Земно правосъдие в света на мистичното: процесът срещу „Върколака от Бедбург“ през 1589 г.
Human Justice in a Mystic World: the Trial against the „Werewolf of Bedburg“ in 1589

Author(s): Nikolay Yanev
Subject(s): History, Social Sciences, Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence, Criminal Law, Sociology, Modern Age, Evaluation research, Studies in violence and power, Sociology of Culture, 16th Century, Social Norms / Social Control, Court case
Published by: Университет за национално и световно стопанство (УНСС)
Keywords: Peter Stumpp; XVI century; social construction of crime; werewolf; serial мurders
Summary/Abstract: This text reconstructs the events leading up to the brutal execution of the German peasant Peter Stumpp, accused of making a pact with the devil and, in the guise of a wolf, committing a series of gruesome murders between 1564 and 1589 in the vicinity of Cologne. Using available sources, it presents details about the convicted man, his modus operandi, the type of victims, and other aspects to reveal a realistic crime, stripped of supernatural elements and understandable by today‘s standards of credibility. The aim is to challenge those theoretical approaches that reduce the explanation of the „witch hunts “ in the pre-modern and early modern period to a mere tool of social control. By reassessing the perspective of the prosecution, we seek to demonstrate that such seemingly fantastical trials could serve an important function—protecting society from the threat of inhuman, bestial cruelty. In the socially constructed reality of the 16th century, the „Peter Stumpp“ case provided contemporaries with as legitimate an explanation of the world as the logical frameworks of rational science do for us today.

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