The Catholic canonist tradition viewed illicit sexual acts (‘stuprum, fornicatio’) as grave offences that, under certain aggravating circumstances, could incur the death penalty.Footnote 1 Among these were violent rape, in particular of virgins, and sexual abuse committed by teachers (‘ludimagistri’, ‘directores’), particularly of boys, who tended to go to school more often, entrusted to their care. In betraying their duty to safeguard their pupils from vice, these men instead became in the eyes of the early modern observer the agents of their moral corruption.Footnote 2 In principle these laws applied to clerics as well. In practice however secular teachers much more often faced consequences than their clerical counterparts. They were easier to denounce, since they did not embody Christ in the eyes of a Catholic and therefore did not enjoy the same social authority; they also possessed far less juridical protection. A secular teacher could be punished by his temporal lord, whereas a cleric was answerable only to his superior, except in cases of the gravest crimes.Footnote 3
Cases of sexual abuse were nevertheless prosecuted by religious orders and bishops, most often when a public scandal was imminent, but also when the perceived good of the religious community was at stake. Research on such cases has been carried out predominantly by Brazilian, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish scholars, since the records of local inquisition tribunals and state police have been particularly well preserved in those regions. This scholarship has even identified local networks and brothels run by members of the clergy, involving both underage and adult men and women.Footnote 4 Documented crimes involving children or adolescents are, however, comparatively rare and seem to concern primarily members of religious orders, who were often responsible for the operation of schools. By contrast, parish clergy appear in the sources more frequently in connection with sexual relationships with women from their own congregations. While the Inquisition in Italy, Spain, and other regions actively prosecuted crimes of solicitation, that is, the sexual abuse of the confessional, comparable mechanisms to encourage the faithful to denounce offending priests were largely absent in the Holy Roman Empire until the early eighteenth century.Footnote 5 Most clerical transgressions there pertained to alcoholism, negligence of duties, and debt and only in rare cases to sexual relations, almost never to the sexual abuse of children. The threshold for reporting such crimes was of course high, and convictions were difficult to secure. The testimony of one victim alone, particularly if it was a child, was not regarded as sufficient evidence, and when the accused vehemently denied the charges, proceedings often collapsed without sanction. This dynamic is exemplified by the case of the priest Wolfgang Horlacher, who was in 1770 accused of having solicited more than seven adult women for sexual acts and of raping a thirteen-year-old girl, but ultimately evaded conviction.Footnote 6 Even the few extant cases are only sparsely documented. For a Benedictine abuser from Trier, only a few pages of interrogation minutes survive, and for a case as public as that of Vicar Matthias Seitz of the diocese of Freising, the record likewise consists of only a few pages and contains no witness testimony.Footnote 7 In a little village outside Landshut, Seitz had abused several girls and boys. He was sentenced to a year of galley service, which was the equivalent of a death sentence. The verdict, however, was only possible because he confessed his crimes.Footnote 8 The punishment indicates the severity with which his transgressions were regarded, since bishops rarely sentenced clerics this way but merely invoked it as a deterrent.Footnote 9 Thus, when a priest was expelled from the same diocese in 1706 for having advised his lover to procure an abortion, he faced excommunication and galley service only if he should return.Footnote 10 The proceedings against Johann Arbogast Gauch run to nearly a thousand pages, despite substantial gaps in the interrogation records, because evidence was collected by two different jurisdictions. The ecclesiastical tribunal confined itself to questioning the priest, whereas the secular authorities, who ultimately held jurisdiction in the case, interviewed dozens of suspected victims and preserved the records, making this the best documented eighteenth-century case known so far. By contrast, ecclesiastical offices often seem to have eliminated sensitive material, as is suggested by the deliberate removal of the page that would have recorded Gauch’s death.Footnote 11
Secular law only inflicted the death penalty when sodomy, understood at the time as anal intercourse involving the emission of semen between two men, or violent rape or bestiality had been proved.Footnote 12 This applied to priests as well, at least in principle, who were supposed to be handed over to the secular government for prosecution. In practice, however, even abusive clerics were rarely punished with the full rigor of the law. In the eighteenth century, only one execution for such sexual crimes seems to have happened in the Holy Roman Empire, namely that of the Swiss priest Johann Conrad Arbogast Gauch.
