Case and Circumstance: Christian Thomasius and the Poetics of the Casus circa 1700 155 Case and Circumstance: Christian Thomasius and the Poetics of the Casus circa 1700 Jasper Schagerl Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Abstract: Using a collection of cases compiled by Christian Thomasius as a paradigm, this paper shows how the practices of knowledge concerning circumstances ( circumstantiae ) lead to a far-reaching coupling of pragmatic legal texts with the simple form of the ‘case,’ as described by André Jolles. Not only do these texts serve as operators that transform readers into expert evaluators of clues; the case to be decided will now be the form of legal decision-making itself. Taking the material and medial aspects of case files as well as the situational context of their usage into consideration, I develop a dynamic notion of a casuistic form that relates internal and external circumstances� Keywords: Christian Thomasius, circumstantial evidence, files, cases, evidential paradigm Long before the modern disciplinary society transformed each individual into a case to be judged, the tradition of rhetorical jurisprudence and early modern casuistry constituted cases through sets of circumstances (Foucault 191)� Their narration did not allow “tiefere Blicke in das Menschen-Herz” [deeper glances into the human heart] 1 (Schiller 202), nor could one detect within them “das Innerste der Gedanken” [the inner core of thoughts] (Schiller 203). Nevertheless, like modern case studies, which increasingly have attracted scholarly interest as a form of writing independent of disciplinary and generic affiliations, 2 early modern cases are equally productive for both literary and scientific communication� Their potential for interdiscursive connectivity lies not in the registration of individual biographies and their turning points but rather in a focus on their particular circumstances - an almost obsessive scrutiny from which a ‘circumstantial style’ 3 of writing emerges in the field of law as well as in literature. 156 Jasper Schagerl In early modern Europe, circumstances were deployed in two main theaters of operations. In the normative fields of law and moral theology, following the tradition of rhetorical and dialectical topics, circumstances were considered to be “denen Dingen und Personen gemeinsame und äusserliche Zeichen” [signs common and external to things and persons] upon which legal decisions were based. With the help of these signs, the law itself could be “entweder geschärfft oder gelindert” [either aggravated or mitigated] (“Circumstantiæ,” col. 151). But they did not only define acts and modify rules; observing, connecting, and narrating them was also crucial in determining the probability of past (and future) events. Thus, in addition to their juridical and moral relevance, they had an eminently logical and forensic function within the “Zusammenhang[] der Dinge” [interrelation of things] as the “Grund wahrscheinlicher Vermuthungen“ [basis of probable assumptions] (“Umstand, Umstände,” col. 1063). Circumstances formed the premises of conjectural arguments� In forensics they took the form of clues, coming into play when either the truth of an event itself was not evident, or its subject and modalities were yet to be reconstructed. In both their legal and logical incarnations, circumstances play an important role in the development of an early modern poetics of casus � When the German literary scholar André Jolles integrated the poetic form of the ‘case’ ( Kasus ) into his system of Simple Forms (1930), he approached it from within this ‘circumstantial’ tradition of early modern casuistry. His remarks, however, touch only on the normative aspects of circumstances, ignoring their conjectural dimension. According to Jolles the poetic form of the ‘case’ is characterized by two criteria. First, the ‘case’ is a narrative that measures “norms […] against norms, in an ascending series,” realizing as form what Jolles calls “a dispersion […] from the norm” (144). The validity of norms is therefore assessed in individual cases: “With the case, the form arises from the use of a standard for judging actions, but what the actualization does is inquire into the value of the norm” (152—53). Second, the ‘case’ “asks the question, but cannot give the answer; […] it imposes the duty of judgment upon us, but does not itself contain the judgment” (153). The ‘case’ asks which norm does justice to the circumstances of a singular event without being able to resolve this question once and for all through a generally binding standard� Jolles’ morphological approach conceives simple forms ahistorically. Not only does his analysis of various ‘ Gestalten ’ [structured forms] neglect their historical development and medial preconditions, but he also ignores their pragmatic function as carriers of information and media for the accumulation and transmission of knowledge. The narration of cases, one must argue instead, assumes different forms and functions in different epistemic, discursive, and practical contexts. This paper therefore seeks to link the simple form ‘case’ Case and Circumstance: Christian Thomasius and the Poetics of the Casus circa 1700 157 to its historical dimension and lay out some peculiarities of the poetics of the legal case around 1700. Jolles’ conception, according to which simple forms are generated from specific “mode[s] of engagement with the world” (xxiii) - what he calls Geistesbeschäftigungen [mental dispositions] -, requires a nominalistic inversion� Instead of essentializing “the act of weighing” ( Jolles 153) as the characteristic mental disposition of the ‘case,’ I consider it an effect of the historically contingent practices of knowledge manifested in the casuistic form� Using a collection of cases compiled by the legal scholar Christian Thomasius as a paradigm, I show how those practices lead to a far-reaching coupling of pragmatic legal texts with the poetic form of the ‘case.’ Not only do these texts serve as operators that transform readers into “weighing and judging” subjects ( Jolles 153); the case to be decided is now the form of legal decision-making itself� The premise of this conjunction lies in the early modern discourse on circumstances� Circumstantial considerations have always opened up the wide field of casuistry. After all, only particular circumstances give a case its specificity, necessitate casuistic decision-making and thus guarantee the autonomy and determinacy of this small or simple form� Yet it is the interdependence of casuistic form and contingent practices of knowledge that gives the Geistesbeschäftigung of ‘weighing and judging’ its specific historical character. Thomasius began to engage with circumstances in a new way� Their singularity at the same time constituted and transcended the form, compelling the actors involved to bring new knowledges and text types into play: expert opinions, medical breakthroughs, autopsies. These newly conceived circumstances call specific institutions of decision-making into being, giving the Geistesbeschäftigung of judging its historical particularity� When Thomasius published his four-volume collection of legal cases, Ernsthaffte / aber doch Muntere und Vernünfftige Thomasische Gedancken u. Erinnerungen über allerhand außerlesene Juristische Händel [Serious / and yet animated and reasonable Thomasian thoughts and memories about all sorts of selected legal proceedings] (1720-21), he had been engaged in a grand project of historicizing the law for several years� 4 In his view the legal procedures of the Kingdom of Prussia were “vom Kopf bis auf die Füsse mit dem Krebs behafftet” [afflicted with cancer from head to toe] ( Juristische Händel 2: 190), and he was eager to find the origin of their shortcomings. A product of his research, this collection of cases was intended to serve as an example “[des] grossen und allgemeinen Elendes so wohl in bürgerlichen als peinlichen Fällen” [of the great and general misery in civil as well as criminal cases] ( Juristische Händel 1: Preface)� It presents disturbing cases with which to explore the weak points of the law and lay bare the inadequacies of jurisprudence. The collection had the further 158 Jasper Schagerl function of providing lawyers with practical training� Prospective civil servants had to learn to navigate complex cases� The decision-making problems raised by these cases demonstrate a growing attention to circumstances in the form of clues ( Indizien ) around 1700, 5 which allowed an explicitly narrative regime of knowledge to infiltrate legal discourse. The material and pragmatic aspects of Thomasius’s collection, dictated by the legal practices of the inquisitorial trial, reflect the logic of circumstantial evidence, with its characteristic coupling of institutions, practices, and text types. This nexus is reenacted in the narratological idiosyncrasies of the cases themselves� The Juristische Händel are composed of extracts of case files. Thomasius’s decision to publish such files made sense on at least three levels. First, cases were materialized only in files. 6 In them each operation was registered and dated and thus given a “temporal index” with which “that act can be addressed as an event in time” (Vismann, Files 81). Second, by including the files, Thomasius could achieve a reality effect: the format signals that the cases in fact took place and were processed in a specific institutional framework. Third, files formed the backbone of Thomasius’s intended legal reform� 7 As the current statutes principally concerned cases that occurred “kaum alle hundert Jahr einmahl” [hardly once in a hundred years] (Thomasius, Cautelen 162) and were therefore practically useless, Thomasius had to comb through the “Fürstliche[] Archive[]” [sovereign’s archives] ( Juristische Händel 2: 180) for viable precedents� If the right law could not be found in the statutes, one had to look at the cases themselves. That such an extensive archive of case files existed at all was a consequence of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina , the criminal law code of Emperor Charles V from 1532� The Carolina had established the inquisitorial trial next to the old accusatorial trial, installing a public authority of inquiry to investigate ex officio even in the absence of plaintiffs. 8 On the one hand, this lead to a momentous amalgamation of accuser and judge; on the other, following the model of the Roman-canon procedure, the inquisitorial trial distinguished strictly between local investigation and centralized deliberation, with the dramatic consequence that defendants were never able to meet their judges. Instead, the Carolina established the institution of ‘file expedition’ ( Aktenversendung 9 ), a new form of written communication which circulated the circumstances registered on site through higher authorities� From now on the world would be observed through a ‘juridical filter’ (Kirchmeier, Verbrechen als Exemplum 8), constituting cases in the medium of files and doubling the world of experience with a legal imaginary� 10 In the publication of case files Thomasius found a means of representation for the legal practices of the institution of Aktenversendung � His collection enacted the documentary reality of law, 11 demonstrating for his readers the ‘weighing’ Case and Circumstance: Christian Thomasius and the Poetics of the Casus circa 1700 159 of evidence on which decision-making was based. For Thomasius, this was the only form through which the way the legal system processed cases could be grasped. “Diese Umbstände,” he writes, “kan ich nicht besser beschreiben, als wenn ich den extract aus denen an uns geschickten Actis hersetze” [I cannot describe these circumstances better than by printing the extract of the files sent to us] ( Juristische Händel 1: 214)� 12 In these cases, the form is intrinsically tied to its material medium� 13 It is constituted through a functional arrangement of medial elements, defined by the affordances of the files themselves. Form emerges as part of a feedback mechanism between material preconditions and the pragmatics of a situated context. The medial potential of files to connect things and people, institutions and text types, and their function of transporting evidence from one site to another, are thus reproduced in the cases. Replicating the logic of circumstantial evidence, the casuistic form appears as a ‘tight coupling’ of those elements that are ‘loosely’ coupled by files as a medium (Luhmann 114—44). In this view, medium and form are inextricably linked, implying one another. The possibilities of the medium are regenerated within the process of formation: to qualify the circumstances, cases partially unravel their ‘tight’ texture to enter temporarily into ‘loose’ relations with other small forms, transforming the Juristische Händel into a series of casuistic assemblages� Still the multilayered observations of the actors through which the legal system operated posed Thomasius considerable narratological difficulties. He solves them by adding an additional narrative stratum, supplementing the particular circumstances of the cases with an extensive description of the “Umstände der dabey vorgekommenen Gelegenheit, und der erfolgten Sui ten” [the circumstances of the occasion that took place and the legal actions that resulted] ( Juristische Händel 4: Preface). In so doing, he creates a framework for observations that do justice to the complexity both of singular cases and of the judicial procedures that generate their outcomes� In seeking to make the circumstances of individual cases narratable, Thomasius allows his readers to