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Crucifixion In Late Roman Times

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Abendlaender

Abendlaender

Assistant executioner
In two of my stories, I have dealt with late Roman times which are very worth to be looked onto as these times involved notable changes, not least by the influence of the spreading Christian belief. The Christian teachings were surely not passing by without traces onto the mindset of people.

Emperor Constantin has surely not favoured the Christian faith and forbidden crucifixion in 320 AD out of humanitarian reasons. He was as well a man with the aim to fasten and restore Roman power as the emperors before him. While Nero could still stir up riots against Christians by the folks, the persecution edict of emperor Diocletian has not be acted upon to the same measure everywhere in the Empire. This had probably not met with approval of a majority of Romans any more and had lead surely to hatred towards Diocletian by some Romans. As well, slaves have been granted legal rights, slowly beginning with the time of emperors until slavery shifted to serfdom with duties to assure the basic needs of the bondsmen.

I believe that Constantin had forbidden crucifixions not only for the reason that the cross has become a symbol of the church, but as well as an acknowledgement to the spirit of time to win loyalty from within the Empire. The disgust towards crucifixion had certainly grown as well within the military.

The Roman power was not as strong as in former times so that the danger of uncontrollable uprisings had grown. If Constantin had not done so, the Roman Empire in the West would propably have collapsed sooner. I believe that there have arisen controversies from the second half of the 3rd century onwards. While the Romans did crush down uprisings like the Spartacus uprising or those in Judaea overly cruel around 70 and 132 AD without any hesitation, I do not know of something like that in the 4th and 5th century AD. They did probably fear growing anger of babarian peoples.

Greetings, Alex
 
As ever, things are not quite certain. No edict of Constantine banning crucifixion is actually on record.
The earliest reference that probably indicates that he did comes from Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus,
in 361 - he refers to the 'terrible punishment of the' patibulum (in the plural, patibulorum) and
'breaking of legs'. He probably meant crucifixion, though patibulum has a much wider range of meanings
than we generally meet here. Sozomen in his account of church history written around 440
is more definite about it being crucifixion, though he too gives no precise information,
just (what by then were assumed to be) the Emperor's motives.
 
Interesting source, Eulalia! The source without doubt is dealing with crucifixion. It can not at all be realistic that crucifixions had at once come to an end when Constantin became emperor. However, it is fact that from the 4th century onwards, crucifixions became less and less widespreadly used. I do not know about mass crucifixion in late Roman times as during the Apartacus uprising or the Jewish uprisings around 70 AD and 130 AD. In our days, changing customs are spreading very quickly due to media. In former times, news, laws and customs from otherwhere took longer to spread out than today. Certainly, Christians had in some lesser christianized parts of the empire less strongly still been harassed after Constantin's edict of tolerance, whereas in other parts, the edict of Diocletian against Christians has hardly been acted upon.

During a few happenings in history, crucifixion has been brought back, for example during the massacres against Armenians within the Ottoman empire or some kind of crucifixion had been used by the Japanese during the 16th and 17th century to fight Christian mission in Japan or in our days by the IS while I am not sure if they crucify persons still alive or dead bodies to deter enemies.

However, since Constantin, the use of crucifixion of living persons had diminished more and more and never came back into widespread use. But in times thereafter, this had not bothered people to kill prisoners in ways at least as cruel as crucifixion, for example breaking on the wheel or impaling. If acted out "rightly", dying could take as well days.

Greatings, Alex
 
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Abendlaender said:
Interesting source, Eulalia! The source without doubt is dealing with crucifixion. It can not at all be realistic that crucifixions had at once come to an end when Constantin became emperor. However, it is fact that from the 4th century onwards, crucifixions became less and less widespreadly used. I do not know about mass crucifixion in late Roman times as during the Apartacus uprising or the Jewish uprisings around 70 AD and 130 AD. In our days, changing customs are spreading very quickly due to media. In former times, news, laws and customs from otherwhere took longer to spread out than today. Certainly, Christians had in some lesser christianized parts of the empire less strongly still been harassed after Constantin's edict of tolerance, whereas in other parts, the edict of Diocletian against Christians has hardly been acted upon.

During a few happenings in history, crucifixion has been brought back, for example during the massacres against Armenians within the Ottoman empire or some kind of crucifixion had been used by the Japanese during the 16th and 17th century to fight Christian mission in Japan or in our days by the IS while I am not sure if they crucify persons still alive or dead bodies to deter enemies.

However, since Constantin, the use of crucifixion of living persons had diminished more and more and never came back into widespread use. But in times thereafter, this had not bothered people to kill prisoners in ways at least as cruel as crucifixion, for example breaking on the wheel or impaling. If acted out "rightly", dying could take as well days.

Greatings, Alex
Click to expand...

Nudely hanging women before the Holy Inquisition is a sort of crucifixion?
 
I would not say that the Inquisition had practiced a kind of crucifixion. Sometimes, the border lines are hard to draw if crucifixion in the wider sense is included. What I am dealing with is Roman cruxifixion as torture or execution for hours and days for everybody to look on. It is different topic that the inquisition is often made worse than it truly was simce the French Recolution. The Protestant Churches have as well done injustice where they themselves had got power. It is the Jesuite von Spee who had been at the forefront to fight the witch hysteria.


As I have said above, breaking on the wheel and impaling can be at least as cruel as crucifixion. There have been other awful kinds of torture in the middle ages, like the rat torture where a rat in a cage had been put onto the stomach of the victim. Then, coals had been put onto the cage to make the rat bite through the body of the victim in panic to flee from burning.

