Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
Very funny! Her crying kept Zeus
awake all nights!
The more you punish your wife, the more backlash you get!
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Art reviews by Zephyros
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awake all nights!The more you punish your wife, the more backlash you get!
It seems, that is a endless natural law.Very funny! Her crying kept Zeus
The more you punish your wife, the more backlash you get!
Lucky are the wife-less men, probably.
Actually Thetis, daughter of Poseidon and mother of Achilles, had run off and called Briareus to come quickly - he had a hundred hands, so untied the knotted thongs that were binding Zeus dead quick. In Book I of the Iliad, Achilles summons up the spirit of his mother and begs her to remind Zeus that he owes her a favour for doing this, so please will he punish Agamemnon for taking his (Achilles') slave-girl? She's reluctant (she knows about Achilles' heel and that he's doomed to die young), but complies. The rest is history. Well, sort of...
Not sure if Nailus Martyrs stocks golden sky-bracelets and dangling anvils, but they might prove more effective than routine cruxing for discouraging rebellions.
Not sure if Nailus Martyrs stocks golden sky-bracelets and dangling anvils, but they might prove more effective than routine cruxing for discouraging rebellions.
So, golden bracelets now.
Zephyros
Magistrate
Bacchanals First Mass Hunt
At the last century of the roman republic - since the female insurrection against the Oppian laws - women were exercising greater freedom. Suddenly, leading patricians were accusing female-led mystery sodalities of poisoning, ritual murder, sexual deviance, and treason. As Livy tells it, the celebrants feasted, drank wine and
... all feelings of shame extinguished, they abandoned themselves to all kinds of debauchery... not limited to faceless coupling of male and female... also poisonings and internal murders, to the point that sometimes the body could not even be found for burial... This violence was hidden by the shouts and noise of the drums and cymbals so that none of the cries for help could be heard... There is no crime or misdeed which they have not committed ...
Panic swept Rome, then all Italy. The night of the speech, many people trying to flee the city were arrested by guards posted at its gates. Thousands more were denounced. Some known initiates, male and female, killed themselves. Others succeeded in escaping from Rome; many of those denounced could not be found. Officials staged dragnet searches and inquests in the suburbs. There were rumored to be more than 7,000 conjurari. Recent initiates were imprisoned, but all the rest—thousands of people—were condemned to death. The state followed the old policy of allowing men to punish female relatives in the privacy of the home:
The convicted women are turned over to their relatives or to those in whose hands they are [male guardians], so that they will punish them in private; if there is no one to carry out the execution, it will be done in public.
According to the roman custom, women were not executed in public, this was done in the privacy - women where hanged in a noose.
Liv. 39 18
https://www.loebclassics.com/view/livy-history_rome_39/1936/pb_LCL313.271.xml
Hanging is a common death for women in Greek tragedy. However, in Roman society hanging was considered to be the death of inferior people, and was regarded with revulsion. Van Hooff notes that in Senccan tragedies the women who in their Greek setting killed themselves by hanging in the Roman versions use cutting implements. In the Aeneid, the noose with which Amata hangs herself is described as »knot of ugly death« (nodum informis leti, Aen. 12.603), emphasising the disfigurement of this way of dying, and Servius writes ad loc. of ancient Roman taboos against hanging.' One reason why upper-class Roman women in particular might have found suicide by hanging a revolting idea was that it was the means of death used for the capital punishment of this section of Roman society. In fact, the only other women recorded in Roman literature who kill themselves in this way arc the freedwomcn Epicharis and Phoebe, with their Greek names.
In other words, this form of suicide is the polar opposite of the soldierly stab which we found in Lucrctia’s story; rather than being masculine, heroic and Roman, the death of the Teutonic women has associations with effeminacy, shame, inferiority and foreignness.
At the last century of the roman republic - since the female insurrection against the Oppian laws - women were exercising greater freedom. Suddenly, leading patricians were accusing female-led mystery sodalities of poisoning, ritual murder, sexual deviance, and treason. As Livy tells it, the celebrants feasted, drank wine and
... all feelings of shame extinguished, they abandoned themselves to all kinds of debauchery... not limited to faceless coupling of male and female... also poisonings and internal murders, to the point that sometimes the body could not even be found for burial... This violence was hidden by the shouts and noise of the drums and cymbals so that none of the cries for help could be heard... There is no crime or misdeed which they have not committed ...
Panic swept Rome, then all Italy. The night of the speech, many people trying to flee the city were arrested by guards posted at its gates. Thousands more were denounced. Some known initiates, male and female, killed themselves. Others succeeded in escaping from Rome; many of those denounced could not be found. Officials staged dragnet searches and inquests in the suburbs. There were rumored to be more than 7,000 conjurari. Recent initiates were imprisoned, but all the rest—thousands of people—were condemned to death. The state followed the old policy of allowing men to punish female relatives in the privacy of the home:
The convicted women are turned over to their relatives or to those in whose hands they are [male guardians], so that they will punish them in private; if there is no one to carry out the execution, it will be done in public.
According to the roman custom, women were not executed in public, this was done in the privacy - women where hanged in a noose.
Liv. 39 18
Plures necati quam in vincula coniecti sunt. Magna vis in utraque causa virorum mulierumque fuit. Mulieres damnatas cognatis, aut in quorum manu essent, tradebant, ut ipsi in privato animadverterent in eas: si nemo erat idoneus supplicii exactor, in publico animadvertebatur.
