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Augustine’s Vision of Hell
The burning stakes and bruloirs were justified that since the
hell is a cruel place, cruelty that lasts less than an hour is
preferable to cruelty that stretches over eternity. In most texts on
philosophy and theology, Saint Augustine receives acclamation. His
self-reflection is extolled, as is the ornate language of his psalms,
and the depth of his faith. Let us look at one of the less well-known of
Augustine’s narratives, as it is accessible only in Latin: the
description of Hell in his 69th address to his fellow hermits ''Ad
Fratres in Eremitate Sermo LXIX,'' where St. Augustine describes how
Satan seized the female's damned soul and commanded his fellow devils to
“pierce her eyes with forks as she enjoyed looking at unclean things,
pierce her mouth as she used them for blasphemy, pierce her heart, as
she did not harbor piety, compassion, clemency, and forgiveness there,
pierce her hands with the heavy fork forged in Hell since she reached
with them at things unclean and did not use them to distribute alms and
help her neighbors, use the fiery forks to pierce her legs she used to
dance and meet her lovers.'
After performing these tasks, devils spread out their black wings and
transport the stabbed soul to the Hell. When the gates of Hell open,
'"out steps a hideous, horrible dragon, always ready to devour souls.
The dragon inserts the soul into his mouth, full of stench. After
chewing and digesting the soul, the dragon vomits the soul into a fiery
lake, where millions of other sinful souls wait for their trial by our
Lord."
This is sick and sickening, as are the similar narratives about females
fried for eternity in oil and males in their own sperm.
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Devil, one of the main protagonists
of the witch trials.
Devil was frequently depicted
as a male or an animal figure.
However, devil could take on either
male (incubus), or female (succubus) form |
I would have no compassion on
the witches. I would burn them all.
Martin Luther
All witches
should be exterminated.
Jean Calvin
Witchcraft trials
Clearly fraudulent and aberrant, the witch trials were sanctioned during a
period of about three centuries. Witch burning occurred sporadically since
1450's. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued an edict, Summis desiderantes
affectibus, where he alleged that many men and women were in collusion with
the Devil. All Christians were to extend their help to two Dominican monks the
Pope placed in charge of fighting people who, in association with Satan, caused
diseases, pestilence, harmed harvest and cattle, and perpetrated other heinous
crimes. The names of these monks were Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, also
known as Institoris. Sprenger and Kramer wrote Malleus Maleficarum,
published in 1486, which codified the charges, interrogation procedures and the
means of judicial resolutions for the witchcraft trials. After , in 1517, Luther
posted his theses, launching the Protestant-Catholic controversy, the frequency
of the trials increased,
as each side believed that the other side is
inspired by the devil.
The era of witch trials culminated around the time of the Thirty Years' War.
Extent of witch trials
Church archives on witchcraft trials remain closed even to
academic scholars and thus the estimates of the number of victims of these
trials differ. However, the ongoing controversy about the number of victims of
religious fanaticism has many parallels with the controversy surrounding
holocaust deniers who do not deny that Holocaust occurred, but try to diminish
its extent. In a similar vein, theologians and religious scholars do not deny
that the Christian churches mandated the witch trials and burning of live human
beings, but to try to diminish the number of victims of these trials. It is
impossible to chart a Christian future that leaves behind the reality of torture
and burning of human beings that took place for over more than three centuries.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to envision a positive expression of
Christianity with the bruloirs it helped to construct at its center.
Instead, what occurs is an attempt by theologians, Christian scholars, and
fundamentalist Christians to deny the extent of human suffering and the number
of deaths the collusion of ecclesiastic and secular institutions projecting
power via the justice system inflicted on innocent human beings.
Termination of witch trials
Witch burning stopped around the time of the American (1776) and the French
Revolution (1789) which affirmed the separation of secular and ecclesiastic
powers.