Defining sodomy, abuse and punishment in early modern jurisprudence
Sodomy, understood as male-male anal intercourse, was in early modern law a capital crime, for it was regarded as the gravest offence against God and the divinely instituted natural order, surpassed only by bestiality.Footnote 13 From the sixteenth century onward, the Roman Curia intensified its prosecution of sodomitical clergy, partly in response to Protestant claims that homosexuality was a distinctive vice of the priesthood. Pope Pius v, in his bull Horrendum illud scelus (1568), ordered that priests guilty of sodomy be publicly defrocked and handed over to secular authorities for execution, making sodomy one of the few ‘crimes of mixed jurisdiction’ (‘crimina fori mixti’). However, most canonists held that the pope intended this penalty only for those who habitually engaged in sodomy, which made death sentences rare, since it remained disputed how many acts, and of what nature, constituted a habit.Footnote 14 Additionally, legal scholars distinguished between sodomia perfecta, sodomy with ejaculation in either mouth or anus, punished with full severity, and sodomia imperfecta or attempted sodomy, which was punished more mildly. Likewise, they considered the active, penetrating partner as more culpable than the passive one.Footnote 15 Clerical defendants understood these distinctions well and often shaped their confessions accordingly, admitting only to acts deemed sodomia imperfecta. This made a conviction difficult whenever sufficient witness accounts were lacking.Footnote 16 How irregularly Horrendum illud scelus was applied is shown by a parochial vicar remarking during Gauch’s trial that the bull had not even been received in the German lands and applied only to Italy.Footnote 17
The law also distinguished between prepubescent and postpubescent boys. Those older than fifteen were regarded as fully culpable in sexual crimes, since they were thought to have lost their childlike innocence and to be strong enough to resist an adult’s advances. They were therefore often treated as accomplices and, if found guilty, could even face the death penalty. Younger children, by contrast, were generally considered too innocent to grasp the nature of the acts into which they had been coerced. Offenders were also usually punished more leniently when their victims were under fourteen.Footnote 18 Indecent touching of a child’s genitals was punished much more leniently than any act of penetrative sex, yet its gravity depended on whether ejaculation, and thus completion of the sexual act, had occurred in either individual.Footnote 19 In addition to these distinctions, legal writers advised prosecutors to scrutinise closely the circumstances of the seduced youth, weighing their age, their alleged malice and their intellectual capacity before determining punishment. The same logic also applied to cases of youth enticed into acts of witchcraft, for if their involvement arose chiefly from ignorance, a mistaken sense of obedience or comparable motives, a more lenient penalty such as a private whipping was often regarded as the appropriate punishment.Footnote 20 The last known public degradation of a priest for sodomy in Portugal, that of the Brazilian José Ribeiro Dias, appears to have occurred in 1747. Instead of being executed, he was, however, sentenced to service on the galleys.Footnote 21
Monastic communities seldom surrendered a sodomitical member to secular authorities, since doing so drew public attention and damaged their reputation. Orders surrendered an offender only when the crime was already widely known, while notorious or grievous sexual transgressions were otherwise handled in internal court proceedings, the Jesuits being an exception.Footnote 22 If the judge, usually the religious superior, found a monk or friar guilty of being, as Santoro de Melfi put it, such a ‘monster’, he was deemed fit for the purifying flames (‘tortura ignis’) and condemned to ‘lifelong’ imprisonment. In practice, however, such lifelong imprisonment was seldom perpetual, but limited to a fixed term, usually seven or ten years. Punishment by fire appears to have been widely employed until the sixteenth century and only rarely thereafter, though a few instances of its use can still be verified as late as the eighteenth century.Footnote 23 All of these legal peculiarities must be taken into account when assessing what is arguably the best-documented case of clerical abuse in the German-speaking lands, namely the crimes of Pastor Gauch.
Learning, authority, and trust: Gauch as priest, dean and educator
Johann Conrad Arbogast Gauch, son of a farrier, was baptised shortly after his birth, on Christmas Eve 1700 in the Swiss parish of Mellingen.Footnote 24 He first attended the local school in Engen, then continued his education at the Jesuit colleges in Fribourg (Üechtland) and Freiburg im Breisgau. Ordained to the priesthood for the diocese of Constance in 1728, he received the parish of Inneringen in 1732 upon the retirement of his cousin, Johann Heinrich Gauch. From 1737 onward, he also served as dean of the rural chapter of Riedlingen.Footnote 25 In the latter position he was not only the mediator between bishop and local clergy but also entrusted with their supervision. He was required to monitor their morals and the fulfilment of their duties, to recommend those who exhibited leadership qualities, and to admonish those who failed to meet the standards expected of a priest.Footnote 26 Sometime in the 1740s he also received the honorary title of Apostolic protonotary, count of the Lateran Palace – the only such distinction in his diocese. Unlike most of his confreres, Gauch was a remarkably erudite cleric who owned a substantial library. On the eve of his incarceration, he sold it to the abbey of Zwiefalten; it had to be transported there in a carriage drawn by six horses, indicating a load of several hundred, if not several thousand, volumes.Footnote 27 Thus, it did not cause suspicion when the well-read Gauch invested much time and energy into his parish school although it already employed a teacher. His presence made the school somewhat of a local magnet for education, so that even noble and prosperous families sent their children there.Footnote 28 It is noteworthy however that in the subsequent criminal investigation none of these young nobles was ever sought out or questioned. Gauch even took students into the parish rectory as boarders, usually boys from poor families who could scarcely afford the required tuition.
The parishioners were therefore pleased that their children received such devoted attention from their pastor, who seemed eager to follow the diocesan directives emphasising the early formation of children in faith and morals through sound instruction and a virtuous life.Footnote 29 As a priest, he was called to be ‘the light of the world, the salt of the earth, and an example to the faithful’, and thus to embody in his speech, bearing, dress and entire conduct nothing short of gravity, moderation and piety.Footnote 30 He seemed at first to meet these expectations. Unlike many of his confrères, Gauch had no weakness for excessive drinking and was never seen in taverns or at the gaming table, although he still managed to accumulate enormous debt. No one accused him of irreverence or haste in celebrating the sacraments, or of any lack of care in preaching, faults all too common among his peers. And yet, behind the image of the exemplary pastor lay a dark secret. In his first or second year he began to make sexual advances towards the schoolchildren and continued the abuse until his arrest thirteen years later.
