TORTURE: ASIAN AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES | OCTOBER 2013
lead and pouring it down the convicted person’s throat, causing immediate death. The particular form of execution by burning in which the condemned is bound to a large stake is more commonly called burning at the stake. As a form of capital punishment, burning has a long history for crimes such as treason (heresy, blasphemy and witchcraft being regarded by the Christian Churches as treason against God). Sodomy was also punished by burning alive, again because it was seen as a crime against God.
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because of the erroneous belief that they worshiped fire. The Christian Emperor Justinian (r. 527-565) ordered death by fire, and confiscation of all possessions by the State as the punishment for heresy against the Christian faith in his Codex Iustiniani (CJ 1.5.), ratifying the decrees of his predecessors the Christian Emperors Arcadius and Flavius Augustus Honorius. In 1184, the Roman Catholic Synod of Verona confirmed this form of punishment, legislating that burning was to be the official punishment for heresy, as Church policy was against the spilling of blood. It was also widely believed that the condemned would have no body to be resurrected in the afterlife. This decree was reaffirmed by the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215, the Synod of Toulouse in 1229, and numerous spiritual leaders up to the nineteenth century. Civil authorities burnt persons judged to be heretics under the medieval Inquisition, Burning was also used by Protestants during the witch-hunts of Europe. Among the best-known individuals to be executed by burning were Jacques de Molay (1314), Jan Hus (1415), St. Joan of Arc (30 May 1431), Savonarola (1498) Patrick Hamilton (1528), John Frith (1533), William Tyndale (1536), Michael Servetus (1553), Giordano Bruno (1600) and Avvakum (1682). Anglican martyrs Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley (both in 1555) and Thomas Cranmer (1556) were also burnt at the stake.
The Burning of two “sodomites” at the stake outside Zürich, 1482 (Spiezer Schilling)
Adopting an old Roman practice, the Christian Church adopted burning as a favoured form of capital punishment. Under the Byzantine Empire, burning was introduced as a punishment for Zoroastrians
If the fire was large (for instance, when a large number of prisoners were executed at the same time), death often came from smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide poisoning before flames actually caused harm to the body. If the fire was small, however, the convict would burn for some time until death from heatstroke, shock, loss of blood or the thermal decomposition of vital body parts.
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