Benedikt Carpzov the Younger

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Benedikt Carpzov the Younger

Benedikt Carpzov the Younger (born May 27, 1595 in Wittenberg , † August 30, 1666 in Leipzig ) was a German criminal lawyer and witch theorist . He is considered to be one of the founders of German law . His pseudonym was Ludovicus de Montesperato .

Life

Benedikt Carpzov the Younger is the son of Benedikt Carpzov the Elder from the Carpzov family . He grew up in Colditz , where he was stopped by his father and trained by private tutors. Together with his brother Konrad Carpzov, he began his studies at the University of Wittenberg in 1610 in order to devote himself to philosophy and jurisprudence . He continued his studies, which soon focused exclusively on law, at the University of Leipzig in 1615 and at the University of Jena in 1616 . After he returned to Wittenberg in 1618, he disputed under Wolfgang Hirschbach on December 3 for licentiate and received his doctorate on February 16, 1619 as a doctor of law.

In April he left Wittenberg to go on an educational trip to Italy. There he came across Venice to Rome , learned there Italian, traveled to Naples , France, England and Holland. In the latter place he received a letter from his father, which informed him that the Elector Johann Georg I of Saxony had offered him a job at the Saxon Schöppenstuhl in Leipzig. On April 25, 1620, he took his oath of office as extraordinary assessor for this purpose and in 1623 became a full assessor. In 1632 he rose to the senior position of the institution, worked from 1636 at the higher court in Leipzig and on June 25, 1639 was a councilor at the court of appeal .

In August 1644, the elector appointed him to Dresden as court and judicial councilor. However, he did not take office because Sigismund Finckelthaus had died. Therefore, he returned to Leipzig with his family on March 25, 1645 and took over a professorship at the law faculty of the Leipzig Academy. On February 24, 1648 he took over the ordinariate at the law faculty and chairmanship at the Schöppen chair. Having made his home in Leipzig, he could not avoid an appointment as a privy councilor in Dresden in 1653. When he was dismissed for reasons of age in 1661, he went back to Leipzig and resumed his judicial office at the Schöppenstuhl. With age he got painful stones and limbs. Eventually he became fatigued from severe diarrhea. Even the medical arts of that time could not cure this diarrhea, whereupon he died to the singing of the bystanders.

He was buried in the Paulinerkirche . Its epitaph was saved from the church being blown up in 1968 and was restored in 2011.

Act

As a rather conservative, organizing and summarizing author, he was particularly important in establishing an independent German legal system. Based on his own experience, he wrote his works, which were mainly based on the case. His best-known work is the Practica nova Imperialis Saxonica rerum criminalium , in which he presents the substantive criminal law and criminal procedural law from the beginning of the 17th century. This book gave German criminal law such a comprehensive and haunting account that it was given almost the same authority for a century. His last major work, Processus juris in foro Saxonica, was for a long time a valid textbook in the training of procedural law. He is considered to be one of the first representatives of the Usus modernus pandectarum .

Carpzov, who was deeply rooted in the religiosity of his time, was also strongly religiously shaped in criminal law thinking and influenced by the school of Salamanca , in particular by Diego de Covarrubias y Leyva . A crime was seen as a rebellion, ultimately as an insult to God himself. For Carpzov, the perpetrator was not only a lawbreaker who violated a state ban, but also a sinner who had rebelled against God. In addition to retaliation, punishment also served as a deterrent to the general public from the crime. In addition to the harshness of his punishment due to the time (in the middle of the Thirty Years War ), the punishment of the lawbreaker should nevertheless be fairly balanced.

Among other things, a refinement of the concept of guilt, a limited arrangement of the extraordinary punishment and a restriction of the legal interpretation and analogy served this goal. In criminal trials, he tried to keep the use of torture within as narrow limits as possible and to acquit a guilty person rather than convict an innocent person. In trials against witches , of the existence of which Carpzov had no doubt, he is said to have received a large number of death sentences. However, the sources are difficult. Carpzov as an individual cannot be proven beyond doubt that individual death sentences have been passed, neither in relation to the witchcraft ruling nor other crimes, since all of the judges 'judges' decisions were made as a joint decision. Nevertheless, Carpzov is said to have theoretically advocated the persecution of witches to this day. This is justified by the fact that Carpzov expressed himself in the first part of his Practica Nova in the questions 48-50 on the individual magic rites and explicitly specified death by fire as a punishment for the devil's pact, the devil's compensation and the damaging spell.

family

Epitaph in the University Church of St. Pauli (2017)

Benedikt Carpzov concluded two marriages: The first marriage on August 28, 1627 with Regina Cramer von Clausbruch (born June 20, 1603 in Leipzig; † June 14, 1637 ibid), the daughter of the heir to Meuselwitz Heinrich Cramer von Claußbruch († 31. August 1615 in Meuselwitz) and his wife Catharina Vollkommer. During his ten-year marriage to her, three sons and two daughters were born: Benedikt Carpzov, Heinrich Julius Carpzov, Benedikt Heinrich Carpzov, Regina Elisabeth Carpzov and Regina Christina Carpzov, who all died in their youth.

His second marriage was on November 15, 1640 with Catarina, the daughter of the Leipzig professor of theology Mauritius Burchard . There were no children from their marriage.

Honor

Carpzovstraße, Leipzig: In 2001 the city of Leipzig named a street after Benedikt Carpzov.

Works

  • Practica nova imperialis Saxonica rerum criminalium . Wittenberg 1635, Frankfurt / Main 1752 Proof of digital copies of the 1670 edition
  • Embarrassing Saxon Inquisition and Eighth Trial . Leipzig 1638, 1733
  • Processus juris in foro Saxonica . Frankfurt / Main 1638, Jena 1657, 1708
  • Responsa juris electoralia . Leipzig 1642
  • Jurisprudentia ecclesiastica seu consistorialis . Hanover 1649, 1721
  • Jurisprudentia forensis Romano-Saxiona . Frankfurt / Main 1638, Leipzig 1721

literature

Specialist dictionaries

Web links

Commons : Category: Benedikt Carpzov the Younger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Saved works of art from the university church are being restored , article (with picture) in the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung of March 31, 2011, accessed on March 31, 2011
  2. ^ Franz Wieacker : History of private law in the modern age. With special consideration of the German development (= jurisprudence in individual representations. Vol. 7, ZDB -ID 501118-8 ). 2nd, revised edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1967. Rn. 247.
  3. ↑ Benedict Carpzov , witch hunt in Leipzig in the period 1430–1750, 2017, accessed on December 25, 2018.
  4. ^ Pätzold, Julia: Leipziger learned lay judges' rulings collection. A contribution to the history of reception in Saxony in the 16th century . Berlin 2009, p. 56 .
  5. ↑ Sönke, Lorenz: Benedikt Carpzov and the witch hunt . In: Günther Jerouschek, Wolfgang. Schild, Walter Gropp (Ed.): Benedikt Carpzov. New perspectives on a controversial Saxon lawyer . Tübingen 2000, p. 96 .
  6. ↑ Hartwig Hohnsbein: Return of a torturer . In: Ossietzky . tape 19 , no. 7 , 2016, p. 234-236 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Carpzov, Benedict the Younger
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Montesperato, Ludovicus de (pseudonym); Carpzov, Benedict the Younger
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German criminal lawyer, witch theorist and founder of German law
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1595
PLACE OF BIRTH Wittenberg
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1666
Place of death Leipzig