observe the settings of juridical forms themselves, uncovering the institutional conditions of legal decision-making, forensic knowledge, and judgment-formation in general. These operations can be followed in the first case of Thomasius’s collection, Defension einer Frauens-Person, die wegen Kindermords verdächtig war [Defense of a woman who was suspected of infanticide], which takes place in 1681 and deals with a particularly controversial topic� 14 After a concealed pregnancy the fifteen-year-old Anna is said to have killed her baby and buried it in the garden with her parents’ knowledge� The family servants discover the child there and report the crime. The protagonist of this case, however, is not Anna, but Thomasius himself, who was assigned the case as a young lawyer. This narratological move has a specific function. Instead of relating the case in the form of a 160 Jasper Schagerl coherent story, Thomasius presents his readers with an extensive collection of files, composed of juridical and bureaucratic small forms: interrogation records, pleas and petitions, as well as reports and medical surveys. First and foremost, therefore, Thomasius must make his files speak. With the figure of the young lawyer Thomasius, he installs a second-order observer who guides readers through the stack of files. Through his eyes they can observe other actors in the legal system making observations. Moreover, by tracing the movements of this figure, Thomasius makes visible all those elements and actions of the legal system that are neither acts of writing nor techniques of inscription: informal communications, for example, but also power relations and chance encounters that do not enter into the files, but nevertheless play a considerable role in the decision of cases� Thomasius thus makes good on his promise to flesh out his cases with the settings in which they occurred, and the narrative framework in which he embeds his dry documents is not without entertainment value� 15 Before he accepts the case, the young lawyer travels incognito to the scene of the alleged crime where, by chance and through all sorts of tricks, he manages to get a first look into the state of the investigation - a trope that imitates the editorial fictions of gallant literature. The files are then presented to the reader in the order of the procedural steps that generate them and according to the protagonist’s current state of understanding� The protagonist thus uncovers the circumstances of the investigation itself (the caliber and approach of local officials, for example), while his actions embody the logic of circumstantial evidence, crossing institutional boundaries and bringing various text types and forms of forensic knowledge into play� This character had a specific place in legal and political discourse around 1700, in which lawyers had become the paradigmatic figures of both counsel and critique. As one of Thomasius’s most famous students writes, their function consisted in “die Richter wegen einer und der andern Unwissenheit, oder Ungerechtigkeit, zu erinnern” [calling to the judges’ attention any oversight or inequity] (Rüdiger 240). Lawyers required at least the same skill set as judges, as they were “diejenigen, welche dem Richter die Gesetze helffen gewissenmäßig applicir en, so daß, wenn etwa der Richter ein gewisses Gesetz nicht erwägte, oder aus einem Gesetze nicht recht schlösse, oder die æquitatem Jur. Nat. nicht betrachtete, [sie] ihn dessen erinnern und zu einer raisonnabl en Sentenz veranlassen“ [the ones who help the judges to apply the laws conscientiously, so that, if for example a judge does not entertain a certain law, or does not draw the correct conclusions from a law, or does not consider the equitable laws of nature, they can remind him thereof and move him to a reasonable sentence] Case and Circumstance: Christian Thomasius and the Poetics of the Casus circa 1700 161 (Rüdiger 236—37). Lawyers touched upon sensitive issues, identified injustices and were - last but not least - experts in equitable decision-making. Accordingly, the figure of the young lawyer provided Thomasius with the perfect narratological tool for conveying practical knowledge� Before presenting the case files to his readers, he describes the protagonist’s experience at the crime scene. In an inn at an unnamed town the lawyer first witnesses the tremendous power and speed of rumors� He hears the “neue und in der ganzen Stadt bekante Zeitung / daß Hr. Hanß Heinrichs seine Tochter Anna ein Kind umbgebracht und ihre Mutter Maria darzu geholffen hätte” [the recent news, known to the whole city, that Anna, the daughter of Mr. Hanß Heinrich, had murdered a child with the help of her mother Maria] (Thomasius, Juristische Händel 1: 3). Not by chance does hearsay play such a prominent role in this case: Thomasius was an outspoken opponent of the legal institution of denunciatio , which, in the inquisitorial system, initiated the ‘General Inquisition’ (Koch 146— 52). For Thomasius, denunciation enabled “hämische und listige Feinde auch denen Unschuldigen […] durch […] dergleichen Angeberey Schaden […] [zu] thun / und selbige in die Inquisition zu bringen” [malicious and cunning enemies to do harm to the innocent as well […] through allegations of this kind and to bring them under inquisition] ( Juristische Händel 1: 107). And so, he locates the origins of the girl’s case not least in the “gemeine Geschrey” [vulgar clamor] and “fliegende Rede” [flying speech] of gossip ( Juristische Händel 1: 2, 56). With the narratological help of the lawyer-figure the case at hand thus becomes a medium for reflection on the actions and procedures by which the machinery of law is set in motion in the first place and events are transformed into cases. In order to determine the role of the lawyer as a narrator, his specific function in the casuistic form, and the type of decision-making problems he faces, it is vital to understand the range and peculiarity of the circumstances captured by his eye� A case with a hard-to-prove delictus occultus and no first-hand witnesses, like the one at hand, could be defined only through circumstantial evidence. Whereas circumstances generally served as variables to frame an event, in the absence of witnesses, they came into play as clues, bringing the unattestable onto the stage of juridical visibility� Without the operationality of clues the truth could not appear: “In each case, infinitesimal traces permit the comprehension of a deeper, otherwise unattainable reality” (Ginzburg 92). The deed in question would emerge only through the artful concatenation of its circumstances, guaranteeing its credibility� The facts of past events could only be reconstructed using what the 18 th century would come to call circumstantial evidence� This required a type of reasoning that, while dealing