Bruloir. Abstract painting. |
Severity of suffering
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s fairy tales drew inspiration from folk sources. Their
stories include such classics as Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, and Hansel and
Gretel. In Grimm's original Kinder und Hausmarchen (1812, p.68) written
from oral peasant narration, the burning of the witch in the oven is described
as follows.
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"Hu! da fing sie an zu heulen,
ganz grauselich;
aber Gretel lief fort, und
die gottlose Hexe muste elendiglich verbrennen." |
[Oh! How the (old witch) did howl, it was quite
horrible to hear her; but Gretel ran away, and the irreligious witch had to burn
miserably.] In most English translations of Hansel und Gretel, the word
"irreligious" is missing. Did the informant of brothers' Grimm have elaborated
on actual events of witch burning? (cf., Krus, Nelsen, & Webb, 1998)
Bruloirs were large ovens,
built to expedite burning of individuals convicted in the course of criminal
justice proceedings that resulted in the death penalty with increased severity
of punishment (Mǖllendorf, 1911, p. 100; Sindelar, 1986, p.182). In these ovens
were also burned children sentenced to death by fire in the course of criminal
proceedings against their parents (Cavendish, 1987). In Spain, these ovens were
called "quemadero" or "brassero." In a study on the agony of dying
based on judgments of forensic pathologists (Rhyne, et.al., 1995), the most
excruciating way to die is by fire, followed by pain of death resulting from
cutting the throat and by stabbing the abdomen. The bruloirs intensified the
pain of death by fire by slowing down the process and increasing its
psychological impact by the horror of being enclosed in a small, dark place
where the temperature was steadily raising. This method of execution is salient
among the cruelest methods designed to intensify the agony of death.
The frequency of the word 'fire' in both the Old and
New Old Testaments is 506. Only a few other words
other than proper names have a greater frequency of
occurrence. The frequency of the word 'fire' and also
of the words 'blood' (375), 'death' (342), and 'love'
(281) are shown in the above figure. In the New
Testament, the word ‘fire’ is used 79 times, in the
Old Testament, the word ‘fire’ occurs 427 times. |
You shall not suffer a witch to live
Computer search of both the Old and New Testaments shows only two occurrences of
the word ‘witch:’ Deuteronomy 18:10 and Exodus 22:18. On inspection, the context
of the word ‘witch’ in Deuteronomy, in somewhat circumspect fashion, involves
fire, However the Exodus 22:18 is explicit and ominous:
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
Aside of Deuteronomy 18:10, the death penalty by
fire was justified by the Biblical verse from the Gospel by John: "If a man
abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather
them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."
Eyes dilated by fear
Preserved in numerous engravings, the faces of people about being burned look at
us across the time. Surrounded by flames with hair already singed, their eyes
are dilated by fear. Jean Bodin (1529-1596), a well-known jurist who taught and
practiced law in Toulouse and Paris was unmoved by the suffering experienced by
people that were burned alive. In his book Demonomanie des Sorciers (On
the Demon-mania of Witches, 1581) Bodin maintained that burning is too lenient
for serious crimes because the suffering does not last more than one hour.[1]
Bodin, a staunch advocate of Huguenots at the court of Catherine de Medici
looked for inspiration to Calvinist Scotland. He recommended that the Calvinist
practice of placing boxes in every church into which parishioners were advised
to put names of persons they suspected of witchcraft was also adapted in France.
Bodin also approved of torture during criminal interrogations, including the
torture of children to compel them to testify against their parents. However,
many people wondered if Bodin, such an expert so convinced of the devil's
existence and so curious about this topic may not himself have been involved
with witchcraft. On June 3, 1587, the general prosecutor ordered the lieutenant
of the baillage to proceed with a search of Bodin's home on suspicion of
witchcraft. However, this search was brought to a halt by intervention Bodin's
supporters. One may only wander how Bodin would feel while experiencing what he
legislated for others. Bodin died in 1596 of Bubonic Plague.
Witch trials in Geneva
Calvin’s administration of Geneva burned people not only on charges of
witchcraft, but also on charges of blasphemy and adultery. Calvinism at its
height in Geneva led to threatening children with death. Some were hung by their
armpits from gallows to demonstrate that they deserved death, and one child was
executed for striking his parents.