By 1745, rumours about him were spreading through the village, though many refused to believe that a priest could be guilty of what was whispered. He was, after all, an educated man and the appointed dean of the district. The victims, burdened by shame, kept silent, wondering whether they could even confide the secret to their parents. Others were simply afraid of the powerful clergyman who could dismiss any accusation as slander and even bring suit for defamation. Some, however, could no longer bear the secret and confided their sorrow to the preacher of the 1745 parish mission, the Jesuit Maximilian Duffrene. It was, after all, a rare occasion for a priest from another town to visit and hear confessions; ordinarily, this duty was fulfilled solely by Gauch and his assistant vicars. The penitents revealed their concerns to Duffrene under the seal of confession, a condition that bound him to silence unless the penitents gave him explicit permission to speak of them. Duffrene was deeply shaken and found it difficult to believe the accusations brought against the fellow clergyman, who was also his host, yet he wished to help. His response was to console the penitents and to advise them not to go to the secular authorities, insisting that the matter ‘must be settled in silence’.Footnote 31 It appears however that Duffrene did not obtain permission to contact the Prince-Bishop of Constance, Kasimir Anton von Sickingen, for no record of an accusation has survived. His advice therefore seems to have extended to urging the victims to remain steadfast and to resist the priest’s advances. Had he obtained permission he would most likely have contacted his ordinary about these ‘occult crimes’, as offences committed in secret and unknown to the public were called. These were almost impossible to prove without a confession since they had taken place in private. A religious superior could however investigate them cautiously and in secrecy, thereby sparing both victim and offender the disgrace of a trial.Footnote 32 Their counterparts were frequent and publicly known transgressions usually called notorious crimes.Footnote 33
The emergence of a public accusation
The categorisation of Gauch’s offences as secret changed abruptly when, on 7 January 1746, the elders of Inneringen accused him before the representative of the secular government of Prince Joseph Wilhelm Ernst of Fürstenberg, the local Schultheiss Michael Ott, of immoral acts with their children. They had not come readily but only after the relentless pleading of the sacristan Dominic Molitor, who could no longer endure being silent. Convinced that if Gauch were not stopped divine wrath might fall upon the village, he saw the two recent lightning strikes on the church tower as well as recent severe storms as omens of a far more dreadful future.Footnote 34 Ott immediately went to his superior, the Obervogt Fauler of Jungnau, and reported the accusation. The news shook him to his core, and he could not hold back tears. Such atrocious things had taken place between the schoolboys and the pastor that he scarcely knew how to put them into words for the prince. He was too ashamed even to write them down. Ott noted that the boys had stayed after school with Gauch, when he touched their genitals and ordered them to do the same: ‘They would rub them back and forth until semen would flow from the dean, and some boys even had to take the dean’s junk [‘Sach’] into their mouths and suck on it [‘daran schlozen und saugen’] until his semen flew.’Footnote 35 The parents of some of these boys were terrified that their sons might fall ill from the swallowed sperm and that God would unleash his wrath upon the village for these abominations. The very next day, Fauler interrogated the first three victims that had been named. Wunibald Grom, then seventeen, had been away from the parish school for four years but had earlier attended it for several years, often remaining in the upper chamber with the pastor. He described how Gauch had told him, at that time eleven years old, to open his pants and ‘pull’ on his penis and how he did the same for the length of about ‘four Our Fathers’. When Fauler asked the sixteen-year-old Conrad Mueller, a ‘rough and ugly boy’,Footnote 36 whether he had ever done something for Gauch, he broke into tears and confessed that he had to ’suck on his pudendis’ for about fifteen minutes until the priest ejaculated. The sixteen-year-old Johann Mueller even stated he occasionally swallowed Gauch’s semen and that the pastor sometimes ‘stung him with his genitals into the behind’, and afterwards asked him, laughing, if it had felt good to him. All three boys stated that they had not wished to return to the priest but were coerced to do so in various ways. On one occasion, Johann Müller even confessed to having had sexual relations to a Capuchin in Riedlingen, who was outraged by the admission but encouraged him to never do such things again until ‘the dean’ compelled him once more.Footnote 37 Gauch even pursued boys who had stopped attending school because of his advances and forced them to return, often abusing his position as confessor to coerce them.Footnote 38
While the investigation of the secular authorities continued, the prince-bishop of Constance learned from an unknown source that Gauch was suspected of sodomy. It is possible that Duffrene informed him, for Fauler had written to the Jesuit seeking further details about what he had heard although he must have known that the confessor was bound to silence. Such a letter however could be forwarded to the bishop without violating the seal of confession and Fauler seems to have suspected as much for shortly after he contacted Duffrene the diocese began to act. On 26 January the Fiscal Commissioner Johannes Labhart, an officer of the ecclesiastical court, arrived in Inneringen together with the pastor of Bingen. The ‘Fiscal’ as Fauler called him, interrogated Gauch briefly and is said to have left the room in tears before placing him in a carriage bound for Constance. He also instructed the household servants not to allow anything to be removed, knowing that Gauch was burdened with enormous monetary debts that remained to be settled.Footnote 39 With the main suspect now outside his jurisdiction, Prince von Fürstenberg realised that the prince-bishop might attempt to shield the priest from prosecution. He therefore ordered that the questioning of other witnesses be continued. On 30 January he also appointed the more experienced chief bailiff (‘Oberamtmann’) Anton von Lenz to head the investigation.Footnote 40 Von Lenz was instructed to interrogate the three victims who, under the law, were regarded as accomplices and to determine whether there might be additional victims. Since the prison cells in Jungnau were insufficient to hold the expected number of accomplices, he was permitted to transfer them to Wildenstein Castle. The prince for his part admonished him to proceed with the utmost caution and to avoid ‘all possible public scandal’.Footnote 41
