Isabel Casteels

Dissertation

Looking for Justice. Execution Spectators and the Revolt in the Low Countries, ca. 1520-1585

Supervisors: Prof. dr. Judith Pollmann & Prof. dr. Maïka De Keyzer (KU Leuven)
Nomination: Leiden University, Faculty of Humanities

Everyone has heard of political or economic crises, but did you know that there was once such a thing as an execution crisis? We encounter this term in the fascinating and intriguing dissertation by Isabel Casteels, who investigated how spectators reacted to executions in the sixteenth century, specifically between 1520 and 1585.

Drawing on local chronicles and manuscripts, Casteels examined around 4,000 eyewitness accounts of public executions carried out in the Low Countries. The authors of these accounts, generally members of the upper middle classes, regarded executions as a barometer of order and stability in society. When executions proceeded in an orderly fashion, this was seen as confirmation of the legitimacy of the ruling authorities.

Casteels’ dissertation is full of compelling findings. She shows, for example, that public executions followed a fixed script, the ars moriendi. The condemned person asked for forgiveness and the audience displayed compassion, creating an optimal balance of mercy and justice. This required, however, that both the sentence and its execution were perceived as legitimate and proportionate.

With the rise of the Reformation, prosecutions for heresy increased dramatically. As a result, the number of executions grew explosively during the 1530s. Social unrest increased as well. From around 1560 onwards, Calvinists increasingly began to disrupt public executions. In some cases, they even rescued condemned individuals from the scaffold. An execution crisis emerged: local authorities lost control and public order broke down. Matters deteriorated further during the Iconoclastic Fury of 1566. Only after the fall of Antwerp in 1585 did the execution crisis, and with it the broader crisis of authority, come to an end.

It may seem a macabre subject, but with Casteels as our guide, readers find themselves almost in the front row of these executions. It is a gripping historical experience. The author writes with great narrative power, drawing the reader, through the eyewitness accounts, into a world of repentance and redemption, revolt and rebellion, compassion and mercy.

Casteels succeeds in combining meticulous source analysis and scholarly precision with a lively and accessible style. As a result, the reader comes remarkably close to the lived reality of the past. The spectators of then and the readers of today are brought together, as it were. In doing so, Casteels has produced an exceptional and outstanding piece of scholarship.