Witch trials in England and Spain
With respect to burning witches, there was no dispute between Protestants and
Catholics as both sides engaged in this practice. Catholic sovereigns of Spain
staged auto-da-fes. England prided herself in upholding modesty by burning women
at the stake, as quartering (a penalty reserved for men accused of witchcraft)
would have involved nudity.
Witch trials in American colonies
European immigrants to America brought with them beliefs in witches and
immigrants from England carried with them also memories of the British criminal
justice courts, dispensing sentences of death by hanging for about 200 offences.
These memories likely included the remembrance of hanging, in 1708, of Michael
Hammond, seven-years-old and his sister, Ann, eleven-years-old, for shoplifting.
Religious zealots attempted to implant the witch trials in America, starting a
series of witch trials in Connecticut, Boston, and Salem, Massachusetts. In
Salem, two girls in the household of the Reverend Samuel Parris were accused of
witchcraft and the prominent colonial Mather family pressed for their
prosecution. Cotton Mather (1663-1728), an influential Puritan pastor and author
of over 450 predominantly religious books is perhaps the best known member of
that family. In one of his children's books Cotton Mather asserts that
children which lie, must go to their father
the devil, into everlasting burning." |
In the course of the Salem Witch Trial more
people got accused of which two died in prison, 19 were hung, and one person was
pressed to death.
The trials Accusations of
witchcraft were obtained by soliciting the congregation to name suspected
sorcerers or witches. The identity of the accusers was kept secret from the
accused. The goal of the investigation was to obtain a confession of witchcraft.
The confessions were forced by use of torture. Among the religious orders, a
major role in the trials of both witches and heretics was played by the
Dominican and Franciscan orders of friars.
The rack. |
The wheel and the rack
Breaking a bone is painful and breaking bones is an old method of torture. This
was frequently done by hitting the extremities or the rib cage with a wagon
wheel. As the dislocated joint is more painful than a broken bone, the torture
by wheel can be upgraded by torture on the rack. The rack was designed to
stretch the body to dislocate its joints. The dislocations of joints can be
heard as popping sounds, often mixed with the shrieks of agony. The pain of
stretching was sometimes further increased by gouging eyes, branding body with
hot irons or tearing off tongue, nipples, ears, nose or male genitals with red
hot pincers. The female genitals were torn from inside by spiked, pear shaped
vaginal stretchers.
The intestinal crank. |
The intestinal crank
Among the instruments of torture, used during the criminal justice
investigations to obtain information, was also the intestinal crank. This method
of torture involved abdominal incision, separation of the duodenum from the
pylorus, and attachment of the upper part of the thin intestine to the
intestinal crank. The crank could be rotated to extract information (and
intestines) from the gastrointestinal cavity of a conscious person (Monestier,
1994).
Witch hunters Witch hunter
was a term used to describe people who worked to locate and bring witches to
justice. The most prominent of the witch hunters was Balthazar Ross. Between
1602 and 1606, Ross collected information that was used to arrest and prosecute
more than 700 people. Another professional witch hunter was the Puritan lawyer
Matthew Hopkins, who often described himself as the leading expert on the
problem of witch crimes. Hopkins is best known for orchestrating the mass
execution of witches in Chelmsford, Essex, in 1645. Nicholas Remy, a jurist in
Lorraine, was responsible for the death of more than nine hundred persons in
witch trials between 1581 and 1591. According to Remy (who quoted Bible on his
the second point), “Devil appears as a man or in shape
of an animal, seeking sexual relationships with women. In case they do not
agree, he rapes them,” and
"Children should be burnt
if they had a witch as a parent." |
Remy described his methods for discovering
witches and bringing them to justice in his book (1595) Demonolatria Libri
Tres, which replaced Kramer and Sprenger’s Malleus as the updated
manuals for the criminal justice proceedings concerning witchcraft.
