divine judgment (ordal) in the Middle Ages with which one hoped to find the murderer in a murder case or with which an accused tried to prove his innocence.
The suspect was brought to the laid body. He had then to lay his hand on the wound and in a fixed Eidformel to swear his innocence. If the body started to bleed again, the suspect was considered guilty, otherwise innocent. The test was based on the assumption that the spirit of the deceased was still present in the body ("living corpse") and wanted to avenge the loss of his body by bleeding.
The oldest legal source in Germany that describes the Bahrprobe as a trial institute is the Freising Law Book of 1328 (Art. 273) , according to which the divine judgment procedure should even be carried out on murder victims who have already been buried.
The bar test is mentioned in the Nibelungenlied and was used in individual cases up into the 17th and 18th centuries. In doing so, however, she experienced a functional change from inquisition to evidence. But it always seems to have only come into consideration as a subsidiary means of information, as a last resort, so to speak. In the course of the Enlightenment, it was finally removed from legal life.
The bar test at Hans Spiess in Ettiswil in 1503 became famous.
literature
- Hans-Kurt Claußen (Ed.): Freisinger Rechtsbuch (Germanic Rights NF, Dept. City Law Books), Böhlau, Weimar 1941, Art. 273 (with nhd. Translation)
- Wolfgang Schild: Alte Jurisdiction , Callwey, Munich 1980, pp. 18–20 (with ill.); ders., On the criminal treatment of the dead, in: Norbert Stefenelli (ed.), Body without Life, Böhlau, Vienna 1998, p. 855ff.
- Werner Ogris: Art. Bahrprobe . In: Albrecht Cordes , Heiner Lück , Dieter Werkmüller , Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand (eds.), Concise Dictionary of German Legal History , 2nd, completely revised and expanded edition, Volume I, Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2008, Sp. 408-410. ISBN 978-3-503-07912-4 .
- Francesco Paolo de Ceglia: Saving the Phenomenon: Why Corpses Bled in the Presence of their Murderer in Early Modern Science . In: Francesco Paolo de Ceglia (Ed.), The Body of Evidence Corpses and Proofs in Early Modern European Medicine . Brill, Leiden-Boston 2020, pp. 23-52, doi: 10.1163 / 9789004284821_003 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Max Döllner : History of the development of the city of Neustadt an der Aisch up to 1933. Ph. C. W. Schmidt, Neustadt a. d. Aisch 1950, OCLC 42823280 ; New edition to mark the 150th anniversary of the Ph. C. W. Schmidt publishing house, Neustadt an der Aisch 1828–1978. Ibid 1978, ISBN 3-87707-013-2 , p. 309.