More were killed than were thrown into prison. There was a large number of men and women in both classes. Convicted women were turned over to their relatives or to those who had authority over them, that they might be punished in private:1 if there was no suitable person to exact it, the penalty was inflicted by the state.
https://www.loebclassics.com/view/livy-history_rome_39/1936/pb_LCL313.271.xml
Hanging is a common death for women in Greek tragedy. However, in Roman society hanging was considered to be the death of inferior people, and was regarded with revulsion. Van Hooff notes that in Senccan tragedies the women who in their Greek setting killed themselves by hanging in the Roman versions use cutting implements. In the Aeneid, the noose with which Amata hangs herself is described as »knot of ugly death« (nodum informis leti, Aen. 12.603), emphasising the disfigurement of this way of dying, and Servius writes ad loc. of ancient Roman taboos against hanging.' One reason why upper-class Roman women in particular might have found suicide by hanging a revolting idea was that it was the means of death used for the capital punishment of this section of Roman society. In fact, the only other women recorded in Roman literature who kill themselves in this way arc the freedwomcn Epicharis and Phoebe, with their Greek names.
In other words, this form of suicide is the polar opposite of the soldierly stab which we found in Lucrctia’s story; rather than being masculine, heroic and Roman, the death of the Teutonic women has associations with effeminacy, shame, inferiority and foreignness.
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messaline
Crucified Amazon
Oh! What a pity ! A long crucifixion could be so much preferable ...
Messa and Judith during the Bachannals ...
Bacchanalia is a theme that's never lost its appeal to artists and their patrons -
a couple of (relatively) modern knees-ups
(It appeals to my childish sense of humour, that the artist who painted #1,
Auguste Levêque, died in 1921 at a place called Saint-Josse-ten-Noode )
a couple of (relatively) modern knees-ups
(It appeals to my childish sense of humour, that the artist who painted #1,
Auguste Levêque, died in 1921 at a place called Saint-Josse-ten-Noode
)
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messaline
Crucified Amazon
Bacchanals were not only a wine'feast but also a sex'feast ; but they were reserved, in fact, to a sect of initiated persons (males and females) and were celebrated in private .
They were becoming so much frequent (sometimes several times per month !) that the Roman Senate took some initiatives to stop this practice, going till to condemn to death those who were practising them !
Here is a sculpted fresco to a roman sarcophagus ( 210-220 AD)
... and for more :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacchanalia
They were becoming so much frequent (sometimes several times per month !) that the Roman Senate took some initiatives to stop this practice, going till to condemn to death those who were practising them !
Here is a sculpted fresco to a roman sarcophagus ( 210-220 AD)
... and for more :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacchanalia
cruxer1956
Spectator
Love yourart
Zephyros
Magistrate
Ancient Female Hangings
References to hanging found in ancient Greece as well as in the Bible suggest that some have long viewed hanging as a dishonorable way to die. In ancient Greece especially it was considered dishonorable because it was associated with female suicides; a woman, it was believed, committed suicide by hanging because hanging was thought to be a bloodless death (though it is often not). For example, in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex Jocasta, upon learning the truth about her son-husband Oedipus, hangs herself from a »dangling noose.« Classicist Eva Cantarella writes that in ancient Greece, »the noose was not only the privileged instrument of female suicide, but also, very often that with which women were killed«.
In Homer’s Odyssey the noose is used to punish women. After his long absence spent warring and wandering, Odysseus returns to Ithaka and murders the men who have been pestering his wife, Penelope, for years. After the bloodbath he orders his wife’s disloyal servant women to clean up the mess and then tells his son, Telemachus, to »hack them with your swordblades till you cut / the life out of them.« But Telemachus has other plans: »I would not give the clean death of a beast / To trulls who made a mockery of my mother / And of me too—you sluts, who lay with suitors«. And then he performs a bit of rope work:
https://www.loebclassics.com/view/homer-odyssey/1919/pb_LCL105.379.xml
As the maidens swung in their cruel and ultimate nests, the men went to Melanthios (Odysseus’s turncoat goatherd), who was also hanging from a beam by rope. They cut him down, sliced off his nose, ears, and genitals, and then tossed them to the dogs. Only then, Homer tells us, »Their work was done.«
In ancient Rome punishments were also spectacles, but they rarely involved hanging by rope. Executions were more likely to involve shoving the accused off the Tarpeian Rock, decapitation, crucifixion, or being thrown to wild animals. The Romans also had a clever punishment for parricides—the condemned was sewn into a sack, at times with animals, including snakes and dogs, and tossed into a body of water. Strangulation, perhaps by rope, was one possible punishment, but as with the Greeks, it was strongly associated with women. All those executed were stripped naked beforehand, so executed women were shielded from the public’s view by curtains; thus, their death by strangulation could be heard but not seen. Fourth-century writer Pacatus writes that hanging »is a feminine death, unworthy of a man,« and the Roman historian Livy describes the death of one man who hanged himself, Quintus Flavius Flaccus, as »the most disgraceful death imaginable.« Men were not supposed to dangle from a rope; they were to throw themselves onto their swords.
