Posthumous execution
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Posthumous execution is the ritual or ceremonial execution of an already dead body.
Contents |
[edit] Examples
- Leonidas of Sparta was beheaded and crucified following his death in the battle of Thermopylae.
- Li Linfu, Chancellor of Tang China during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong (712-756) in the latter years, was exhumed and executed for crimes of high treason by his rival Yang Guozhong for his implication in the An Lushan Rebellion.
- Harold I Harefoot, king of the Anglo-Saxons (1035-1040), illegitimate son of Canute, died 1040 and his half-brother, Harthacanute, on succeeding him, had his body taken from its tomb and cast in a fen with animals.[1]
- John Wycliffe (1328–1384), was burned as a heretic 45 years after he died.
- Vlad the Impaler (1431–1476), who was beheaded following his assassination.
- King Richard III of England (1452–1485), who was hanged by his successor King Henry VII following his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field. His body was further desecrated following the Dissolution of the Monasteries and, according to legend, thrown into the River Soar.
- Jacopo Bonfadio (1508-1550) was beheaded for sodomy and then his corpse was burned at the stake for heresy.
- Pietro Martire Vermigli (1500–1562) was burned as a heretic following his death.
- Nils Dacke, leader of a 16th century peasant revolt in southern Sweden.
- Gilles van Ledenberg, whose embalmed corpse was hung from a gibbet in 1619, after his conviction of treason in the trial of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt.
- A number of the regicides of Charles I of England had died before the Restoration of King Charles II. Parliament passed an order of attainder for High Treason on the four most prominent deceased regicides: John Bradshaw the court president, Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and Thomas Pride.[2] The bodies were exhumed and the first three were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. The most prominent was the former Lord Protector Cromwell, whose body - after said "punishment" - was thrown, minus its head, into a common pit. The head was finally buried in 1960.[3] The body of Pride was not "punished" perhaps because it had decayed too much. Of the regicides still alive then, some were executed and others either fled or were imprisoned. For a full list see List of regicides of Charles I.
- In 1917 the body of Rasputin, the Russian mystic, was exhumed from the ground by a mob and burned with gasoline.
- In 1945 the body of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was lynched, hung (upside down), and shot several times after his execution by a firing squad.
- General Gracia Jacques, a supporter of François Duvalier ("Papa Doc") (1907–1971), Haitian dictator, whose body was exhumed and ritually beaten to 'death' in 1986.
[edit] Dissection as a punishment in England
Formerly, many Christians believed that the resurrection of the dead on judgement day required that the body be buried whole facing east so that the body could rise facing God.[4][5] If dismemberment stopped the possibility of the resurrection of an intact body, then a posthumous execution was an effective way of punishing a criminal.[6][7]
In England Henry VIII granted the annual right to the bodies of four hanged felons. Charles II later increased this to six . Now bodies had to come from somewhere, but the conjoining of anatomy and hanging offences was very bad news, and the basis of an association which lasted until the first Anatomy act in 1832. Dissection was now a recognised punishment, a fate worse than death to be added to hanging for the worst offenders.
The dissections performed on hanged felons were public: indeed part of the punishment was the delivery from hangman to surgeons at the gallows following public execution, and later public exhibition of the open body itself. The punishment replaced the earlier hanging drawing and quartering, in which the four quarters were exhibited on spikes in various parts of the city, and differed only in that it was performed by medical men, and, incidentally that anatomical knowledge was obtained. This state of affairs was accepted by surgeons because it was, oddly, good for their image to achieve royal patronage and to be linked with the law. ... In 1752 an act was passed allowing dissection of all murderers as an alternative to hanging in chains. This was a grisly fate, the tarred body being suspended in a cage until it fell to pieces. The object of this and dissection was to deny a grave. After the act the number of available bodies increased, and the act itself was pro anatomy in that the execution had to follow smartly upon conviction, and the body conveyed immediately to the surgeons. Dissection was described as 'a further terror and peculiar Mark of Infamy' and 'in no case whatsoever shall the body of any murderer be suffered to be buried'. The rescue, or attempted rescue of the corpse was punishable by transportation for seven years.[8]
[edit] See also
- Cadaver Synod, in 897, when Pope Stephen VI had the corpse of Pope Formosus disinterred and put on trial.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica
- ^ Journal of the House of Commons: volume 8: 1660–1667 (1802), pp. 26-7 House of Commons Attainder predated to 1 January 1649 (It is 1648 in the document because of old style year)
- ^ Cambridgeshire Museums Online
- ^ Barbara Yorke (2006), The Conversion of Britain Pearson Education, ISBN 0582772923, 9780582772922. p. 215
- ^ Fiona Haslam (1996),From Hogarth to Rowlandson: Medicine in Art in Eighteenth-century Britain,Liverpool University Press, ISBN 0853236402, 9780853236405 p. 280 (Thomas Rowlandson, "The Resurrection or an Internal View of the Museum in W-D M-LL street on the last day", 1782)
- ^ Staff. Resurrection of the Body Catholic Answers, Retrieved 2008-11-17
- ^ Mary Abbott (1996). Life Cycles in England, 1560-1720: Cradle to Grave, Routledge, ISBN 041510842X, 9780415108423. p. 33
- ^ Dr D.R.Johnson, Introductory Anatomy , Centre for Human Biology, (now renamed Faculty of Biological Sciences, Leeds University), Retrieved 2008-11-17