with evidential blind spots, looked for the truth in the contingent reflexes of the incident. Historical faith ( fides 162 Jasper Schagerl historica 16 ) was now defined as “præsumtionem veritates, ortam ex conjecturis circumstantiarum, qvæ non sœpe fallere solent” [the presumption of truth based on conjectures derived from circumstances which generally do not deceive] (Bierling and Patje 4). The observation, collection, and narrative connection of clues as the paradigmatic type of circumstances thus lift events out of a state of latency (Vogl 73), writing them into being by speculatively anticipating their existence and truth in a penumbra of suspicious details� No wonder that logical discourse around 1700 had refashioned circumstances into the basis of a new logic of probability� To assess the plausibility of events adequately, the Port-Royal Logic (1662) had insisted on paying “attention to all the accompanying circumstances, internal as well as external” (Arnauld and Nicole 264). While internal circumstances “belong to the fact itself,” external circumstances “concern the persons whose testimony leads us to believe in it” (Arnauld and Nicole 264): the authenticity and credibility of certifications and testimonies, the strength of their arguments, the trustworthiness and the intentions of the witnesses� 17 These operations thus called for a specific type of second-order observation, evoking new narratological figures able to make events legible. Unlike antique rhetorical and dialectical topics, still the point of departure for discussions of probability around 1700, 18 early modern logic distinguished the internal and external circumstances of events only under the premise of their reciprocal relatability. In so doing, logical discourse integrated the iudicium [judgement] omitted in classical topics, which by definition concentrated only on the inventio [invention] in its analysis of events. In topics, internal and external circumstances had diverged without any common denominator as artificial and non-artificial proof (Cicero II, 8), leaving the ars rhetorica in the mode of mere “participatory observation of the first order” (Campe 108). Now, everything would center on the possibility of a recursion from the external circumstances of observation to the internal circumstances of the event itself� An event was therefore never to be considered “nakedly and in itself ” (Arnauld and Nicole 264) but always in relation to other events. In order to do so, one had to consider every possible circumstance - including the circumstances of those circumstances - and observe “which ones have the most indications of truth” (Arnauld and Nicole 264). The Port-Royal Logic could not give exact rules for this sort of calculation, but it was crucial not to let oneself “be carried away by […] some general truth,” taking into account instead the “specific occasions” (Arnauld and Nicole 272—73). In this way, early modern logic enabled the evaluation of measurable probabilities, transforming the old notion of verisimilitude into a systematic mode of judgment� 19 The transformation briefly outlined here made possible for the first Case and Circumstance: Christian Thomasius and the Poetics of the Casus circa 1700 163 time the paradoxical project of a science of singular instances� In Aristotelian epistemology the strict disjunction between scientia and historia - between systematic philosophy and the knowledge of singularities administered by rhetorical and dialectical topics - had always been fundamental, and the inauguration of this new project unified all anti-Aristotelians around 1700. 20 Singular events, which until now had only been accounted for in narrative form ( historiae ), now became cases for a scientific logic of conjecture. 21 Confronted with a multiplicity of singular cases, one no longer needed “unzählich viel Regeln nach der Anzahl aller vollkommenden [sic] Umstände” [countless rules according to the number of all occurring circumstances], as Thomasius writes ( Kurtzer Entwurff 60). Through the “Erkäntnüß des Wahrscheinlichen” [knowledge of probability] it was now possible to give “gleichmäßige Regeln” [consistent rules] even in those sciences whose object were human affairs (Thomasius, Vernunfft-Lehre 224—25). Potential facts were no longer to be identified by their propositional form alone. Rather, as in the Port-Royal Logic , facts would appear only against the background of a perspectival and therefore an eminently narrative arrangement in which the observation of facts displaced the facts themselves from the center of attention (Wolf 93; 259)� Such probabilities could be assessed only if the observer (unlike the orator of classical rhetoric) was not involved in the events under evaluation and was therefore able to distinguish “falsche Erzehlungen von wahren oder wahrscheinlichen” [false narrations from true or probable ones] (Thomasius , Cautelen 97). For Thomasius, who had been recommending the Port-Royal Logi c to his students since the 1680s ( Discours 14), another important function of the lawyer-figure was therefore to enable the measurement of probabilities as a second-order observer� As Thomasius’s student and collaborator Johann Friedrich Ludovici writes, a lawyer’s task is to inquire, “ob es wahrscheinlich sey / daß der angegebene Delinquent die böse That begangen habe” [whether it is probable that the designated delinquent had perpetrated the evil deed] (Ludovici 66). In order to do so, he must not only observe the multiple circumstances of the case itself, but also the observation of these circumstances by other actors. Those practices of knowledge that concerned circumstantial evidence therefore involved a new kind of weighing and judging Geistesbeschäftigung , which, in order to be institutionalized as a casuistic practice, first had to be trained properly. The pragmatic dimension of the collection, the training of lawyers through the circulation of practical knowledge, thus involved exercises in second-order observation. Because, as his students learned, “ein jedes factum seine eigene und besondere Umbstände hat” [every fact has its own particular circumstances] and since “alle Fälle insonderheit zu erzehlen unmöglich ist” [telling all cases one by one is impossible] (Ludovici 71; 95), prospective civil servants could not 164 Jasper Schagerl learn how to handle each singular case from systematic works. Instead, as the Port-Royal Logi c had stated, everything depended on situational judgment, making the proper training of the legal actors the most important task Thomasius and his colleagues faced. Such prudential judgment was not acquired “durch blosses Speculiren” [through mere speculation]; on the contrary, since it was understood essentially as a form of experiential knowledge, it depended on a specific form of exemplary teaching, which was