Hanging may have been a punishment among the Assyrians, and some historians point to two examples from the Book of Esther to support this argument. The first comes from Esther 2:23, when two men accused of attempting to kill the king are »both hanged on a tree.« In Esther 7:9-10 King Ahasuerus’s Prime Minister Haman is put to death on a «gallows fifty cubits high« that Haman himself had built in order to execute Mordecai. In the King James Version of events Haman is »hanged«, and in the New International Version he is »impaled«. It’s likely that he endured the latter punishment of impalement first and then had his body hanged on display for the public to gaze upon, a postmortem display intended to further disgrace the executed. This manner of punishment would be supported by Mosaic Law in Deuteronomy 21:22-23 (NIV): »If someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is exposed on a pole [or tree], you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.« Joshua was a fan of hanging bodies, putting them on display in order to further disgrace the dead—he does so with the bodies of the King of Ai and the five anti-Gibeonite Kings. And yet none of these examples fully supports the idea that hanging by the neck until death occurs was a form of judicial or extrajudicial punishment in the Old Testament.
But there are, in fact, two perhaps more significant examples of people hanging by rope until they die in the Bible—one in the Old and one in the New Testament.
Although both are suicides, how they are remembered and discussed shapes, I believe, how hanging is subsequently viewed in medieval Europe—the next destination in our journey. The first example of suicide by rope occurs in II Samuel when Ahithophel, a counselor of David, joins David’s son Absalom when he rebels against his father, trying to take David’s kingdom. After the initial rebellion Ahithophel counsels Absalom to attack David again before David’s forces are able to regroup. Absalom ignores his advice. Foreseeing Absalom’s future demise and, therefore, his own, Ahihtophel takes his leave. What he does next is explained tersely in II Samuel (NIV): »When Ahithophel saw that his advice had not been followed, he saddled his donkey and set out for his house in his hometown. He put his house in order and then hanged himsel«f.
There are other suicides in the Old Testament—Abimelech, son of Gideon; Samson; Saul and his squire; and Zimri—but Ahithophel’s is the only one involving a rope. The other suicides involve either swords or fire. In some ways Ahithophel’s hanging death foreshadows Absalom’s own death, as he is ultimately killed after his hair gets caught in a tree. But the importance of his story, for this book at least, is that Ahithophel was a turncoat, and therefore, his death was viewed as disgraceful. In Psalms 41:9 (KJV) David writes of his former counselor: »Yea, mine own familiar friend, / in whom I trusted, / which did eat of my bread, / hath lifted up his heel against me«. In other words, Ahithophel betrayed David, a move that has led some to refer to him as »the Old Testament Judas«. Theologians would eventually say quite a bit about Ahithophel, in part because his betrayal of David typologically anticipates that of Jesus and Judas.
References to hanging found in ancient Greece as well as in the Bible suggest that some have long viewed hanging as a dishonorable way to die. In ancient Greece especially it was considered dishonorable because it was associated with female suicides; a woman, it was believed, committed suicide by hanging because hanging was thought to be a bloodless death (though it is often not). For example, in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex Jocasta, upon learning the truth about her son-husband Oedipus, hangs herself from a »dangling noose.« Classicist Eva Cantarella writes that in ancient Greece, »the noose was not only the privileged instrument of female suicide, but also, very often that with which women were killed«.
In Homer’s Odyssey the noose is used to punish women. After his long absence spent warring and wandering, Odysseus returns to Ithaka and murders the men who have been pestering his wife, Penelope, for years. After the bloodbath he orders his wife’s disloyal servant women to clean up the mess and then tells his son, Telemachus, to »hack them with your swordblades till you cut / the life out of them.« But Telemachus has other plans: »I would not give the clean death of a beast / To trulls who made a mockery of my mother / And of me too—you sluts, who lay with suitors«. And then he performs a bit of rope work:
ὣς ἄρ᾿ ἔφη, καὶ πεῖσμα νεὸς κυανοπρῴροιο
κίονος ἐξάψας μεγάλης περίβαλλε θόλοιο,
ὑψόσ᾿ ἐπεντανύσας, μή τις ποσὶν οὖδας ἵκοιτο.
ὡς δ᾿ ὅτ᾿ ἂν ἢ κίχλαι τανυσίπτεροι ἠὲ πέλειαι
ἕρκει ἐνιπλήξωσι, τό θ᾿ ἑστήκῃ ἐνὶ θάμνῳ,
αὖλιν ἐσιέμεναι, στυγερὸς δ᾿ ὑπεδέξατο κοῖτος,
ὣς αἵ γ᾿ ἑξείης κεφαλὰς ἔχον, ἀμφὶ δὲ πάσαις
δειρῇσι βρόχοι ἦσαν, ὅπως οἴκτιστα θάνοιεν.
ἤσπαιρον δὲ πόδεσσι μίνυνθά περ οὔ τι μάλα δήν.
So he spoke, and tied the cable of a dark-prowed ship to a great pillar and cast it about the round house, stretching it high up that none might reach the ground with her feet. And as when long-winged thrushes or doves fall into a snare that is set in a thicket, as they seek to reach their roosting place, and hateful is the bed that gives them welcome, even so the women held their heads in a row, and round the necks of all nooses were laid, that they might die most piteously. And they writhed a little while with their feet, but not for long.
https://www.loebclassics.com/view/homer-odyssey/1919/pb_LCL105.379.xml
As the maidens swung in their cruel and ultimate nests, the men went to Melanthios (Odysseus’s turncoat goatherd), who was also hanging from a beam by rope. They cut him down, sliced off his nose, ears, and genitals, and then tossed them to the dogs. Only then, Homer tells us, »Their work was done.«
In ancient Rome punishments were also spectacles, but they rarely involved hanging by rope. Executions were more likely to involve shoving the accused off the Tarpeian Rock, decapitation, crucifixion, or being thrown to wild animals. The Romans also had a clever punishment for parricides—the condemned was sewn into a sack, at times with animals, including snakes and dogs, and tossed into a body of water. Strangulation, perhaps by rope, was one possible punishment, but as with the Greeks, it was strongly associated with women. All those executed were stripped naked beforehand, so executed women were shielded from the public’s view by curtains; thus, their death by strangulation could be heard but not seen. Fourth-century writer Pacatus writes that hanging »is a feminine death, unworthy of a man,« and the Roman historian Livy describes the death of one man who hanged himself, Quintus Flavius Flaccus, as »the most disgraceful death imaginable.« Men were not supposed to dangle from a rope; they were to throw themselves onto their swords.