Victims, accomplices and the crisis of public trust
Von Lenz took his duties very seriously and kept his ruler continuously and in great detail informed, sometimes several times a week, about the developments in the case. By the beginning of February 1746, he already had ten ‘accomplices’ brought to Wildenstein. Yet, he informed the prince that the boys between seven and ten years of age, and some of those between ten and fourteen, were of such simple understanding and weak bodily constitution that they could not have withstood such a ‘diabolical seduction’ or corrupting influence as that of Gauch, and subtly suggested that they should not even be questioned. The problem was more difficult with those ten who at the time of the sexual acts were already over fourteen years old and were now imprisoned, for they were suspected of being ‘infected’ with sodomy, which they could further spread in the region. They could also face legal consequences for their actions.Footnote 42 Initially, von Lenz thought, he could easily ascertain the ages of the boys, who did not possess any papers, by asking the parish vicars for a copy of their baptismal records.Footnote 43 Yet the inquiry into the boys’ ages dragged on for more than a year since the interim pastor of Inneringen, von Langen, maintained that he could not cooperate with the secular prosecution of his parishioners. After all, they were considered accomplices and by providing the records he might become a participant in a potential death sentence and risk excommunication himself. Only when the bishop assured him that handing over the records was permissible since they would likely assist the boys’ defence did von Langen agree.Footnote 44
Von Lenz did not mince words when he spoke about Arbogast Gauch. He called his influence ‘diabolical’ and expressed sympathy for the families ‘who had entrusted their innocent children to this devil incarnate’.Footnote 45 He learned only through private communications that Gauch had already been examined by the episcopal tribunal on 12 February 1746 and was agitated that the prince-bishop had not contacted the Fürstenberg government. Von Lenz urged his ruler to demand the strictest possible ‘imprisonment of this cruel murderer of souls and corruptor of boys (‘grausamen Seelen-Mörders und Knabenschänders’)’. He added that this was all the more necessary since unofficial reports stated that the priest was walking about freely in Constance, celebrating mass and gambling with military officers in his lodgings instead of being degraded and surrendered to the secular authorities. Unaware that Gauch had already been imprisoned for five days, von Lenz’s passionate plea secured the prince’s support for prosecuting the priest to the fullest extent of the law by suggesting that the diocese might otherwise let him escape proper punishment.Footnote 46 Lenz’s letter is remarkable not only for its direct condemnation of Gauch but also for its compassionate description of the victims’ parents. The whole village, he wrote, was now ‘outraged’ (‘entrüstet’) at the clergy and implored the prince to restore their trust in them and to provide spiritual consolation. They asked for stronger support in their devotion, for during the past eight years their crops had failed badly, bringing great poverty. This suggests that not just the sacristan but also the villagers regarded the bad weather as divine punishment for the sins their pastor had committed and hoped that new priests might appease God and bring them good fortune. They clearly had no trust left in the two assistant vicars, since they suspected that these men must have witnessed the ‘suspicious activities of Gauch in the school’ and despised them for not reporting him to their bishop. Yet also their own loveless behaviour rendered them unlikeable, for example when the vicar von Moz had tried to extort money from dying parishioners. These clergymen had lost ‘all love and credit’ in the village.Footnote 47 Prince von Fürstenberg agreed with Lenz’s assessment and ordered the release of the younger boys six days later. He ordered them to be diligently taken care of through spiritual instruction so they would not imitate Gauch’s sexual behaviour.Footnote 48 Moreover, he wrote to the Ecclesiastical Council of Constance with unmistakable directness that he did not doubt the diocese would bring the ‘corruptor and abuser of so many boys’ to justice and immediately imprison him, since there was a risk he would flee.Footnote 49
The parish of Inneringen, suddenly deprived of its pastor and dean, did not receive hollow words of comfort. Both the prince and von Lenz understood that real consolation was essential to keep the region administratively stable. After all, some parents were so furious that an outbreak of violence seemed likely. They blamed the secular authorities for the delay of the trial and the long imprisonment of their loved ones.Footnote 50 Yet beyond maintaining control, the prince also seemed to feel pity for his suffering subjects. Von Lenz had therefore arranged for Father Duffrene to return to the parish during Lent to preach and hear confessions.Footnote 51 This allowed the parishioners to vent openly in the confessional – to tell the priest what tormented them, safely and in confidence. Duffrene’s preaching, too, offered hope and clarity, demonstrating that not every priest was a scoundrel. Yet the prince had grown deeply cautious. Young men connected to Gauch he now viewed with suspicion: if they had been sodomised they might themselves be inclined toward such acts. The first victim of this distrust was Johann Baptist Schienle of Inneringen. A university graduate who aspired to the priesthood, he was told bluntly by the prince that he would receive no support, simply because he had once boarded at Gauch’s school. Forced to abandon his calling, Schienle turned instead to the study of law.Footnote 52 Likewise, Wunibald Schlude, who had already completed his philosophy studies, was told he would never get a benefice in the Fürstenberg territory, although he was known to be of impeccable character and had called Gauch even before the inquisition a ‘godless cleric’.Footnote 53 The prince also rejected the bishop’s appointment of Eustachius Holdtbach as new pastor of Inneringen, because he wanted the thirty-year-old pastor of Engen, Anton Joseph Friedrich von Langen. After all, he reasoned, von Langen had studied at the esteemed Collegium Germanicum in Rome, and was the kind of exemplary clergyman ‘who instils in us the hope that he will again build up the suffering parish, that he will improve morals, eradicate evil and bring everybody back on a path to virtue’.Footnote 54 The message he sent to the diocese was clear: he did not trust another appointee of the bishop but wished to choose the next pastor himself, namely a man he trusted. Now, however, the diocese insisted that he could not be appointed until Gauch was formally convicted, and this dragged on for more than a year. In the end, however, von Langen was appointed in 1748 and served in Inneringen until 1772.
