The reprisals after death were usually awarded to people who were very powerful during their lifetime. Thus, Pope Stephen VI, who ascended the papal throne in 896, "distinguished himself" by organizing the trial of the previous pontiff Formosa.
The corpse of Formosus was dug from the grave, dressed in papal robes and put in the dock. At the end of the trial on charges of violating church rights, the dead Formosa was punished.
They took off the papal clothes from him, cut off three fingers of his right hand, with which he blessed the people. Then the mutilated corpse of Formosus was thrown into the Tiber.
This blasphemy did not leave indifferent the inhabitants of Rome. Soon Stephen VI was imprisoned and strangled there.
Suicides - to the gallows
During his lifetime, the Oxford scientist and philosopher John Wycliffe, apparently, so angered the clergy with his demands to reform the Roman Catholic Church that he was reminded of them already 40 years after his death. On May 4, 1415, the Council of Constance decreed:
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“The Holy Council declares, defines, and condemns John Wycliffe as a notorious heretic who died confirmed in his heresy. The council curses him and condemns the memories of him. The Council also decrees and prescribes that his body and bones, if they can be recognized among the bodies of other faithful people, should be removed from the ground and thrown away from church cemeteries in accordance with the established canons and laws."
It is difficult even to imagine what the remains of Wycliffe looked like, which had lain for four decades in the ground when they were being executed, but only bones are depicted in medieval engraving.
The Burning of the Bones of John Wycliffe, engraving from Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563)
Wycliffe's ashes thrown into the river
The attitude towards suicides in the Middle Ages was extremely negative. Society and the church unequivocally expressed their attitude towards those who dared to take their own lives. Not only were they forbidden to be buried in a common cemetery, but sometimes they were punished after death.
This happened, for example, with a resident of Edinburgh, Thomas Dobby, who drowned himself in a quarry near Holyrood Abbey on February 20, 1598. When his body was taken out of the water, they did not immediately bury him, but dragged him to court. There the dead man was tortured.
And, apparently, he confessed that he didn’t just drown, but drowned at the instigation of the devil. In medieval dungeons, it seems, even the dead confessed. As a result, the judges sentenced Thomas Dobby to be hanged. The next day, his body was dragged through the city and hung up on the gallows.
Combined reprisals
Executions of the dead were common in many European countries. A classic example is the public execution in England of the dead Oliver Cromwell. His body, buried in the chapel of Henry VII of Westminster Abbey, was removed from the grave and publicly beheaded. Then the head was put on the roof of Westminster Hall, and the body was hung.
It is curious that when Cromwell was at the zenith of fame and triumphantly entered London, he, following the precepts of the Romans, "remembered death." The retinue officer was delighted that the protector was being met by so many people. "If I had been taken to the scaffold," replied Cromwell, "there would have been no less onlookers."
And so it happened. The massacre of the dead Cromwell gathered a huge crowd. Together with him, three of his deceased associates were betrayed by death: Henry Ayrton, Thomas Pride and John Bradshaw. They, too, were dragged out of their graves, tried, executed, and then hung up on chains in Tyburn.
The tradition of massacring the dead existed in England for a long time. So, at the beginning of the 19th century, a certain John Williams was considered the main villain in England. His cruelty and power were debated throughout the country after he beat two families to death with a carpenter's mallet in December 1811 in the East End Ratcliff Highway.
On this mallet he was soon figured out. The people of London literally counted the days until his public execution to admire her. However, the villain Williams deceived popular expectations and on the eve of his execution he hanged himself in a prison cell.
To avoid popular unrest, the authorities decided not to cancel the execution. With a large crowd of people in the square in front of the New Gate prison, the dead Williams was first hanged, then lowered onto the scaffold, removed from the noose and driven into his heart with an aspen stake. And to fully guarantee that this villain will never rise again, his body was burned.