Hanging may have been a punishment among the Assyrians, and some historians point to two examples from the Book of Esther to support this argument. The first comes from Esther 2:23, when two men accused of attempting to kill the king are »both hanged on a tree.« In Esther 7:9-10 King Ahasuerus’s Prime Minister Haman is put to death on a «gallows fifty cubits high« that Haman himself had built in order to execute Mordecai. In the King James Version of events Haman is »hanged«, and in the New International Version he is »impaled«. It’s likely that he endured the latter punishment of impalement first and then had his body hanged on display for the public to gaze upon, a postmortem display intended to further disgrace the executed. This manner of punishment would be supported by Mosaic Law in Deuteronomy 21:22-23 (NIV): »If someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is exposed on a pole [or tree], you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.« Joshua was a fan of hanging bodies, putting them on display in order to further disgrace the dead—he does so with the bodies of the King of Ai and the five anti-Gibeonite Kings. And yet none of these examples fully supports the idea that hanging by the neck until death occurs was a form of judicial or extrajudicial punishment in the Old Testament.
But there are, in fact, two perhaps more significant examples of people hanging by rope until they die in the Bible—one in the Old and one in the New Testament.
Although both are suicides, how they are remembered and discussed shapes, I believe, how hanging is subsequently viewed in medieval Europe—the next destination in our journey. The first example of suicide by rope occurs in II Samuel when Ahithophel, a counselor of David, joins David’s son Absalom when he rebels against his father, trying to take David’s kingdom. After the initial rebellion Ahithophel counsels Absalom to attack David again before David’s forces are able to regroup. Absalom ignores his advice. Foreseeing Absalom’s future demise and, therefore, his own, Ahihtophel takes his leave. What he does next is explained tersely in II Samuel (NIV): »When Ahithophel saw that his advice had not been followed, he saddled his donkey and set out for his house in his hometown. He put his house in order and then hanged himsel«f.
There are other suicides in the Old Testament—Abimelech, son of Gideon; Samson; Saul and his squire; and Zimri—but Ahithophel’s is the only one involving a rope. The other suicides involve either swords or fire. In some ways Ahithophel’s hanging death foreshadows Absalom’s own death, as he is ultimately killed after his hair gets caught in a tree. But the importance of his story, for this book at least, is that Ahithophel was a turncoat, and therefore, his death was viewed as disgraceful. In Psalms 41:9 (KJV) David writes of his former counselor: »Yea, mine own familiar friend, / in whom I trusted, / which did eat of my bread, / hath lifted up his heel against me«. In other words, Ahithophel betrayed David, a move that has led some to refer to him as »the Old Testament Judas«. Theologians would eventually say quite a bit about Ahithophel, in part because his betrayal of David typologically anticipates that of Jesus and Judas.
Last edited by a moderator:
Naraku
Draconarius
There is still a stigma attached to hanging. Hermann Goring requested to be executed by firing squad; a "soldier's death" ; and chose to commit suicide when his request was denied. Other German and Japanese officers convicted of war crimes expressed their distress at being put to death by such a "shameful" method. Saddam Hussein also expressed a desire to be shot and his execution by hanging may have been intended to humiliate him.
Zephyros
Magistrate
Torture In Churches Of Rome
Idolatry was one of the charges brought against the Roman Catholic Church by many Protestant leaders in the XVIth century: the Renaissance paintings and statues which embellished the churches of Rome were seen as proof of a proclivity towards a form of idolatry, especially because, unlike the medieval works of art, they were clearly inspired by pagan patterns of the ancient Greek and Roman world.
Chapel of Palazzo Altemps: fresco by il Pomarancio portraying angels carrying instruments of torture
In the second half of the XVIth century this decision was accompanied by a series of recommendations about the subjects to be portrayed: in particular it was recommended to emphasize the role of the ancient martyrs and their heroic sacrifices.
In 1583 Pope Gregory XIII commissioned a series of frescoes to Niccolò Circignani, known as il Pomarancio after the small town near Pisa where he was born; these paintings portrayed the death of the Apostles and of the most popular martyrs and they complied with the new "communication" policy of the Church, which included a rigid iconography for the portrayal of saints to make them immediately identifiable.
This cycle of frescoes became a sort of reference book for all Roman painters.
Towards the end of that century the Roman Church had overcome its worst period and Pope Clement VIII was able to celebrate the 1600 Jubilee by restoring many ancient churches.
SS. Nereo ed Achilleo is a small church near Caracalla's Baths in a location which still retains some of the countryside appearance it had in the past. The church is not a parish and it is open almost exclusively for weddings. The subject of the frescoes, which entirely cover its walls, could not be less in tune with the celebration of a festive ceremony.
