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 burning at the stake was a penalty imposed by inquisitorial, ecclesiastical in general, and secular tribunals in cases considered particularly serious. It was applied in particular to impenitent heretics, who showed no sign of repentance and refused abiura, and to relapsi. This penalty was often inflicted on those condemned for witchcraft.
In its classic form, the execution consisted of burning the condemned, tied to a stake surrounded by bundles of wood and straw serving as fuel; but the condemned could also be placed in a cauldron filled with oil and pitch and literally boiled (this was the case of Pomponio Algieri, executed in Rome in 1556). After the religious fracture of the sixteenth century, the burning of heretics or witches was naturally also practiced by Protestants (consider the famous execution of Michael Servetus in Calvinist Geneva in 1553). Death occurred as a result of severe burns and/or asphyxiation. Not infrequently, however, the condemned had already been executed (by decapitation, strangulation, or hanging), and the burning was carried out on the corpse (as in the case of Pietro Carnesecchi, executed in Rome in 1567: the burning was performed on his decapitated body). In cases of contumacy, the condemned could be burned in effigy.
Burning at the stake was the type of capital execution most associated with the condemnation of heretics and witches, but it was not the only one. Alternatively, the condemned could be executed by decapitation, strangulation, hanging, or drowning (drowning in the lagoon was the type of capital execution normally employed for heretics condemned to death in Venice).
The stake symbolically recalled the flames of hell and the eternal damnation of heretics and witches.
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.
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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]