able, “die Handgriffe zu zeigen / wie diese Regeln auf vorkommende Fälle geschickt zu appliciren / und bey einer zweiffelhafften oder duncklen Geschichte die nöthigen und zur Entscheidung dienenden Umstände wohl hervor zu suchen seyn” [to show the art of applying these rules proficiently to cases that transpire and, in a dubious or obscure affair, uncovering the circumstances necessary for a decision] (Thomasius, Kurtzer Entwurff 20—21). The Juristischen Händel provided exactly the right format for such examples. Using the published cases, the student readers were to learn how to assess situations with dubious evidential bases and to derive judgments from them� This accorded with Thomasius’s mantra that even “der geringste Umbstand das Recht verändert” [the slightest circumstance changes the law] ( Juristische Händel 1: 3)� Such casuistic exercises pinpointed a systematic problem within the inquisitorial trial itself: the impossibility of positively stating which kinds of clues constituted evidence and were therefore sufficient to initiate the next procedural step� 22 Instead, their validity had to be decided specifically and subjectively for each case: Allein / hier entstehet die Frage / welche indicia dann vor zureichend zu halten? Darauf kan ich weiter nichts zur Antwort geben / als daß es auf des Richters Ermessen ankomme. Die Rechts-Gelehrten sagen sonst: minima circumstantia variat rem, und lässet sich allhie auch appliciren / denn so manche inquisition, so mancherley indicia werden auch gefunden / dahero es eine allgemeine Regel dißfalls vorzuschreiben eine wahre Unmöglichkeit ist. (Ludovici 9—10) [But here the question arises, which clues are to be considered sufficient? I cannot provide more of an answer than that it depends on the discretion of the judge� The legal scholars say elsewhere: The slightest circumstance changes the case and this can be applied here as well, for in every inquiry some circumstantial evidence ( indicia ) is found which makes it a true impossibility to prescribe a general rule in this matter.] When dealing with circumstantial evidence, the legal decision could not be formalized. “[W]o die Rechts-Sachen auff das arbitrium judicis ankommen,” writes Thomasius, “da pfleget auch das arbitrium gar leicht bald so, bald anders zu fallen” [Where cases depend on judicial discretion, discretion is all to apt to turn out one way this time, the next another] ( Juristische Händel 1: 225). Clues, as a Case and Circumstance: Christian Thomasius and the Poetics of the Casus circa 1700 165 specific type of signs, were thus an inherent source of instability, subverting the inquisitorial logic of decision-making as a formal process based on a systematic positive theory of proof, which tried to minimize the role of subjectivity (Stichweh)� The indeterminacy of circumstantial evidence undermined the positive common law of proof by invoking a casuistical approach to decision-making, essentially transforming continental criminal law into a case law system: “Wann nit muglich ist, alle Argkwonige vnnd verdechtliche fell vnnd vmbstende zu beschreiben,” the Carolina had stated, “Soll jnn fellenn, so darjnne nicht benannt seind, gleichnus genomen warden” [When it is not possible to describe all the clues and suspicious cases and circumstances, one shall compare cases that are not named here with precedents] (Art. 24). Unlike ‘objective’ testimonies and confessions under duress, which qualified as instruments of ‘direct’ proof, clues were seen as ‘indirect’ proof that itself had to be proven by witnesses first (Shapiro, Presumptions 155—58). Their ‘precarious status’ ( Jakob 35) thus prohibited a definite decision solely based on them. Nevertheless, where the proceedings lacked the requisite ‘full’ proof of two reliable eyewitnesses and the delinquent’s confession, and regular standards of evidence could not be applied, indirect proof in the form of circumstantial evidence came into play. In this case, however, a ‘ poena ordinaria ’ [ordinary punishment] could not be imposed. A ‘circumstantial’ system of law based on clues (instead of the bedrock of torture’s unquestionable truths) ultimately lead to the breakdown of the inquisitorial system of judgment itself (Langbein 45—69). Astonished and overworked legal scholars of the years around 1700 spoke with horror of cases, “[die] so tieff in die Umstände versincken, daß ein Richter mühe habe, heraus zu kommen und ein Urtheil ex bono & æquo zu sprechen” [that get so mired in circumstances that a judge has difficulty to find his way out and pronounce a sentence in equity and conscience] (“Casus pro amico,” col. 1397). Sometimes, as Thomasius writes, it could even happen that “solche indicia auff beyden Seiten vor[kommen], daß ein unpartheyischer Richter bald nicht weiß, auff welche Seite er incliniren soll” [such clues are found on both sides that an impartial judge does not know to which side he should incline] ( Juristische Händel 1: 186)� The potentially infinite reassessment of the circumstantial evidence, as well as the constant possibility that new evidence would emerge thus made a formal decision impossible. Instead, the end of a trial becomes incalculable: on the basis of circumstantial evidence, only a ‘ poena extraordinaria ’ [extraordinary punishment] can be imposed in the form of a ‘ Verdachtsstrafe ’ [penalty on suspicion] - a provisional (and generally mitigated) punishment that could be appealed at any time (Schaffstein). 23 This is precisely what occurred in the case of the murdered child: the guilt of the accused was merely anticipated in form of a suspicion without ever being 166 Jasper Schagerl confirmed. Thus, the trial did not come to a proper conclusion. Instead, it persisted in an almost infinite protraction, in which every sentence spoken could be revised. This is also why, as Thomasius writes, all the judgments presented in his collection can and should be revised by the readers: Nach Erwegung dieser bißhero erzehlten Umbstände kan nun ein unpartheyischer Leser unser allhier beygedrucktes Urtheil mit Bedacht lesen / und überlegen / ob wir bey diesem gleichwohl zweiffelhafften und etwas verwirrten Handel das rechte Pflöckgen getroffen, oder / wenn er nicht unserer Meinung ist / sich selber über den Handel machen, und unser […] gesprochenes Urtheil pro lubitu verbessern oder verschlimmern� ( Juristische Händel 1: 188) [After contemplating the circumstances narrated to this point, an impartial reader can now look at the judgment printed below with care and consider if we have hit the nail on the head in this withal dubious and somewhat confused case, or, if he is not of our opinion, apply himself to the case and lighten or compound the sentence we have passed at his discretion.] In the infanticide case, before revealing the lawyer’s actions, Thomasius asks his readers explicitly