From Mortal Sins to Individual Pride: Transformations of Sexually Motivated Crimes in the Czech Lands from the Middle Ages to the Present

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper was well sourced, researched, and written. The methods are sound. It is engaging for the reader and offers original insights. There are no suggestions for improvement as it is sufficiently decent as it is. Congratulations for a wonderful effort. You made the peer review quite easy for me.

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewer for this generous and encouraging evaluation. We deeply appreciate your positive feedback on the structure, methodology, and originality of the article. It is reassuring to know that the text reads clearly and that the argument comes across as coherent and well-supported. Your kind words were both motivating and meaningful, and we are grateful for the time you devoted to the review.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The reviewed article breaks down into two parts: a historical one and a sociological one, which examines sexual offenses from a criminological perspective. It is evident, that the “sociological” part is methodologically closer to the author. Unfortunately, the first part – the historical one – contains too many errors.

Both parts of the article are only minimally interconnected. The significance of the phenomena under analysis for the genealogy is insufficiently explained.

The entire first part has the character of a non-analytical, popularizing text, unsuitable for publication in a journal of the standard of Genealogie.

In my opinion, the author should abandon the „historical“ part, or rather reduced it to the necessary minimum context, and develop the undoubtedly interesting analysis focused on the recent past and present.

Line 78 – the gradual decline of using pitch books - it is necessary to explain and to cite actual research (Tinková).

Line 97 – White Mountain – it is necessary to explain for a foreigner

Line 105 – „Krameš“ is missing in the „References“.  The structure of sexual delicts has been studied in the Czech Republic, it is necessary to consider results of other researchers who offer diverse comparisons (Dibelka, Matlas, Stůj, Tinková, Velková).

Chapter 3 – the author does not specify the provenience of the used sources, i.e. the geographical horizon of his/her research. A comparison of the approach of different authorities to various sexual offenses is still lacking in the Czech historiography.

Line 138 – description of the torture is superfluous.

Chapter 3.1.: the punishment officially recommended by Koldín is missing.

3.2. – two diverse crimes are compared – the sexual relationship between biological kin and relationship between a stepfather and a stepdaughter.

Line 242, 245, 253, 296, 320 – reference to the source is missing

Chapters 3.4., 3.5 - the chapters are superfluous in the context of the research and could be replaced by a short note

Chapter 4 - Instead of analysing and tracing the development of the issue, the author merely places examples next to each other, mixing legal norms and excerpts from sources.

Line 391 - nonsense, the illegitimacy rate was low in the mid-20th century, but much higher in mid-19 century (Fialová).

Chapter 5 - is acceptable, but the author misses Codes from the 18th century (Constitutio criminalis Theresiana, Josephina), mentioning only Koldín´s code of law.

Chapters 8 and 9 – are very interesting, nevertheless it is not clearly indicated where the author's own research begins and what methods were used.

Line 724 – reference is missing

Line 759 - Excentric artist can be hardly perceived as an indicator of social changes. Personally, I guess that most people consider his declaration as an art performance.

776 - more severely – better to say more systematically (capital punishment for rape in the Middle-Age and Early modern period).

810 – there should be some references.

 

 

 

 

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewer for this generous and encouraging evaluation. We deeply appreciate your positive feedback on the structure, methodology, and originality of the article. It is reassuring to know that the text reads clearly and that the argument comes across as coherent and well-supported. Your kind words were both motivating and meaningful, and we are grateful for the time you devoted to the review.

All changes made to the manuscript—mainly in response to comments from the other reviewer—are summarised in the accompanying response document and are also visible in the revised version of the article, where all edits are tracked using the “Review” function.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The quality of the latest version of the paper is better.

The historical aspects of the studied topic are more clearly explained.

In historiography, I would prefer monographs or key papers of Dibelka, Matlas, Tinková than their particular articles.

Konrádová is missing in References.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the continued engagement with our manuscript and for the suggestion to include monographs by Dibelka, Matlas, or Tinková. While we understand the intention behind this recommendation, we believe that including an additional citation without deeper engagement in the main text would not substantially enrich the article’s analytical value. Given the article’s focus and already existing references to these authors’ work, we have opted not to add further citations at this stage.

We do, however, appreciate the reviewer’s attention to detail regarding the reference list. The omission of Konrádová’s article was indeed an oversight, and it has now been properly included in the references.