The ecclesiastical tribunal: confession, evasion and judgement
The episcopal inquisitors had begun interrogating Gauch on 2 March 1746 in the episcopal dungeon of Constance. Present were the Vicar-General Franz Joseph von Deuring, canon Franz Karl Anton von Ratzenried, ‘Fiscal’ Johannes Labhart and the secretary of the diocesan curia, Othmar Reebmann. As usual, the first question put to Gauch was whether he knew the reason for his interrogation, and he immediately admitted that he was accused of indecent conduct with schoolchildren. At first, he admitted to having abused them over the past four or five years but later conceded that the acts had begun as early as 1735. He further acknowledged having touched twenty prepubescent and five pubescent boys, with whom he had also ‘attempted’ to commit sodomy. He also acknowledged having touched a few young women.Footnote 55
He confessed that at first he had been seduced by the devil but had afterwards formed so evil a habit that he could no longer free himself from it. Initially he counted five or six instances in which he had attempted sodomy, and about six cases of masturbation. With the girls, he also claimed to have engaged in vaginal intercourse (‘copula’) and indecent touching.Footnote 56 The inquisitors carefully recorded the names of the boys and girls he mentioned and confronted him with von Lenz’s interrogation reports. Wunibald Grom had stated that he had been penetrated by him; Gauch, however, insisted that he had merely attempted to do so after they had masturbated together, but that his erection had not been strong enough. He further maintained that he had not penetrated the other boys either but had only touched their rectum externally with his penis (‘ad orificium’), and that they had misunderstood this as penetration. He added that they had falsely accused him out of resentment for the severity of his discipline at school. The reason was clear. Only if Gauch had penetrated the boys, could he be sentenced as a sodomite, and thus far he had only confessed to attempted sodomy. The inquisitors, however, were persuaded that the boys some of whom were already nineteen years old, by describing in detail the act itself and the discharge of semen in their rectum, had exposed the falsity of Gauch’s defence. After all, the court reasoned, why would they confess to it, knowing that it made them accomplices of the crime?
The second interrogation followed on 16 March. Gauch had meanwhile undertaken ten days of religious exercises and a general confession over the sins of his whole life. This was believed to put him into a more cooperative disposition. For many boys, Gauch claimed he could not remember whether he had tried to penetrate them or not, but he confessed doing so with Caspar Eisele (‘a strong young man’), Conrad Stöhr, the then twelve-year-old Wunibald Grom (‘lascivious and pale’) and Carl Beck (a ‘very strong and virile young man’).Footnote 57 With Beck it happened around forty times, but his conscience did not force him to confess any ‘real penetration’, Gauch proclaimed.Footnote 58 Eisele, however, attested that he had been used by the pastor ‘like a woman’, and Schoenle to have been penetrated about twenty times.Footnote 59
Since the tribunal continued to receive further evidence from von Lenz, it reconvened for another interrogation on 4 May in the prison cell of Reichenau monastery, to which Gauch had been transferred. Asked to estimate the extent of his lascivious acts, Gauch spoke of roughly 300 instances of indecent touching involving manual stimulation and approximately 130 further attempts to insert either his fingers or his penis into the anus of the boys.Footnote 60 All of these acts had taken place either in the school or the rectory of Inneringen, a few in the church choir, some in the castle of Treuchtelfingen, and others in the rectory of Riedlingen. Remarkably, Gauch had never locked the doors, so that on several occasions the sacristan, the janitor, the maids or other boys interrupted him. Once, even the assistant vicar von Motz burst in upon them.Footnote 61 Yet the inquisitors grew increasingly suspicious of Gauch’s dissimulations, especially his assertion that he had engaged in masturbation before attempting anal intercourse.Footnote 62 Only under sustained pressure did he acknowledge a further fifty or sixty instances of oral sex (‘in os alterius’), several occasions of ejaculation between a victim’s thighs, as well as seven cases of full anal penetration and about seventy ‘not very deep’ (‘semiplenae’) penetrations, all allegedly without ejaculation.Footnote 63 The way Gauch described his actions, though, still appeared untruthful. He seemed to ‘hold back the truth and to delay the proceedings’.Footnote 64 The judges challenged this account, pressing him to explain why he would have withdrawn before orgasm. They ‘could not believe’ his claim that his intention had been limited to mere ‘pollution’ and never to ejaculation in the anus, an act that in their understanding constituted sodomy in the strict sense.Footnote 65 They continued to confront him with the victims’ statements, and Gauch eventually conceded that they might be telling the truth, though he maintained that he could not remember and that his conscience did not accuse him of such acts.Footnote 66 This suggests that the priest had fashioned a subjective narrative of the events in which the gravity of his actions was minimised, a construction that allowed him to construe himself as innocent of sodomy.
On 21 June the final hearing followed. The interval allowed the judges to probe his memory and expose contradictions that might warrant torture. They threatened him and commanded a full confession. Now Gauch admitted that most of the ‘partial penetrations’ (‘semiplenae penetrations’) had indeed been full penetrations, and also that his semen might have effused a few times, but he still denied having ripped the shirt of one of the girls and having thrown her onto his bed, indicating rape.Footnote 67 He admitted giving them a few pennies or small gifts after the act such as a rosary or prayer book and said he had done the same with the boys. He also claimed that most of his victims usually received a little ‘love water’ beforehand, often a rosemary or cherry brandy to dull their senses.Footnote 68 To satisfy the canonical standards, Gauch was asked to certify the minutes, which were read out, of his four interrogations on 25 August in the presence of seven clergymen as witnesses, which he did.