to evaluate the evidence that found its way into the files, that is, to consider which clues within the superabundant data set are indeed relevant: Worauff ich eben eigentlich damahlen reflectiret / würde zu weitläufftig fallen / allhier distincte anzuführen […]; indessen können curiöse Gemüther die bißhero excerpirten registraturen noch einmahl / da es beliebig / für sich durchgehen / und sonderlich die mit andern littern getruckten Worte in Acht nehmen / maßen in denenselben partim indicia contra reos, partim indicia pro illis enthalten sind. ( Juristische Händel 1: 15) [What I in fact reflected upon at the time would be too lengthy to enumerate here point by point […]; however, curious minds can review for themselves the registers excerpted thus far once more if they wish, paying special attention to the words printed in different type, as they contain evidence both for and against the defendants] Indeed, Thomasius had marked off clues ( indicia ) that could either incriminate or exculpate Anna typographically by setting them in bold� Of his own thoughts he reveals only this much: “Mein Hertze wurde mir / nachdem ich etwas attent dasjenige / was ich gelesen / betrachtete / umb ein gutes Theil leichter” [My heart became significantly lighter after I had considered more attentively that which I had read] ( Juristische Händel 1: 14)� Such an exercise was vital for law students because it prepared them for the legal steps required in the transition from a general to a special inquisition, as well as for the imprisonment and potential torture of the accused. Since the inquisitorial trial increased the evidential requirements in parallel to the intensification of the interrogation (from Case and Circumstance: Christian Thomasius and the Poetics of the Casus circa 1700 167 the indicia ad inquisitionem to the indicia ad capturam to the indicia ad torturam ), and because there was always the possibility that “viele irrige und falsche indicia mit unterlauffen” [many false and incorrect clues slip in] (Ludovici 75), students had to learn how to evaluate circumstantial evidence and practice reasoning from manifest signs to causes� In Thomasius’s collection the facticity and interrelation of circumstances are always up for debate� Legal decision-making has “meistentheils nur mit wahrscheinlichen Dingen zu thun […] / wobey man keine gewisse und unstreitige Entscheidung geben kann” [to do for the most part only with probable things, where a certain and indisputable decision cannot be given] (Thomasius, Cautelen 216)� Dealing with circumstantial evidence meant determining which circumstances were to be considered and which of these were causally related to the event at hand� Since every fact is itself tied to an abductive chain of reasoning and an investigative conclusion, clues as a juridical and semiotic phenomenon are constituted as much on an interpretative as on a material basis (Eder 36—37). Thomasius asks his readers to decide what is decisive for the decision to be made ( Jakob 26)� They must then provisionally determine whether these indications speak for or against the suspect. How, for example, did eleven wounds end up on the body of the dead child? Were they inflicted by Anna or created postmortem by the skewer used by the cook while searching for the buried child in the garden? And how should the testimony of the witnesses and the accused be evaluated? To explore these questions, the young lawyer sets out to obtain medical opinions proving that the child did not die through a postnatal act but rather through a “harten Fall” [hard fall] (Thomasius, Juristische Händel 1: 70) that Anna took during her pregnancy. Since the usual truth tests institutionalized in the inquisition were not applicable, the contributions of other agencies of truth (like medical surveys 24 ) were necessary to qualify the clues in question, coupling forensic practices with the new experiential knowledge of the natural sciences, which shone not only “mit herrlichen rationibus, sondern auch mit guten unverwerflichen experimentis” [with magnificent reasoning, but also with good irrefutable experiments] (Thomasius, Juristische Händel 1: 70)� In the Juristische Händel , clues circulate through institutions, eliciting weighing and judging practices of knowledge which contribute to their forensic qualification. Dealing with circumstantial evidence requires the linkage of different operational fields and forms of knowledge, and this logic is reenacted by Thomasius’s circumstantial style of storytelling, which couples institutions and their specific text types as well. In the lawyers’ argumentation, the reference to Anna’s ‘ Fall ’ functions entirely in accordance with the original meaning of the Latin term casus : within 168 Jasper Schagerl judicial rhetoric, casus referred less to the contentious case itself than to those exculpatory coincidences introduced by the rhetor to preclude intentionality (Hohmann)� As part of the status doctrine, the casus was thus an element of the circumstances, which was of decisive importance for the assessment of the perpetrator’s actions. The emphatic discussion of the ‘ Fall ’ that pervades this first case plays with the multiple meanings of the term (from incident to coincidence to collapse) and in so doing raises the collection of cases into a self-reflexive register. In this way, Thomasius poses the question of how a person or an incident becomes a case ( Fall ). The effect of this self-thematization, which aims to clarify the premises of the legal process, is to disquiet the legal system itself. Thomasius’s “merckwürdigste[]” [strangest] ( Juristische Händel 1: Preface) cases make the procedures of law themselves seem strange� The same effect is achieved by another peculiar moment in the child murder case: Thomasius’s provocative use of equity ( Billigkeit )� In order to prove Anna’s innocence, the young lawyer must not only prove the improbability of the crime ( quaestio facti ), but also neutralize a particularly rigorous article of the Carolina , which was still in force at the beginning of the 18 th century ( quaestio juris ). Not only does the article stipulate the highest possible punishment for infanticides - they are to be “lebendig begraben vnnd gepfelt” [buried alive and impaled] ( Carolina Art� 131) - it also states that in the case of a dead child a concealed pregnancy is sufficient evidence that a woman has killed her child: Doch so eyn weibßbild eyn lebendig glidtmessig kindtlein also heymlich tregt, auch mit willen alleyn, vnd on hilff anderer weiber gebürt, welche on hilfliche geburt, mit tödtlicher verdechtlicheyt geschehen muß, So ist deßhalb keyn glaublichere vrsach, dann daß die selbig mutter durch boßhafftigen fürsatz vermeynt, mit tödtung des vnschuldigen kindtleins daran sie vor inn oder nach der geburt schuldig wirt, jre geübte