Cardinal Cesare Baronio (1538-1607) was among those who had a leading role in contrasting from a cultural viewpoint the theories of the various Protestant confessions. His Annales ecclesiastici, a history of the Church, emphasized the role of the Roman Church in the early centuries of Christianity and theorized the rightness of preserving the monuments of Ancient Rome as historical evidence of the miracles, martyrdoms and other memorable events of the first developments of the new faith. His views were accepted by the popes of his time (Gregory XIII, Sixtus V and Clement VIII).
He defined for the 1600 Jubilee the iconographical plan of the frescoes decorating SS. Nereo ed Achilleo: the martyrdoms of some of the greatest saints of the early centuries. The design and the execution of the frescoes is traditionally attributed to il Pomarancio. The final result is that, despite the most gruesome details and the blood spilt all over the place, the neutral light and the pastel colours lead the viewer to believe he is being narrated a gentle fable, rather than a dramatic event.
S. Vitale is another minor church which was entirely decorated with frescoes at the end of the XVIth century: it was in a suburban area, while today it is entirely surrounded by late XIXth century buildings. The late mannerism style and the light colours are very decorative, but the drama of the scene portrayed above hits the viewer: it impacted even more the viewer of the year 1600, because, while in SS. Nereo e Achilleo the head of St. Simon perfectly sawed into two halves raised just an anatomical curiosity, the man lying on the rack was not the nearly unknown martyr to whom S. Vitale is dedicated, but rather (for the 1600 viewer) Giacomo Cenci, who, having been tortured on the rack, eventually confessed the role he and his sister Beatrice had had in the killing of their brutal father. The individual viewing this fresco in 1600 would also be reminded of the philosopher Giordano Bruno accused of heresy, who did not abjure his opinions and was burnt alive in Campo de' Fiori. The details of the rack show that the painter was well aware of its mechanisms, because in that period it was routinely used by the Roman prosecutors, in particular by those of Tribunale del Sant'Uffizio (o Inquisizione). Even when the prosecutors had gathered enough evidence to substantiate the charge, they made use of the rack to obtain a full confession: in this way they thought they had helped the culprit by saving his soul, a very noble aim indeed.
Sadism: form of sexual perversion marked by love of cruelty; deriving of pleasure from inflicting or watching cruelty. The works of art portraying tortures inflicted on some heroines of Christianity lend weight to the suspicion that sadism existed well before Marquis de Sade gave his name to it. In his Voyage en Italie he described how he enjoyed the sight of some works of art decorating the Roman churches: in particular the statue of S. Cecilia.
Charles Dickens wrote a very interesting account of a beheading he saw in Rome in 1845. It was the usual way executions were carried out and in general they attracted a lot of people. So the Romans were accustomed to seeing heads rolling into a basket and then executioners holding them by the hair and showing them to the people. It is not unusual to see paintings and sculptures showing beheadings and not only with reference to the martyrdoms of saints.
In 1571 the Turks, breaking the terms signed to obtain the surrender of Famagosta, flayed alive Marcantonio Bragadin, the Venetian commander of the fortress. This event, rather than the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, is what the 1600 viewer saw in this gruesome painting in SS. Nereo ed Achilleo (note the character, portrayed on the left in the fresco wearing a Turkish turban.
Dickens described the paintings he saw in S. Stefano Rotondo as a panorama of horror and butchery, a sort of catalogue of all the conceivable means to torture and put to death a human being: the fresco shown above combines two different capital punishments: stoning, which is usually associated with punishment of adulterers, and burying alive, the melodramatic fate of Aida and Radames.
Mannerist painters portrayed the most bloody and horrific martyrdoms in such a formal and decorative way, that, notwithstanding the subject, their paintings looked "nice". It was the task of a great painter to show the dramatic end of the first saints. Caravaggio did not indulge in gruesome details, but his use of light and his not idealized bodies conveyed a pathos which eventually led some of those who had commissioned him a painting, to refuse it because of its being too real.
Pics...
Idolatry was one of the charges brought against the Roman Catholic Church by many Protestant leaders in the XVIth century: the Renaissance paintings and statues which embellished the churches of Rome were seen as proof of a proclivity towards a form of idolatry, especially because, unlike the medieval works of art, they were clearly inspired by pagan patterns of the ancient Greek and Roman world.
Chapel of Palazzo Altemps: fresco by il Pomarancio portraying angels carrying instruments of torture
In the second half of the XVIth century this decision was accompanied by a series of recommendations about the subjects to be portrayed: in particular it was recommended to emphasize the role of the ancient martyrs and their heroic sacrifices.
In 1583 Pope Gregory XIII commissioned a series of frescoes to Niccolò Circignani, known as il Pomarancio after the small town near Pisa where he was born; these paintings portrayed the death of the Apostles and of the most popular martyrs and they complied with the new "communication" policy of the Church, which included a rigid iconography for the portrayal of saints to make them immediately identifiable.
This cycle of frescoes became a sort of reference book for all Roman painters.
Towards the end of that century the Roman Church had overcome its worst period and Pope Clement VIII was able to celebrate the 1600 Jubilee by restoring many ancient churches.
SS. Nereo ed Achilleo is a small church near Caracalla's Baths in a location which still retains some of the countryside appearance it had in the past. The church is not a parish and it is open almost exclusively for weddings. The subject of the frescoes, which entirely cover its walls, could not be less in tune with the celebration of a festive ceremony.
Cardinal Cesare Baronio (1538-1607) was among those who had a leading role in contrasting from a cultural viewpoint the theories of the various Protestant confessions. His Annales ecclesiastici, a history of the Church, emphasized the role of the Roman Church in the early centuries of Christianity and theorized the rightness of preserving the monuments of Ancient Rome as historical evidence of the miracles, martyrdoms and other memorable events of the first developments of the new faith. His views were accepted by the popes of his time (Gregory XIII, Sixtus V and Clement VIII).
He defined for the 1600 Jubilee the iconographical plan of the frescoes decorating SS. Nereo ed Achilleo: the martyrdoms of some of the greatest saints of the early centuries. The design and the execution of the frescoes is traditionally attributed to il Pomarancio. The final result is that, despite the most gruesome details and the blood spilt all over the place, the neutral light and the pastel colours lead the viewer to believe he is being narrated a gentle fable, rather than a dramatic event.
S. Vitale is another minor church which was entirely decorated with frescoes at the end of the XVIth century: it was in a suburban area, while today it is entirely surrounded by late XIXth century buildings. The late mannerism style and the light colours are very decorative, but the drama of the scene portrayed above hits the viewer: it impacted even more the viewer of the year 1600, because, while in SS. Nereo e Achilleo the head of St. Simon perfectly sawed into two halves raised just an anatomical curiosity, the man lying on the rack was not the nearly unknown martyr to whom S. Vitale is dedicated, but rather (for the 1600 viewer) Giacomo Cenci, who, having been tortured on the rack, eventually confessed the role he and his sister Beatrice had had in the killing of their brutal father. The individual viewing this fresco in 1600 would also be reminded of the philosopher Giordano Bruno accused of heresy, who did not abjure his opinions and was burnt alive in Campo de' Fiori. The details of the rack show that the painter was well aware of its mechanisms, because in that period it was routinely used by the Roman prosecutors, in particular by those of Tribunale del Sant'Uffizio (o Inquisizione). Even when the prosecutors had gathered enough evidence to substantiate the charge, they made use of the rack to obtain a full confession: in this way they thought they had helped the culprit by saving his soul, a very noble aim indeed.
Sadism: form of sexual perversion marked by love of cruelty; deriving of pleasure from inflicting or watching cruelty. The works of art portraying tortures inflicted on some heroines of Christianity lend weight to the suspicion that sadism existed well before Marquis de Sade gave his name to it. In his Voyage en Italie he described how he enjoyed the sight of some works of art decorating the Roman churches: in particular the statue of S. Cecilia.
Charles Dickens wrote a very interesting account of a beheading he saw in Rome in 1845. It was the usual way executions were carried out and in general they attracted a lot of people. So the Romans were accustomed to seeing heads rolling into a basket and then executioners holding them by the hair and showing them to the people. It is not unusual to see paintings and sculptures showing beheadings and not only with reference to the martyrdoms of saints.
In 1571 the Turks, breaking the terms signed to obtain the surrender of Famagosta, flayed alive Marcantonio Bragadin, the Venetian commander of the fortress. This event, rather than the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, is what the 1600 viewer saw in this gruesome painting in SS. Nereo ed Achilleo (note the character, portrayed on the left in the fresco wearing a Turkish turban.
Dickens described the paintings he saw in S. Stefano Rotondo as a panorama of horror and butchery, a sort of catalogue of all the conceivable means to torture and put to death a human being: the fresco shown above combines two different capital punishments: stoning, which is usually associated with punishment of adulterers, and burying alive, the melodramatic fate of Aida and Radames.
Mannerist painters portrayed the most bloody and horrific martyrdoms in such a formal and decorative way, that, notwithstanding the subject, their paintings looked "nice". It was the task of a great painter to show the dramatic end of the first saints. Caravaggio did not indulge in gruesome details, but his use of light and his not idealized bodies conveyed a pathos which eventually led some of those who had commissioned him a painting, to refuse it because of its being too real.
Pics...
- Chapel of Palazzo Altemps: fresco by il Pomarancio portraying angels carrying instruments of torture
- S. Stefano Rotondo: cycle of frescoes by il Pomarancio 1583: (left) martyrdom of SS. Vito, Modesto e Crescenzia (Sts. Vitus, Modestus and Crescentia); (right) martyrdom of SS. Giovanni e Paolo (Sts. John and Paul).
- SS. Nereo ed Achilleo: Martyrdom of S. Simone (St. Simon the Apostle) by Nicolò Circignani (?) (1600)
- S. Vitale: Torture of S. Vitale (St. Vitalis) by Agostino Ciampelli (1595 ca.)
- S. Maria dell'Anima: Torture of S. Barbara (St. Barbara) by Michiel Coxie (1539 ca.) and SS. Quirico e Giuditta: Martyrdom of SS. Quirico e Giuditta (Sts. Quiricus and Juditta) (unknown author - 1631)
- S. Vitale: Decollation of S. Protasio (Sts. Gervasius and Protasius) by Andrea Commodi (1600 ca.) - S. Maria del Popolo: Giuditta by Raffaele Vanni (1658)
- SS. Nereo ed Achilleo: Martyrdom of S. Bartolomeo (St. Bartholomew) by Nicolò Circignani (?) (1600)
- S. Vitale: Martyrdom of S. Vitale by Agostino Ciampelli (1595 ca.)
- S. Maria del Popolo: Crucifixion of S. Pietro (St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles) by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1601)
- Chiesa dei Cappuccini: S. Michele Arcangelo (St. Michael the Archangel) by Guido Reni (1635) and S. Maria del Popolo: Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo (St. Lawrence) by Daniele Seyter (1685)
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LittleSiss
Sorceress
Very nice pieces.
JustJJ
Governor
My early curiosities about torture were always piqued by such artwork and stories. I would find them in history encyclopedias and the stories of religious martyrs.
I've often joked that modern prude Christians who devour books like Foxe's Book of Martyrs and Jesus Freaks and Tortured for Christ and Safely Home just have suppressed fetishes.
I've often joked that modern prude Christians who devour books like Foxe's Book of Martyrs and Jesus Freaks and Tortured for Christ and Safely Home just have suppressed fetishes.
Zephyros
Magistrate
Flaying
Flaying, also known colloquially as skinning, was a method of slow and painful execution in which skin is removed from the body.
We have several sources of ancient Greek where historians tell us about this custom in Persia. Here are three of them …
Cetesias FGrH 3c, 688 F 9.6
Cyrus then sent Petisacas the eunuch, who had great influence with him, to Persia to fetch Astyigas from the Barcanians, he and his daughter Amytis being anxious to see him. Oebaras then advised Petisacas to leave Astyigas in some lonely spot, to perish of hunger and thirst; which he did. But the crime was revealed in a dream, and Petisacas, at the urgent request of Amytis, was handed over to her by Cyrus for punishment. She ordered his eyes to be dug out, had him flayed alive, and then crucified.
Again, it is a woman insisting on this punishment …
Cetesias FGrH 3c, 688 F 16.66
Cetesias FGrH 3c, 688 F 26.7
And before the king suspected her design, she put the eunuch in the hands of the executioners, who were ordered to flay him alive, to set up his body slantwise on three stakes, and to nail up his skin to a fourth. This was done, and when the king was bitterly incensed at her, she said to him, with a mocking laugh: " ‘What a blessed simpleton thou art, to be incensed on account of a wretched old eunuch, when I, who have diced away a thousand darics, accept my loss without a word.’
Ancient Rome knew this, but it was not parasitized beside the myth of Marsyas.
Assyrians flaying their prisoners alive
Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" - St Bartholomew holding the knife of his martyrdom and his flayed skin (Sistine Chapel)
Apollo flaying Marsyas by Antonio Corradini (1658-1752), Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Apollo flaying Marsyas by Jan van der Straet, gen. Stradanus, Florenz/Antwerpen (1580 ± 1600)
Apollo flaying Marsyas by Adam Lenckhardt, Elfenbein (1644).
Apollo flaying Marsyas by Meister M. F. (1536)
The Judgement of Cambyses by Gerard David in 1498.
Flaying of San Bartholomäus by von Stefan Lochner
Anthropodermic bibliopegy is the practice of binding books in human skin. As of April 2016, The Anthropodermic Book Project "has identified 47 alleged anthropodermic books in the world's libraries and museums. Of those, 30 books have been tested or are in the process of being tested. Seventeen of the books have been confirmed as having human skin bindings and nine were proven to be not of human origin but of sheep, pig, cow, or other animals."[1] (The confirmed figures as of August 2017 have increased to 18 bindings identified as human and 14 disproved.
An early reference to a book bound in human skin is found in the travels of Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach. Writing about his visit to Bremen in 1710:
Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, »Merkwürdige Reisen durch Niedersachsen, Holland und Engelland« tells:
»We also saw a little duodecimo, Molleri manuale præparationis ad mortem. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about it, and you couldn't understand why it was here until you read in the front that it was bound in human leather. This unusual binding, the like of which I had never before seen, seemed especially well adapted to this book, dedicated to more meditation about death. You would take it for pig skin.«
A book bound in the skin of the murderer William Burke, on display in Surgeons' Hall Museum in Edinburgh.
Flaying, also known colloquially as skinning, was a method of slow and painful execution in which skin is removed from the body.
We have several sources of ancient Greek where historians tell us about this custom in Persia. Here are three of them …
Cetesias FGrH 3c, 688 F 9.6
Ἔτι διαλαμβάνει ὡς ἀποστέλλει Κῦρος ἐν Περσίδι Πετησάκαν τὸν εὐνοῦχον, μέγα παρ´ αὐτῷ δυνάμενον, ἐνέγκαι ἀπὸ Βαρκανίων Ἀστυΐγαν· ἐπόθει γὰρ αὐτός τε καὶ ἡ θυγάτηρ Ἀμύτις τὸν πατέρα ἰδεῖν. Καὶ ὡς Οἰβάρας βουλεύει Πετησάκᾳ ἐν ἐρήμῳ τόπῳ καταλιπόντα Ἀστυΐγαν λιμῷ καὶ δίψει ἀπολέσαι· ὃ καὶ γέγονε. Δι´ ἐνυπνίων δὲ τοῦ μιάσματος μηνυθέντος, Πετησάκας, πολλάκις αἰτησαμένης Ἀμύτιος, εἰς τιμωρίαν παρὰ Κύρου ἐκδίδοται· ἡ δέ, τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἐξορύξασα καὶ τὸ δέρμα περιδείρασα, ἀνεσταύρισεν.
Cyrus then sent Petisacas the eunuch, who had great influence with him, to Persia to fetch Astyigas from the Barcanians, he and his daughter Amytis being anxious to see him. Oebaras then advised Petisacas to leave Astyigas in some lonely spot, to perish of hunger and thirst; which he did. But the crime was revealed in a dream, and Petisacas, at the urgent request of Amytis, was handed over to her by Cyrus for punishment. She ordered his eyes to be dug out, had him flayed alive, and then crucified.
Again, it is a woman insisting on this punishment …
Cetesias FGrH 3c, 688 F 16.66
LIX. Ὡς Παρύσατις εἰς Βαβυλῶνα ἀφίκετο πενθοῦσα Κῦρον, καὶ μόλις ἐκομίσατο τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν χεῖρα, καὶ ἔθαψε καὶ ἀπέστειλεν εἰς Σοῦσα. Τὰ περὶ Βαγαπάτου, τοῦ ἀποτεμόντος προστάξει βασιλέως τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος Κύρου· ὅπως ἡ μήτηρ, μετὰ βασιλέως κύβοις ἐπὶ συνθήκαις παίξασα καὶ νικήσασα, ἔλαβε Βαγαπάτην· καὶ ὃν τρόπον τὸ δέρμα περιαιρεθεὶς ἀνεσταυρίσθη ὑπὸ Παρυσάτιδος, ὅτε καὶ τὸ πολὺ ἐπὶ Κύρῳ πένθος αὐτῇ ἐπαύσατο διὰ τὴν πολλὴν τοῦ Ἀρτοξέρξου δέησιν.
Parysatis set out for Babylon, mourning for the death of Cyrus, and having with difficulty recovered his head and hand sent them to Susa for burial. It was Bagapates who had cut off his head by order of Artoxerxes. Parysatis, when playing at dice with the king, won the game and Bagapates as the prize, and afterwards had him flayed alive and crucified. At length she was persuaded by the entreaties of Artoxerxes to give up mourning for her son. The king rewarded the soldier who brought him Cyrus's cap, and the Carian who was supposed to have wounded him, whom Parysatis afterwards tortured and put to death. Mitradates having boasted at table of having killed Cyrus, Parysatis demanded that he should be given up to her, and having got him into her hands, put him to death with great cruelty.Cetesias FGrH 3c, 688 F 26.7
καὶ πρὶν ἐν ὑποψίᾳ γενέσθαι βασιλέα τοῦ πράγματος ἐγχειρίσασα τοῖς ἐπὶ τῶν τιμωριῶν προσέταξεν ἐκδεῖραι ζῶντα, καὶ τὸ μὲν σῶμα πλάγιον διὰ τριῶν σταυρῶν ἀναπῆξαι, τὸ δὲ δέρμα χωρὶς διαπατταλεῦσαι. γενομένων δὲ τούτων καὶ βασιλέως χαλεπῶς φέροντος καὶ παροξυνομένου πρὸς αὐτήν, εἰρωνευομένη μετὰ γέλωτος, “Ὡς ἡδύς,” ἔφασκεν, “εἶ καὶ μακάριος, εἰ χαλεπαίνεις διὰ γέροντα πονηρὸν εὐνοῦχον, ἐγὼ δὲ χιλίους ἐκκυβευθεῖσα 6δαρεικοὺς σιωπῶ καὶ στέργω.”
And before the king suspected her design, she put the eunuch in the hands of the executioners, who were ordered to flay him alive, to set up his body slantwise on three stakes, and to nail up his skin to a fourth. This was done, and when the king was bitterly incensed at her, she said to him, with a mocking laugh: " ‘What a blessed simpleton thou art, to be incensed on account of a wretched old eunuch, when I, who have diced away a thousand darics, accept my loss without a word.’
Ancient Rome knew this, but it was not parasitized beside the myth of Marsyas.
Assyrians flaying their prisoners alive
Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" - St Bartholomew holding the knife of his martyrdom and his flayed skin (Sistine Chapel)
Apollo flaying Marsyas by Antonio Corradini (1658-1752), Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Apollo flaying Marsyas by Jan van der Straet, gen. Stradanus, Florenz/Antwerpen (1580 ± 1600)
Apollo flaying Marsyas by Adam Lenckhardt, Elfenbein (1644).
Apollo flaying Marsyas by Meister M. F. (1536)
The Judgement of Cambyses by Gerard David in 1498.
Flaying of San Bartholomäus by von Stefan Lochner
Anthropodermic bibliopegy is the practice of binding books in human skin. As of April 2016, The Anthropodermic Book Project "has identified 47 alleged anthropodermic books in the world's libraries and museums. Of those, 30 books have been tested or are in the process of being tested. Seventeen of the books have been confirmed as having human skin bindings and nine were proven to be not of human origin but of sheep, pig, cow, or other animals."[1] (The confirmed figures as of August 2017 have increased to 18 bindings identified as human and 14 disproved.
An early reference to a book bound in human skin is found in the travels of Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach. Writing about his visit to Bremen in 1710:
Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, »Merkwürdige Reisen durch Niedersachsen, Holland und Engelland« tells:
»We also saw a little duodecimo, Molleri manuale præparationis ad mortem. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about it, and you couldn't understand why it was here until you read in the front that it was bound in human leather. This unusual binding, the like of which I had never before seen, seemed especially well adapted to this book, dedicated to more meditation about death. You would take it for pig skin.«
A book bound in the skin of the murderer William Burke, on display in Surgeons' Hall Museum in Edinburgh.
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William Burke, and his mate William Hare, were of course the famous grave-robbers, who found there was such a demand for cadavers among the medical professors and students in Edinburgh they had to maintain supplies by murdering suitable candidates for dissection
Of course, he (and I guess most if not all the others who ended up as book-bindings) was dead before his hide was tanned.
Of course, he (and I guess most if not all the others who ended up as book-bindings) was dead before his hide was tanned.