Dictionary of Heretics, Dissidents, and Inquisitors in the Mediterranean World
Edizioni CLORI | Firenze | ISBN 978-8894241600 | DOI 10.5281/zenodo.1309444
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The sentence to the galleys (or to the triremes, or to the oars) began to be imposed by civil tribunals in the late Middle Ages as an alternative to the death penalty and continued to be practiced until the eighteenth century (the advent of steamships rendered it obsolete). The punishment consisted of forced service at the oars of warships, either for a limited period or for life. Its advantage for public authorities lay in providing manpower at extremely low cost.
The sentence to the galleys was often imposed on political and/or religious dissidents. Inquisitorial tribunals made wide use of it in the early modern period to punish particularly serious crimes against the faith (at times, the sentence to the galleys was imposed on relapsi as an alternative to the death penalty).
Bibliography
- Italo Mereu, Storia dell'intolleranza in Europa. Sospettare e punire: l'Inquisizione come modello di violenza legale, Bompiani, Milan 1988.
- Giovanni Romeo, L’Inquisizione nell’Italia moderna, Laterza, Rome-Bari 2002.
Article written by Redazione | Ereticopedia.org © 2015
et tamen e summo, quasi fulmen, deicit ictos
invidia inter dum contemptim in Tartara taetra
invidia quoniam ceu fulmine summa vaporant
plerumque et quae sunt aliis magis edita cumque
[Lucretius, "De rerum natura", lib. V]