According to Hieronymus Grom’s testimony, he had been about twelve when Gauch first approached him, initiating a series of sexual encounters that he remembered taking place at least a dozen times, the last during a visit in 1745. He was seventeen on the last occasion and tried to resist, yet ultimately yielded to Gauch’s advances because he needed the money the priest had promised. In recounting the incident, Grom implicated himself, a fact that in the prosecutors’ view strengthened the credibility of his testimony and led them to impose only a mild punishment. Asked what he had felt during the encounters, he stated that he had experienced no pleasure, only distress and repugnance. ‘He would have liked to cry,’ yet felt compelled to submit to Gauch’s will.Footnote 69 Among the other victims were also his younger brother Peter and their cousin Magnus.Footnote 70
Johann B. Mayer, born in 1731 as the son of a miller in Sarmenstorf, was a cousin of Gauch and had lived in the rectory for the previous four years. Over the last three of these he experienced both active and passive sodomy with the priest. According to the innkeeper Eva Steinerin, her lodger Bayer reported that Mayer had confided to him that he had ‘been required to make himself sexually available to gratify a certain Doctor Lang in Zwiefalten’. The fourteen-year-old Joseph Zengerle, an orphan, had likewise lived in the rectory for the past three years and been subjected to Gauch’s abuse. He and Mayer also engaged in sexual relations with one another. These encounters were unlikely to be the product of the ordinary sexual exploration associated with puberty. Given their shared history of sexual abuse, they are more plausibly understood as trauma-driven, including through traumatic re-enactment, cycles of revictimisation, or through increased rates of sexual risk-taking that are associated with abuse.Footnote 71 In passing, Zengerle mentioned that a gardener from Biberach who spent the night in the rectory once attempted to solicit him for sex. Read together, the references to these two adult men, one from Zwiefalten and one from Biberach, make it unlikely that they approached the boy, by accident. Rather, they suggest that Gauch may have been involved in a clandestine network through which boys were made available for sex. The same conclusion can be drawn from a related case from nearby Reichenau, where a student was abused by several priests in succession.Footnote 72
Jurisdictional conflicts and the delayed course of justice
Chief bailiff von Lenz had to divide the interrogation reports he sent to Prince Fürstenberg into several mail packets because the scribes, who copied the papers, struggled to keep pace. His earlier conviction that Gauch should face the death penalty grew, however, stronger by the month. The more details von Fürstenberg learned, the more impatient he grew at the slowness of the ecclesiastical tribunal in Constance.Footnote 73
Only two days after receiving von Lenz’s report, which indicated that the priest had abused his students for more than ten years, the prince wrote a remarkably direct letter to the prince-bishop on 27 April 1746. He demanded a swift trial of Gauch and his immediate surrender. Although he did not state it outright, he clearly implied that he sought the death penalty. The details he listed about Gauch’s crimes must have surprised the bishop, who had not shared a single line from the interrogation with von Lenz. The prince thus signalled that he had a strong case even without the cooperation of the diocese. In his letter he wrote that Gauch’s ‘insatiable lust [‘Gailheit’] had climbed the highest peak of wickedness’ and had turned the rectory of Inneringen into a ‘veritable sodomitical breeding ground’.Footnote 74 This implied that Gauch’s actions easily met the legal requirement of notoriety, but the prince’s words also pressed the bishop to act. After all, a place of Christian virtue had become one of sexual corruption, threatening to ‘infect’ the region with sodomy, which he likened to a contagious disease. By ignoring the prince’s demands, the bishop risked appearing as a bad shepherd, who did not care for the moral ruin of the young. After all, the prince remarked, ‘thirty persons of both sexes have been abused by this arch-sodomite and soul murderer … and their parents thrust into deepest pain’. He added that not only Catholics but also the neighbouring Protestant lands expected Gauch to be brought to justice. Thereby, Fürstenberg reminded the bishop that sparing the priest would only fuel anti-Catholic polemics. He concluded by expressing his hope that the bishop would let ‘divine justice run its course and cleanse the sacred priesthood of such filth’.Footnote 75
The diocese, however, proceeded with its tribunal, slowly but seemingly steadily, rejecting von Fürstenberg’s countless requests to speed up the trial, because von Lenz could not finish his inquiry without having interrogated Gauch.Footnote 76 On 25 November, the prince-bishop apologised for the delay of the trial which he had hoped would have come to an end in September, insisting it was not his fault but due to the complication that several bishops and prelates had to be consulted in such severe a canonical matter.Footnote 77 Meanwhile von Lenz grew increasingly anxious that the trial would never reach a conclusion and feared for the life and health of the imprisoned accomplices, since their cells in Wildenstein Castle could not be heated. He had also still not received a transcript of the episcopal interrogation and therefore could not release anyone.Footnote 78 More and more parents began turning angrily against the local bailiff and protested against the year-long imprisonment of their children, unaware that the delay was caused by the ecclesiastical commissioners. By January 1747 nothing had changed. The prince’s many letters to the chancery in Constance had achieved nothing.Footnote 79
Only on 3 April 1747 did the secular chancellor of the prince-bishopric, Friedrich Wilhelm Balbach von Gastel, finally inform Prince von Fürstenberg that the tribunal had reached a verdict to be announced later that month. He could not, however, reveal whether it entailed degradation and extradition, and instead requested a private meeting with von Lenz.Footnote 80 The prince was irritated, taking the letter as a sign that the bishop intended to spare Gauch’s life. He therefore instructed von Lenz to lodge the strongest possible protest if that proved to be true. Instead, however, the Fürstenberg official found out that the diocese had granted the request and intended to degrade Gauch publicly at the end of the month on Reichenau Island, where he had been imprisoned since spring 1746.Footnote 81