leichtuertigkeit verborgen zuhalten� [But should a woman conceal a viable pregnancy and deliberately give birth alone and without the help of other women, such an unassisted childbirth must incur fatal suspicion, as there is no more plausible reason than that this very mother with malice aforethought intended through the killing of the innocent child, of which she becomes guilty before or after the birth, to keep her imprudence a secret.] In that case, any further extenuating circumstances that the accused women might submit were automatically disqualified as an “angemasten vnbeweisten freuenlichen entschuldigung” [presumptuous and unproven womanish excuse] ( Carolina Art� 131)� On the one hand, Thomasius seeks to demonstrate the evidential short circuit within this law, its missing “ratio connexionis” ( Juristische Händel 1: 67); on the Case and Circumstance: Christian Thomasius and the Poetics of the Casus circa 1700 169 other, he must interpret the law in such a way as to show that the intention of the legislator and the meaning of the law do not refer to cases like the one at hand� While his hermeneutics bridge the gap between general law and singular case, the very application of the norm leads paradoxically to its suspension. In order to delegitimize the norm, Thomasius describes Charles V’s motivations in detail, referring to the specific historical context in which it was promulgated (58—60). Where the Carolina had classified concealment of a pregnancy as proof of homicidal intent because of the woman’s presumed fear of disgrace, Thomasius turns the tables, rejecting the possibility of intent precisely because of Anna’s fear of social ostracism� He refutes the remaining elements of the statutory definition given by the law as well: neither did the accused know about her pregnancy, since she learned about it only shortly before the birth, nor did the birth take place secretly, since the mother, as he argues, was present and the birth room could easily have been entered by other people� Thomasius’s arguments lend themselves to a restrictive interpretation of the statutory definition, discouraging its extension to this case by comparing it with the “Circumstantiæ facti” (97)� Discussing an event that took place behind closed doors was also a strategic move in Thomasius’s reform effort. A crime like infanticidium was usually a “ delictum occultum ,” an offence that occurred clandestinely and without witnesses. Where there were “keine andere indicia verhanden” [no other clues at hand], Thomasius argued that cases like this should be “GOttes gerechten Gerichte billig anheim gestellet warden” [left equitably to God’s righteous court] (59). In his view, equally applicable to other ‘occult’ crimes such as the practice of witchcraft, 25 a concealed pregnancy should not automatically be turned into a case. Instead, he distinguishes between law and morality, contributing to a process of differentiation that was steadily gaining momentum around 1700. 26 For Thomasius it is thus clear that “nach Gelegenheit der Umbstände, die Regulæ decori mit denen regulis justitiæ nicht zu vermischen [sind]” [depending on the disposition of the circumstances, ethical rules are not to be confounded with legal rules] ( Juristische Händel 1: 225)� The attested fact that Anna had “zweymahl in der Kinder-Stuben Unzucht […] getrieben” [fornicated twice in the nursery] (40) does not make her a criminal. Carnal sins and “süsse Gedancken von einem verbotenen Laster” [sweet thoughts of forbidden vice] are not to be confused with actual crimes: since no one is harmed by such a “Regung” [impulse], “so ist auch keinem Menschen daran gelegen / daß jemand deswegen gestrafft werde” [it is in no one’s interest that someone be punished for it] (Thomasius, Drey Bücher 518). Against the inquisitorial principle that “officium judicis consistit, in eo, ut inquirat in delicta, etiamsi nemo accuset” [the office of the judges consists in investigating crimes, even if there is no accuser] (Thom- 170 Jasper Schagerl asius and Saltzsieder 9), Thomasius argues that it is not always in the public interest to scrutinize and punish acts that left neither traces nor witnesses� 27 His written defense is an object lesson in legal hermeneutics 28 and equity ( Billigkeit 29 )� His interpretation of the law deviates from its narrow letter in order to bridge the gap between its generality and the particular case, reminding the judges to consider the circumstances “ex bono & æquo” [from equity and conscience] (Thomasius, Juristische Händel 1: 64)� While Thomasius with his equitable interpretation cannot abrogate the law itself, he can nevertheless, in the very act of applying it, temporarily suspend the original norm within the extant legal order (Moser 61—65). 30 As soon as he moves away from the letter of the law in order to apply it to the circumstances, the original intention of the norm is abandoned� What at first appears to be a familiar casuistic correction of an overly general principal thus turns out to be much more� By forcibly bending the norm of the Carolina in applying it to his case, Thomasius’s interpretation temporarily suspends a law that was in no way adequate to the contemporary sense of justice. Through this strategy the young lawyer becomes a provocateur of the law, looking for potential alternatives. Equity, as it functions here, is not only a weapon in the casuistic process of appropriating the law; it is a privileged medium for unsettling the established legal order, transcending the singularity of the child murder case to indict the unjust procedures of the trial itself� The premise of the narrative form that enfolds this trial thus lies in the historicization of the law that Thomasius had set in motion� This project had revealed the precarious basis of the law, enabling the observation of law as an historical and contingent social reality� At the turn of the 18 th century positive law and (divine) natural law were beginning to diverge, as indeed were law and morality more generally, opening up a space for a critique of the law through cases in which legality and legitimacy no longer coincided� Only then could a case like the alleged infanticide discussed here become a touchstone for legal sensibility and appear in the poetic form of the ‘case’ ( Kasus ) (Kirchmeier, Krise der Kritik 23—27) 31 � As a catalyst for a development that would have an illustrious career in the 18 th and 19 th centuries, Thomasius’s case files not only exposed the illegitimacy of certain laws; their ‘circumstantial’ framing story transformed the inquisitorial trial and the procedures of the law into ‘cases’ to be judged. This transformation, paradoxically, succeeds only by transcending the simple form of the ‘case’ ( Kasus ) in the direction of a dynamic casuistic form following its own ‘circumstantial’ poetics. In