Vom Geist der Strafe. Andreas Gryphius’ Carolus Stuardus und die englischen Debatten über den Tod Karls I.

This essay takes as its starting point the debates for and against the death sentence against the English King Charles I in Andreas Gryphius’ ‘Carolus Stuardus.’ These debates were originally conducted in England, but, not least through various translations, had an impact on and throughout Europe. The focus of this essay is the interchangeability of arguments regarding the divine legitimacy of rule claimed by both the royal and independente positions. Led in ‘Carolus Stuardus’, at least on the royal side, by the ghosts (of the past), this debate is a central one. These spirits, a central theme in Gryphius’ theatrical works, demand divine vengeance for Charles’ death. However, this claim is made ‒ unlike by Charles, who claims an imitatio Christi for himself ‒ only on the basis of the Mosaic law of talion, which the opposite side also claims for itself with the same arguments, only directed the other way around. Therefore, the whole undertaking, especially clearly in the B-version, leads into aporia: There are two groups of spirits facing each other, which seek revenge with equal right, but which thus, in the sense of the legal concept of the early modern period reconstructed in the essay, can only be private, but not divine punishment. The search for the spirit, i.e., the legitimation of punitive punishment thus ends, at least in this particular case, in nothingness.