The sentencing decree dated 19 April 1747 cited the degradation formula from the Pontificale Romanum and stated that Gauch’s crimes had not only offended God but also stirred ‘commotion’ among the people. He was therefore perpetually deposed from all clerical offices and ordered to undergo degradation.Footnote 82 Gauch learned of the verdict only the next day at three o’clock in the morning, when his guard woke him. The same day at ten o’clock, the public ceremony was held in front of the main tower of the Reichenau village. At its end, the prisoner was ceremoniously extradited into the hands of secular Reichenau government, symbolised by the showing of the ‘iron fist’, and only the next day into the hands of the von Fürstenberg’s officials, who escorted him to Wildenstein Castle.Footnote 83 There, the chapel doors had been reinforced so that the prisoner could not slip inside and claim sanctuary.Footnote 84
Now the investigation could continue. By May 1747 Hieronymus Grom (born 1728), Peter Grom (born 1731), Wunibald Grom (born 1729), Joseph Zengerle (born 1732), Jacob Flöss (born 1726), Conrad Stöhr (born 1726), Hilarius Flöss (born 1729), Hans Caspar Schönle (born 1728), Johann Evang. Müller (born 1729), Carl Beck (born 1726), Johann Mayer (born 1731), Hans Caspar Eisele (born 1731) and Joseph Kloz (born 1728) were still in prison.Footnote 85 Von Lenz soon stopped the interrogation, since Gauch merely repeated that his conscience accused him of no further acts of sodomy, though he conceded that such acts might have occurred and that he must entrust himself to the mercy of God. He also judged it unwise to torture the former priest, for doing so would oblige the authorities to torture the witnesses as well, even though they had already suffered greatly and were not to be prosecuted further.Footnote 86 Nevertheless, Gauch showed no defiance and appeared remorseful, so he was kept in only one foot shackle, and by mid-June the number of guards was reduced. He was judged unlikely to flee or to take his own life.Footnote 87
Condemnation and preparation for the execution
As late as July 1747 the names of new victims were emerging. Moreover, von Lenz had just recently found out that several of Gauch’s students had also practised mutual masturbation and sodomy among themselves. Among them were Johann Baptist Mayer and Joseph Zengerle as well as Joseph Kloz. All three had ‘ridden each other like dogs and must be considered the worst of all’, von Lenz commented.Footnote 88 Especially damning was that Kloz had been already fifteen years old when he was with Zengerle and the twelve-year-old Xaver Spindler (born 1734). To Lenz, the three also demonstrated how readily sodomy could spread, for they had drawn an innocent boy from Wilflingen named Fridolin Mindler into their acts. Mayer admitted that he had sex with Zengerle as well as with Joseph Klöck, who had died in 1745, and with Franz Joseph Bayer, and that at times all three were together.Footnote 89 A few weeks later, von Lenz sent his last summary. He had accumulated almost a thousand pages of interrogation protocols. He counted at least ninety male and seven female victims, among them Gauch’s goddaughter. Moreover, he had calculated that there were four hundred instances of indecent touching, three hundred of which were accompanied by his own ejaculation, sixty in which a boy likewise ejaculated, one hundred and thirty cases involving anal stimulation and the previously noted instances of anal penetration.Footnote 90 He was so appalled that his proposed punishments for Gauch’s ‘accomplices’ were far harsher than what they ultimately received, though he sought the death penalty only for Gauch. The Faculty of Law at Freiburg moderated the final judgment for the teenagers, but Gauch was condemned to death: he was to be pinched three times with glowing tongs, then beheaded, his body burned to ashes and scattered.Footnote 91 The jurists further emphasised that the priest was solely responsible for the seduction of the boys, who, they argued, had acted out of ignorance of the moral law and a misconceived reverential fear (‘metus reverentialis’) of the clerical estate. They also maintained that the younger victims should be treated with greater leniency, especially the twelve-year-old Xaver Spindler, who was still prepubescent. The professors concurred with von Lenz’s proposal to forgo further interrogations – particularly of the many suspects who had never been imprisoned – and instead recommended organising a three-day spiritual retreat, during which a Jesuit would deliver several exhortations on the gravity of ‘unnatural crimes’ and afterwards invite the participants to confession.Footnote 92 Thirty-eight boys from Inneringen and twenty-one from neighbouring villages were not examined; instead their pastors were instructed to watch over them and to exhort them to lead a Christian life. This leniency provoked popular outrage. Magnus Grom, for example, was furious that his son had suffered in prison for nearly two years while many others were not even questioned. He shouted to bystanders that he would rather see all the boys beheaded and thus duly punished than have only a few suffer.Footnote 93 Nevertheless, six boys aged fourteen to fifteen, and a further seven of fifteen, were judged to have been accomplices and to be punished accordingly.Footnote 94 Wunibald Biechele and Lorenz Bögele were to be spared due to their age.Footnote 95 Von Lenz even suggested that the rectory of Inneringen ought to be burned to the ground, so grievously had it been defiled, just as after an act of bestiality the abused animal was to be burned in order to erase every memory of the deed.Footnote 96
Gauch had made his peace with God and, in September, petitioned that the Jesuit Father Beck, who had accompanied him since his imprisonment on Reichenau Island, be granted to him as confessor and attendant in his final moments on earth.Footnote 97 Another farewell letter he addressed to the prince-bishop, ‘with a voice of wonder, a voice of praise, and a voice of thanksgiving’, since the ordinary had promised to say a mass for him, the ‘the most unworthy of all men … the lowest worm on earth’.Footnote 98 This was not flattery, for Gauch knew that nothing could alter the course he was on; it was instead an expression of genuine surprise that the bishop would remember him in prayer at mass. He then spoke of his own faith and of his conviction that, having confessed all his sins, he might still hope for God’s mercy.
