Embarrassing questioning
The embarrassing questioning or also extremely embarrassing questioning was a procedural element of the blood jurisdiction of the high and late Middle Ages as well as the early modern period . The awkward questioning is also called a sharp question or torture . The term embarrassing is derived from pain , so in today's language it can be translated as painful .
Originally, the embarrassing questioning was the main questioning of the accused in inquisition trials ; later, the embarrassing questioning was generally understood to mean the use of torture to obtain a confession from a defendant . The use of torture as an interrogation method can be proven in many epochs and parts of the world, but its manifestations developed very differently from region to region. The embarrassing questioning is documented in writing in 1499 in the Tyrolean Malefizordnung under King Maximilian I and then in 1532 under Emperor Charles V in the uniform imperial neck court order, whereby the so-called Constitutio Criminalis Carolina or also neck court order of Karl V is the first general German penal code. She gained fame in Europe in the early modern period in the wake of the Inquisition and the witch hunt .
The embarrassing questioning should only be used if the accused had not previously been convicted by a confession called the Urgicht or by the procedural method of evidence . In addition, there had to be an urgent suspicion . Based on the original principle, the embarrassing questioning could not be used arbitrarily. Excluded from the embarrassing survey as an application were children under 14 years of age, the disabled , old people, pregnant women, the mentally ill , dumb people and sick people who in all probability would not have survived the embarrassing survey.
The preliminary stage of the embarrassing questioning is territion (fright), in which the torture instruments are demonstrated and explained to the accused. The Bamberg ordeal was a milder form of embarrassing questioning .
literature
- Edward Peters: Torture. History of the Embarrassing Questioning. European Publishing House, 2001, ISBN 3-434-50004-9 .
- Heinrich Institoris: The witch hammer. BiblioBazaar Publishing House, 2009, ISBN 978-1-110-07364-1 .
- The embarrassing court order of Emperor Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire from 1532 = (Carolina). Ed. And ext. by Friedrich-Christian Schroeder. Reclam, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-15-018064-8 .
