Um das Leben würfeln

Abstract

Scholarly literature of the Early Modern period often mentions that soldiers who had committed a collective crime, such as mutiny or desertion, had to toss a dice in order to decide whether they were to be executed or saved. The article asks to what extent such decision by lot really was a military practice. It begins by reconstructing the context of the theological and legal debates dealing with the general issue of decision by lot, traces the reception of the ancient Roman praxis of ‚decimatio‘ by the late humanism, and shows that it was implemented into positive military law all over Europa in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War. Evidence for cases in which individuals were in fact gambling for their life is, however, hard to come by. Only very few, spectacular cases have so far been documented. For these cases, it can be shown that the decision by lot did not have a religious meaning and that it always remained contested as well. It thus turns out that the practice of the ‚Decimatio‘ embodied an economic as well as a psychological, but not a legal rationality: Justitia does not throw the dice – she levels a scale.