First, I considered that even the justice of God could not condemn me, even if it wished to, for even if it were to seize me and, according to my merits, cast me into eternal damnation, I hold fast – as indeed I truly do – to the infinite merits of my divine Redeemer. For the Lord is both my refuge and the help of my hope: my God [Psalm xciii (=xciv).21]. Since He has done full satisfaction on my behalf and has already paid the debt to divine justice, I can, as soon as I appropriate these divine merits through true repentance and penance, say with true confidence and without any fear: ‘Deliver me according to and in thy justice’ [Psalm xxx (=xxxi).1].Footnote 99
Gauch’s only remaining worldly concern was that he had failed to celebrate 1,090 masses, mostly owing to his imprisonment, and he asked the bishop to absolve him of this debt so that it would not be held against him in the life to come.Footnote 100
All the accomplices were to be punished the day before the execution: Kloz received fifty, Mayr forty and Zengerle thirty strokes of the rod. Mayr was additionally perpetually banished from the Fürstenberg territories. Spindler, despite his youth, was to receive thirty strokes on one day, for Von Lenz considered him the most ‘deeply infected’ of all the boys, and another thirty on the third day, again on the buttocks. Jacob Flöss received twenty strokes on one day, and another twenty on the third day. Wunibald Grom received thirty strokes once, Beck, twenty-five, Peter Grom, Stöhrer and Hilarius Flöss only fifteen. Anna Flöss’s and Mechthild Boegele’s time in prison was counted as time served, while Catharina Boegele, Anna Maria Rueff and Catharina Glöck were to be imprisoned for three and two weeks respectively. All accomplices, however, were also ordered to swear under oath to go for the next three months every two weeks to confession and receive the eucharist. Moreover, they were escorted by a group of soldiers to attend Gauch’s execution.Footnote 101
On the scheduled day of execution in Messkirch on 24 November 1747, the Jesuit Franz Xaver Beck from Constance had agreed to accompany the condemned man, together with the local parish priest, to the gallows. At the last moment, upon the intercession of the prince-bishop, Prince von Fürstenberg rescinded the painful torture with glowing tongs. At nine o’clock in the morning the procession set out from the castle of Messkirch, led by a detachment of the Fürstenberg regiment under a major on horseback, and proceeded to the main square in front of the city hall. There, the sentence of death was read aloud. Allegedly the judge asked Gauch at this occasion whether it was true that he had not been able to elevate the sacred host when he said mass in the city on Portiuncula Sunday in August 1745. He nodded. At the time he pretended it was due to an inflammation in his arm, Gauch added, but then confessed: ‘The Heavens wished to humble me, for I was not worthy to celebrate.’Footnote 102 Then he was taken to the place of execution, with neither hands nor feet bound, arriving there at about ten o’clock. He received a blessing from the accompanying clergyman, was stripped of his jacket and bound to a wooden chair. While the Jesuits recited the rosary, the executioner severed Gauch’s head and immediately displayed the bloodied sword to his three principal accomplices, Kloz, Mayr and Zengerle, declaring that they had deserved the same punishment. The head and body of Gauch were affixed to a stake, which by five o’clock in the afternoon had burned to ashes.Footnote 103
A close reading of the extensive inquisition records concerning Johann Conrad Arbogast Gauch’s crimes reveals that the ecclesiastical authorities initiated proceedings only after the local secular government had begun interrogating suspects. Pressure from Prince von Fürstenberg on the prince-bishop of Constance to dismiss Gauch from the clerical estate compelled a more complex judicial process involving multiple prelates and canonists. The available evidence, however, suggests that the diocese sought to delay both the proceedings and the requested extradition, perhaps hoping that the secular court would lose interest in pursuing the case. However, the sheer number of victims – then legally categorised as ‘accomplices’ – gave the Fürstenberg prosecution a solid evidentiary foundation and enabled it to proceed without diocesan cooperation. Indeed, the diocese withheld its findings until April 1747, more than a year after Gauch’s imprisonment. Von Lenz’s need to remind the bishop’s curia of procedural details for the ritual degradation indicates either reluctance among diocesan canonists to pursue the case or unfamiliarity with such a rarely invoked procedure. This behaviour, as well as similar cases from other dioceses, suggests that if a priest was also the secular subject of a bishop, he could usually expect greater leniency, since the ruler aimed above all to protect clerical reputation and to avoid public scandal.
The case also shows that serial child abuse occurred in early modern parish schools and that such crimes, once exposed, could be punished severely. At the same time, the parents’ letters reveal troubling legal assumptions: the victims were treated as accomplices and thus risked the death penalty themselves. Reporting an abuser could therefore mean self-incrimination, which helps explain parental reluctance to let children testify. Particularly striking is also the leniency the court extended to several victims who, though already fifteen and therefore punishable under sodomy statutes, received only corporal discipline. Such clemency, given the severity of contemporary law, suggests that the judge recognised mitigating circumstances: the boys had been deceived by Gauch into believing that sodomy was not sinful and had acted under a misguided obedience to his priestly authority. Equally noteworthy is the precision with which many of the victims described their own experience within the constraints of interrogation.
The beheading of Arbogast Gauch and the cremation of his body, followed by the scattering of his ashes, signified not only early modern abhorrence of sodomitical acts but, more profoundly, the intent to erase the memory of both the man and his crimes. By denying him a grave, the authorities ensured that no place of remembrance would remain in this world. Just as the wind or the river carried away his ashes, so too was his memory meant to dissolve within the community, allowing the wounds he had inflicted to fade and the social order to heal.
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