Greatings, Alex
 
Fox-on-Cross said:
I think plural patibula.
Click to expand...
Frank Petrexa said:
This word should be second declension neuter?
Then patibula is the nominative plural, and patibulorum the genitive plural.
singular:
patibulum
patibuli (genitive)
patibulo (dative)
patibulum (accusative)
patibulo (ablative)
plural:
patibula
patibulorum
patibulis
patibula
patibulis
Click to expand...

Aurelius Victor referred to 'poena terribilis patibulorum',
the terrible punishment of the patibula - gen. pl. patibulorum

Fox-on-Cross said:
Nudely hanging women before the Holy Inquisition is a sort of crucifixion?
Click to expand...
I think that's a product of our fantasies. Some Inquisitions certainly practised some very nasty tortures,
as did some (mainly Protestant) witch-hunters - including strappado and suchlike suspension,
but there's no historical evidence for, and a good deal against,
the victims being naked. And in any case, it wasn't a punishment or mode of execution.
 
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Eulalia said:
As ever, things are not quite certain. No edict of Constantine banning crucifixion is actually on record.
The earliest reference that probably indicates that he did comes from Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus,
in 361 - he refers to the 'terrible punishment of the' patibulum (in the plural, patibulorum) and
'breaking of legs'. He probably meant crucifixion, though patibulum has a much wider range of meanings
than we generally meet here. Sozomen in his account of church history written around 440
is more definite about it being crucifixion, though he too gives no precise information,
just (what by then were assumed to be) the Emperor's motives.
Click to expand...
From what I read about Constantine, he Christianized the empire for superstitious reasons (supposedly he saw a cross in the sky before the battle with one of his competitors for the throne and emblazoned it on his standards). He started out as the "co-emporer" in the west, based in Gaul, and took part in the succession crisis to move up. There was also one in the east. This system was put into practice by Diocletian to attempt to solve the endless civil wars over succession. By Constantine's time, the emperors needed to be close to the German frontier in the west and the Parthian frontier in the east, and Rome was something of a back water and the Senate even more removed from power than the English House of Lords.
Constantine, like Diocletian, wanted unity. He presided over the Councils that established the doctrine of the Trinity (from which the bishop of Rome, now known as " the Pope", was often absent), but was dismayed at the petty but intense nitpicking over language describing the relationship of Christ to the Father and the origin of Christ in the "god head". "You basically agree!" He was not baptized until he was on his deathbed, because he knew emperors had to do things that were sinful to maintain power, and he had no intention of not doing his job. Once the Church had state sponsorship and access to state stipends, the road to worldly corruption and (male-dominated) hierarchy was wide and well-paved. Women (even Paul has to acknowledge their role and in some cases their apostleship) played a prominent part in the very early church, and one can argue that it was this role that caused Christianity to spread--soft power with the women pushing things along. There seem to be strong currents in history that are hard to damn permanently--maybe our societies have more in common with a gorilla or chimpanzee troop than we like to think.
Well, I'm a heathen and don't like to deal with politics of any kind, so my cynicism shows.
 
Yes, attitudes were changing, and went on changing, in the late Empire -
not just to crucifixion, but to 'spectacles' in the arena, nudity,
what was acceptable either as public punishment or as entertainment -
it's hard to say how much that was due specifically to the rise and official adoption of Christianity,
in a way that itself was just a part of the growth in (political, demographic and economic) dominance of the Eastern Empire,
increasingly influenced by the puritanical views of the peoples of the Middle East
(as manifested also in Rabbinic Judaism and, later, Islam)
 
Frank Petrexa said:
From what I read about Constantine, he Christianized the empire for superstitious reasons (supposedly he saw a cross in the sky before the battle with one of his competitors for the throne and emblazoned it on his standards).
Click to expand...
Superstition, at least on Constantine's part, likely had nothing to do with it. There are differing versions of how he got the idea and all from later writers. It was most likely a morale booster for his army. It set them apart from the army of his rival Maxentius, which was also, of course, a "Roman" army. Also, most of his army were Germans who had already Christians.
The symbols used was not the cross. Instead it was the chi rho, which had been used by Christians for many years. The Greek letters (ch and r), represent the first letters of Christos (Christ). This continued to be a symbol on Eastern Roman shields and banners until the fall of Constantinople.
monogram-of-christ384x389vatican.jpg arth21354759241847.jpg
It remains uncertain if Constantine really was a Christian. His mother, St Helena, certainly was. He was definitely a crafty and ambitious politician and may have seen Christianity as way of unifying the Empire and consolidating his hold over it.
 
Naraku said:
It remains uncertain if Constantine really was a Christian. His mother, St Helena, certainly was. He was definitely a crafty and ambitious politician and may have seen Christianity as way of unifying the Empire and consolidating his hold over it.
Click to expand...

On his death bed Constantin must have been asked: "Did I play my role well?"
 
Gibbs505 said:
Not sure about that since he was poisoned by Liva, his wife.
Click to expand...
So claimed Robert Graves, taking his cue from the Roman equivalent of the Daily Sport or a conspiracy-obsessed Internet blog. The idea came from frivolous gossips who had no purpose beyond gossip. And who of course had been partying elsewhere when Augustus died, had witnessed nothing. I very much doubt that story.
But it is said that on his deathbed he asked if he had played his part well in the comedy. That might be true, it could be in keeping. Though famous last words tend to be reformulated. George V was reported in the Times as saying "How is the Empire", rather than "Bugger Bognor". Count Cambronne at Waterloo was reported (the Times again) as declaring "The Guard dies but it does not surrender", rather than the pithier "Merde!" And it is said Dr Jamieson changed Cecil Rhodes "Turn me over" to the more Imperial "So much to do, so little done!"
 
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Well maybe he was poisoned by someone else, maybe he died of natural caused or maybe he was killed by lead pipes that romans used.
 
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