order to make the trial itself observable to his students (and thus turning the case into a Kasus ), Thomasius not only installs a figure that is himself a second-order observer, but demands second-order ob- Case and Circumstance: Christian Thomasius and the Poetics of the Casus circa 1700 171 servations from his readers as well� The account of events and the assessment of that account therefore no longer diverge incompatibly into ‘artificial’ and ‘non-artificial’ proof, as they had in classical rhetorical topics. Instead, they can be distinguished only as relatively differentiated modes of assertion that can be interrelated by one and the same observer (Campe 108)� As part of the feedback loop between media technology, pragmatics, and an emergent casuistic narrative form, this logico-legal upheaval around 1700 had several major consequences. Cases could no longer be narrated from the vantage point of their solution. On the contrary, following a poetics of circumstance, they opened onto one of many possible decisions, taking a path which itself would be presented to the judgment of the reader� Cases were investigated and explained on the basis of their modalities, transforming them into ecologies of events, to be unfolded in their complexity only with the help of a specific circumstantial logic that coupled legal institutions, text types, and forms of knowledge� The readers’ attention was turned towards events lifted out of latency by an artful connection of their circumstances� In attempting to transform his readers into expert evaluators of clues, Thomasius thus invoked a conjectural mode of judgment that gave the Jollesian Geistesbeschäftigung of ‘weighing and judging’ a new and historically concrete form. Notes 1 Unless noted, all translations are my own. I want to thank Noah Willumsen for his invaluable help and support� 2 For the poetics of (literary) case studies around 1800, see Düwell; Pethes; Krause. For a summary of the key issues from the perspective of the poetics of knowledge, see Frey. 3 For the emergence of a ‘circumstantial style’ in English literature, see Gladfelder; Watt; Welsh; Wickman� 4 For Thomasius’s historization of the law, see Hammerstein. Thomasius outlines this massive project in his text Von denen Kennzeichen und Vorsichtigkeit eines politischen Artztes / der etwan zur Verkürtzung der langwierigen Processe nützlich zu gebrauchen [Of the characteristics and prudence of a political doctor suited to be used in the shortening of lengthy trials] in Juristische Händel 2: 161—201. 5 While Carlo Ginzburg famously located the evidential paradigm in the late nineteenth century, recent research (for example by Antonia Eder or Susanne Düwell) has traced its formation back to the so-called ‘saddle period’ around 1800. However, by shifting one’s focus to the period around 1700, as this paper does, it becomes clear that the early modern era had already de- 172 Jasper Schagerl veloped a distinctive scientific approach to circumstantial evidence, which justifies speaking of an evidential or rather ‘circumstantial’ paradigm. See Ginzburg; Eder; Düwell 34—39. 6 For the materiality of cases, see Hull 112—61, especially 115—26. 7 For Thomasius’s plans for a legal reform, see Kühnel 173—83. 8 For the procedural steps of the Carolina , see Ignor 41—128. 9 See Vismann, “Akten.” 10 For the creation of a legal imaginary, see White; Meyer-Krentler. 11 For the legal practices of documentation, see Latour, The Making of Law; Modes of Existence 357—79. 12 See also Thomasius, Juristische Händel 2: 37: “Damit ich aber auch die Sache etwas umständlicher vorstelle, kann ich nicht besser thun, als wenn ich solches acten -mäßig thue” [That I might present this matter more circumstantially, I can do no better than by making use of files]. 13 Recent discussions of form have stressed the elemental interrelation between form and material medium. See Latour, Reassembling the Social 222— 23; Levine 1—23; Hahn and Pethes. 14 Over the course of the 18 th century infanticide would become even more scandalous, becoming an exemplary case for the legal reforms of the Enlightenment. Not so much the deed as the perpetrator would now serve as the focus in the assessment of crimes� Individual guilt would be judged against the background of external causes such as social misery, disadvantageous living conditions and social factors in general (see Michalik)� For the appearance of this topic in literature, see Neumeyer; Niehaus. 15 By then Thomasius had achieved a certain degree of popularity� The entertainment value of the collection therefore also lay in the integration of “etliche Umstände […] / die zu meinem curriculo vitæ gehören” [a number of circumstances […] which are part of my biography] ( Juristische Händel 2: Preface), transforming the cases into anecdotes. 16 For the discourse of fides historica which revolved around the conditions of historical knowledge, see Völkel (for Thomasius’s take on fides juridica 128—36). 17 For a discussion of testimonials in early modern logical discourse, see Scholz, especially the section on the Port-Royal Logic (252—62). 18 See Campe, especially 118—46. Campe mentions Thomasius only marginally and with good cause: Thomasius never seriously engaged in discussions of aleatory probability� 19 For Thomasius’s logic of probability see Madonna� Case and Circumstance: Christian Thomasius and the Poetics of the Casus circa 1700 173 20 See Shapiro, Probability and Certainty 3—14 . Thomasius addresses the new relation of scientia and historia extensively in the fifth chapter of Cautelen der Rechts-Gelahrheit � See Cautelen 82—108. 21 For the transformation of historia into a systematic mode of knowledge, see Seifert; Pomata and Siraisi� 22 For a genealogy of a clue-based evidential paradigm beginning with the legal procedures established by the Carolina , see Schneider. 23 For the place of the poena extraordinaria in the inquisitorial trial, see furthermore Koch 202—04; Schulz 184—87. 24 For the logic of early modern medical surveys, see Geisthövel and Hess. 25 See Thomasius, Vom Laster der Zauberei and the Exempel recht alberner und tummer Hexen-Processe [Examples of foolish and insane witchcraft-processes] in Juristische Händel 2: 300—39, as well as the Ungegründete Hexen-Proceße [unfounded witchcraft-processes] in Vol. 3: 221—33. 26 For the process of differentiation between law and morality, see Lindner and Ort; Titzmann� 27 For an extensive reading of these arguments to be found in the Dissertatio Inauguralis De Origine Processus Inquisitorii , see Dezza 99—108. 28 For the state of discussion of legal hermeneutics around 1700, see Bühler (for Thomasius 107—10); Schröder, Legal Interpretation (for Thomasius 94— 96, 99—101). 29 For a discussion of the problems of equity, see Maye. 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