Often in England people were sentenced to a combined execution. At first they were hanged, and then they also mocked their dead bodies. For example, in the middle of the 15th century, the priest Roger Bolinbroke was first hanged, then beheaded, and then quartered for his participation in the conspiracy of the Duchess of Gloucester. The decapitation of the corpses of those hanged in England continued into the 19th century.
For example, in 1817, a trio of rebels known as the Pentrich Martyers were executed in this way. They were first hanged, and then the executioner in turn cut off the heads of the corpses and lifted them up with the words: "Behold the head of the traitor!" This was the last use of an ax in Britain.
Unlike England, in France, dead rulers were not executed, but there they cruelly dealt with the deceased murderer of the king. On August 1, 1589, a 22-year-old Dominican monk, Jacques Clement, thrust a poisoned dagger into the stomach of King Henry III of France on the outskirts of Paris Saint Cloud.
Clement was convinced that the murder of the king would remain unpunished for him, because immediately after the assassination attempt, by the will of God, he would become invisible, which means that he would avoid punishment.
It is clear that Clement did not become invisible after this crime, but he became dead. The king's servants immediately stabbed him to death.
The next day, August 2, 1589, a trial took place … over the corpse of a monk. The verdict was announced to him: "To tear the corpse of the aforementioned Clement into four parts by four horses, then burn them, and pour the ashes into the river in order to finally destroy all memory of him." On the same day, the sentence was carried out.
Death of False Dmitry
In Russia, the dead were not officially executed, but sometimes they were lynched. For example, at the beginning of the 17th century, the people executed the dead body of the impostor Grishka Otrepiev, who remained in history as Tsar False Dmitry I.
A counter was brought from the stalls and the corpse of False Dmitry was placed on it. Then the nobles left the Kremlin and whipped the dead body with whips, after which they took the mask prepared for the festive masquerade and threw it on False Dmitry's ripped stomach, and stuck a pipe into his mouth.
But they did not rest on this either. Some time after the burial of False Dmitry, his body was dug out of the pit, burned, and the ashes were loaded into a cannon and fired.
Another famous massacre of a corpse was the posthumous execution of the marching chieftain of the Don Cossacks, Kondraty Bulavin. He raised an uprising after Prince Yuri Dolgoruky, by tsarist decree, in eight Cossack villages seized and sent up to 3 thousand fugitive serfs to their former place of residence.
This caused outrage among the Cossacks. And then this indignation was led by Stepan Bulavin. At night he attacked Prince Dolgoruky, killed him and all the officers and soldiers who were with him, numbering about a thousand people.
On July 7, 1708, the Cossacks loyal to the tsar surrounded the house where Bulavin and his closest associates took refuge, and decided to set it on fire. Bulavin, seeing that the house was surrounded with reeds, decided not to wait for death in the fire and shot himself with a pistol. Later in Azov, his corpse was put to death, his head was cut off, and then he was hanged. The priests refused to bury the rebel's body in the local cemetery.
Nowadays, the clergy protect the dead. So, a few kilometers south of the Polish city of Gdansk in the side of a mountain, a crypt was cut down where the glorious knight Kazimierz Pitsaluski, who participated in the First Crusade, rests.
In his homeland, he became more famous for the fact that with fire and sword he planted the faith of Christ among the pagan tribes. Pan Casimir tortured the prisoners in the most severe way until they began to believe in Jesus. In one of the battles with the pagans, he fell on the battlefield. Enemies dragged his body to their camp and there they chopped it into pieces and burned it.
Later, his comrades-in-arms collected his remains and walled up in a mountain crypt. Archaeologists have long been eager to get into the last refuge of the knight and even announced a reward of 25 thousand dollars to those who help them in this.
Upon learning of their intentions, Pope Urban II came to Poland and announced that the one who dares to disturb the peace of Casimir Pitsaluski will face terrible punishment on earth and hellish torments in the afterlife. While the papal threat protects the knight's crypt from uninvited guests.
Oleg ALEXANDROV