Inquisitors
Inquisitors who distinguished themselves by a large number of their victims were
Bernard Gui, Conrad of Marburg, Pedro Arbues, Robert le Bougre, Nicolas Eymeric,
and Tomas de Torquemada, who traveled with 50 cavalrymen and 200 foot soldiers
as his bodyguards, well aware that his large-scale burnings have created him
many enemies. The inquisitor Conrad "the butcher" of Marburg was killed in 1233
by a group of noblemen whose relatives he burned at stake. Inquisitor Pedro
Arbues was killed in 1485 in Saragossa, Andalusia.
Apologists Apart
from Malleus Maleficarum, there were many books justifying the witch trials.
Johann Geiler von Kayserberg maintained in his Die Emeis (1517) that the
devil anesthetizes witches right before burning so they would not feel any pain.
Bartolomeo Spina’s Questio de Strigibus (1523) is polemics against people
who did not believe in witch trials. The French Calvinist Lambert Daneau, in his
book Les Sorciers (1564), published in Geneva, proposed the final
solution of the witch problem. He held that witches represent a major danger for
humanity and must be exterminated. Bishop Peter Biensfield in his Tractatus
de Confessionibus Maleficorum (1589) maintained that since the sinfulness of
the world increased, God also allowed increasing the stringency of punishments.
Henri Boquet in his Discours des Sorciers (1602) believed that witches
multiply as worms in the garden do and wished to burn them all in one great
fire.
Antagonists To oppose witch
trials was dangerous. The proponents of witch trials maintained that whoever
opposes the trials is probably also a witch or a sorcerer. This opinion persists
and a person who opposes a law or its severity is often suspected of ulterior
motives and has something to hide or something to be afraid of. These notions
discouraged many people from opposing injustice. Tace pro pace, be silent
and live in peace. However, the Romans also used to say qui tacet, consentire
videtur, who remains silent, consents.
Doctoris Universae Medicinae.
Johannes Weyer, (1516 - 1588).
Father of Psychiatry.
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The physician Johannes Weyer was among the early
opponents of witch trials. Weyer in his book De Praestigiis Daemonum, (On
the Activities of Demons, 1563) Dr. Weyer writes:
"The uninformed and the unskilled physicians relegate all the incurable
diseases, or all the diseases the remedy for which they overlook, to witchcraft.
When they do this, they are talking about disease like a blind man does about
color."
Called the Father of Psychiatry, he investigated the 1564 devil
possession of the nuns of Cologne and found out that a group of teenage boys
climbed the convent wall and made love to the nuns who, subsequently, covered up
this amorous event by claiming possession by the devil.
Friedrich Spee von
Langenfeld, S.J. (1591-1635) |
The most courageous opponent of the witch trials
was the Friedrich Spee von Langefeld who in his Cautio Criminalis (1631)
told of confessions of hundreds of persons just before their executions. The
condemned witches and sorcerers all confessed that their signed confessions were
forced by torture and that they were innocent. He wrote:
Why do you search so diligently for sorcerers? I will show you at once where
they are. Take the Capuchins, the Jesuits, all the religious orders, and torture
them - they will confess. Should a few still be obstinate, keep on torturing -
they will give in. If you want more, take the Canons, the Doctors, the Bishops
of the Church - they will confess.
Qui bono? The
cardinal question remains who ultimately benefited from these trials. The reason
usually given is that the witchcraft trials were sustained by material benefits
obtained by confiscation of property of the condemned individuals. However, the
elites with real power and real money could ultimately hardly benefit from
depopulated villages and crippled economy. The reason elites tolerated the
trials was that the widespread horror generated by mass burnings turned out to
be one of the most effective tools for maintaining power. Over the centuries,
hysteria of witch hunts intensified during the times of internal unrest or prior
to initiation of wars of aggression, as notions that to counteract the supreme
evil embodied by the devil justified even the most ruthless and cruel methods of
inflicting violence on others.
References
Binsfeld, P. (1596) Tractatus de confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum.
Trier, Germany: Heinrich Bock.
Bodin, J. (1581) De la démonomanie des sorciers, Paris, Jacques Du Puys;
De magorum daemonomania, Libri VI, Hildesheim. Olms, 2003.
Boquet, H. (1602) Discours execrable des Sorciers. Lyon: Phenix
Editions.
Cavendish, R. (1987) A history of magic. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Cazotte, J. (1772) The devil in love. Sawtry, England: Daedalus Ltd.,
1991
Daneau, L. (1564) Les Sorciers, dialogue très utile et très necessaire pour
ce temps. In Levack, B. (1992) The literature of witchcraft: articles on
witchcraft, magic, and demonology. Garland.
Franzen, A. (2006) Kleine Kirchengeschichte. Freiburg, Germany: Herder.
Geiler, J. (1508) Die Emeis. Strassburg: Johann Grüninger.
Grimm, J., & Grimm, W. (1812) Kinder und Hausmãrchen. Berlin, Germany:
Realschulbuchhandlung.
Kramer, H. & Sprenger, J. (1486) Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer).
Unabriged online publication.
Kūng, H. (1999) Declaration of the Religions for a Global Ethic.
Krus, D.J, Nelsen, E.A. & Webb, J.M. (1998) Issues in oral history: elaboration
of traumatic events: Perceptual and Motor Skills, 86, 928-930
(Request reprint).
Monestier, M. (1994) Peines de mort. Paris, France: Le Cherche Midi
Éditeur.
Mǖllendorf, P. (1911) Geschichte der Spanischen Inquisition. Leipzig,
Germany.
Palmer, J. (2003) Viva Papa!; or, humanism betrayed. Nthposition, October
03.
Remy, N. (1595) Daemonolatreiae libri tres. Lyon, France. English
translation in Summers, ed. (1929) Demonolatry, reprinted by Kessinger
Publishing (2003).
Rhyne, C. E., Templer, D. I., Brown, L. G., & Peters, N. B. (1995) Dimensions of
suicide: perceptions of lethality, time, and agony. Suicide & Life
Threatening Behavior, 25(3), 373-380.
Shlachter, B. (1999) Bothered and bewildered; Wiccans at Hood shrug off media
hubbub. Fort Worth Star Telegram, August 7.
Sindelar, B. (1986) Hon na carodejnice v zapadni a stredni Evrope v
16.-17.stoleti. Prague: Nakladatelstvi Svoboda.
Spee, F. (1631) Cautio Criminalis oder Rechtliches Bedenken wegen der
Hexenprozesse. Dtv (2000).
Spina, B. (1523) Questio de strigibus: apologia de lamiis contra Ponzinibium.
Rome, Italy: In aedibus populi Romani.
Weyer, J. (1563) De Praestigiis Daemonum. English translation in Kohl, B.
(1998) On Witchcraft: An Abridged Translation of Johann Weyer's De Praestigiis
Daemonum. Pegasus Press.
Convictions were based not on tangible evidence, but
on allegations
and confessions elicited by torture ... |
Notes There
are several movies about witch trials. One of the best is Otakar Vavra's
Kladivo na Carodejnice (Malleus Maleficarum) based on Vaclav Kaplicky’s book
Kladivo na Carodejnice (1995), an informed account of witch trials in
Northern Moravia during the 1670s. These trials started when an altar boy
observed an old woman hiding the bread given out during communion. He alerted
the priest who confronted the old woman. She admitted that she took the bread
with the intent to give it to her cow to double its milk production. The priest
reported the incident to the owner of the local estate who, in turn, called in a
judge specializing in witchcraft trials. The judge selected a tribunal from the
leading citizens of the county and commenced an ever escalating series of
trials, eventually involving hundreds of people.
The penalty was death by burning ... |
The significance of this movie cannot be
overstated, especially during our times witnessing the reemergence of torture.
The movie is available on a DVD with the English subtitles and is recommended as
a supplementary material for the civics classes discussing the Eight Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution
