Ritual defilement

“ Moreover, the high-priest entered into the holiest place in virtue of the blood of goats and calves. [170] Add, if you will, the ceremony of cleansing a person who had [155] contracted defilement by touching a dead body. [171] He also was cleansed by having the ashes of a heifer sprinkled upon his flesh. Why, the very defilement is unreal and artificial. To touch a dead body a sin! It may have been well to make it a crime from sanitary considerations, and it may become a sin because God has forbidden it. So far it touched conscience. ”

“ We observe with a shock of surprise that a distinctly savage ritual was performed in our midst. It includes the belief in the infective taboo of the corpse; the destruction of the movable property of the dead man by fire or by immersion in water; the light kept burning near the corpse; the taboo of all food in contact with it, and the refusal to cook in its neighbourhood; the funeral feast preceded by a fast and eaten at a distance from the scene of death. One remarkable custom, that connected with the dressing of the body, needs further examination before it can be described or discussed. ”

“ The Church enjoyed their fanatical devotion, but only at the price of tacitly accepting many immemorial pagan usages disguised by an unusually transparent veil of Catholic ritual; while the Law occasionally found it expedient to leave a convicted murderer (as in the Figlia di Iorio) to be executed by an angry multitude according to the savage methods their tradition prescribed. ”

“ Their blasphemies against religion went hand in hand with their desecration of everything holy in social life, and a pre-eminence in guilt became the highest object of ambition. Sated with slaughter, bloated with crime, the nation reeled like a drunken savage over the ruin it created, and with the insane lust of blood poured forth its armed thousands throughout the whole of Europe. ”

“ It would be superfluous to recount in detail the dreary catalogue of wholesale slaughters which for centuries disgraced Europe, whenever fanaticism or the disappearance of a child gave rise to stories of the murder rite, or a blood-stained host suggested sacrilege committed on the sacrament, or some passing evil, such as an epidemic, aroused the populace to bloodshed and rapine. ”

“ Afflictions, persecutions, imprisonments and deaths, we must expect, according to the Scriptures, which tell us, that the blood of those whose souls were under the altar could not be avenged on them that dwell on the earth, until their brethren should be slain as they were. ”

“ But no altar was too sacred, no home too pure, no name too greatly reverenced and no life too pure and holy to deter the invader or wither the sacrilegious hand of the spoiler. Meanness was not an incident of the war, and sacrilege was not confined to Mexican guerrillas. Men are naturally mean, and depravity is a fact of human nature. ”

“ This form of execution is meted out at some of the religious dances or festivities to some of their pagan gods to atone and drive away the evil spirits that have caused pestilences to come upon the people. ”

“ In short, whatever deeds fanaticism, revenge, avarice and desperation, in fearful combination, could instigate mankind to perform,—and where in such a case is the limit?—were executed in the year 1349 throughout Germany, Italy, and France, with impunity, and in the eyes of all the world. It seemed as if the plague gave rise to scandalous acts and frantic tumults, not to mourning and grief; and the greater part of those who, by their education and rank, were called upon to raise the voice of reason, themselves led on the savage mob to murder and to plunder. ”

“ If no criminals or prisoners were available, the first gardener or fisherman was captured, knocked on the head, and his body left to decay on the altar. Oil and holy water were used to anoint the altar and sacred objects, and when a temple was newly finished its altar was piled with the dead. There is a striking universality among people in the brutal stage of development in this practice of pacifying their deities by murder. When a king or high priest offered a sacrifice of a foeman the butcher gouged the left eye from the body and gave it to his superior, who pretended to eat it. ”

“ Strong men, to whom tears had been a half forgotten memory, wept as the thurible was waved over the casket and the wreaths of incense smoke ascended toward the dome. Men, brought face to face with a great crime, stood in the presence of their God, while the priests around the altar, clothed in mourning vestments, offered supplication for the soul of the deceased, and prayed for pardon for his murderers. ”

“ A guillotine from Hell will be erected, where a demon will execute a headsman. The hour will be four, and we shall form the crowd round the scaffold.
Probably things will be like this. But if the dead do return, in what shapes will they appear? What part of their incomplete and mutilated body will they keep? Which will they choose? Shall the head or the trunk appear as a spectre?
Alas! what has Death done with the soul? ”

“ Those condemned to death, either by fire or strangulation, were now formed into a melancholy procession, each person accompanied as before by familiars and monks, the latter disturbing the last moments of their yellow-robed victims by their senseless exhortations. ”

“ The lynching of a nun would have been less ghoulish than the slaughter of that blameless passion. Heaven and earth shall pass away but the bitterness of that crude killing shall be never quite forgotten. ”

“ How many mutilated corpses lie prostrate on the ground with their dilated eyes staring at the sky—and among them, the happy, the enviable! how many living, groaning, bleeding men, writhing with pain, unable to raise their mutilated bodies from the gory bed of torture and death! ”

“ The act is not considered as very criminal, and the murderer absolves himself by a small present, which he gives to his priest; but, if he sheds only one drop of blood, he falls into the deepest disgrace, is expelled from his caste, and abandoned even by his own associates. ”

“ It is not sufficient to kill the victim, but before being dispatched he must also be tortured, the corpse sprinkled with his blood, and his flesh eaten under the eyes of the priest and priestesses, who perform the prescribed rites. ”

“ In the reeking and yet panting heart, the spirit of the witch is kept captive, and the retreat of it prevented by the arrow transfixed. Similarly hath not many a murdered carcase at the coroner's inquest suffered a fresh hæmorrhage or cruentation at the presence of the assassin?—the blood being, as in a furious fit of anger, enraged and agitated by the impress of revenge conceived against the murderer, at the instant of the soul's compulsive exile from the body. ”

“ The obligation to devour the whole body perhaps rested on the belief that its slaughter otherwise than as a sacrifice was impious, and if any part of the body was left unconsumed the clan would incur the guilt of murder. ”

“ Then men and women, with a certain divine and inexpressible alacrity rushed into the fire. The persecutors, constantly inventing new tortures, vied with one another as if there were prizes offered to him who should invent the greatest cruelties. The men bore fire, sword, and crucifixions, savage beasts, and the depths of the sea, the maiming of limbs and searing with red hot iron, digging out of the eyes and mutilations of the whole body, also hunger, the mines, and prison. ”

“ On the burial of any notorious character,—of a suicide, of a man who has perished by manslaughter, of a woman who has died in child-birth, or even of a child who has been killed by being run over in the street, this vulgar excitement rises to an insufferable height. If, in such a case, the corpse is brought into my church, this sacred and beautiful structure is desecrated and disfigured by the hurried intrusion of a squalid and irreverent mob, and clergyman, corpse, and mourners are jostled and mixed up with the confused mass, by the uncontrollable pressure from without. ”

“ Fire and fagot, sword and rack and all the instruments of torture known to the ingenuity of mankind were employed for the torture and death of heretics—all in the name of Christ and for the salvation of the world. Catholics tortured and burned Protestants and Protestants murdered each other. ”

“ But the executions of veteran philosophers, of grey-haired parish-priests, of harmless nuns—the deliberate cold-blooded cruelty which punished with death the resentment, the imprudence, often the mere birth, of orphaned lads ”

“ Those rites might seem to relate only to the case of defilement by the dead. But among the directions as to them, there is one which is unequivocal and comprehensive. “The man that shall be unclean and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord; the 73water of separation hath not been sprinkled on him. ”

“ The swelling of the muscles is also perceived, nay, the cold dews of death are even shown, in that design, to be stealing over the bodies of the martyred victims. In the soldiers by whom the martyrs are conducted, there is the evidence of a most cruel and merciless spirit ”

“ What an inexpressible feeling of terror smote her breast, when she passed the grave of the murdered man!—Her limbs trembled so violently that it is surprising how she was enabled to support herself, and she mentally offered up an involuntary prayer for the repose of his soul, and that his barbarous assassins might be brought to punishment for their inhuman violation of the laws. ”

“ If the men in the temple courts, impelled by religious fury, showed no mercy, and, hunting unresisting men and women into dark corners, slew them indiscriminately till the areas were filled with [331] dead and dying, lying in heaps as they had fallen by the sword or had been trampled down; those who had remained outside were, in their turn, no more humane. ”

“ Many of them were burned alive, many others were killed by the most cruel torture that could be devised by man. Up to recent times more victims have been put to death for heresy and kindred crimes against religion than for any other cause. ”

“ But by far the most powerful means of effecting their conviction—surpassing false witness and torture by an infinite length—was the infamous scrutiny to which the miserable creatures were subjected. The search for devil mark and amulet, as prescribed by the Church, was regarded as worse than death itself, and of the thousands who perished, a vast proportion died self-accused, preferring the deadly search of the flame to that of the monkish inquisitors. ”

“ How can there be a good God to look down on His people tortured and maimed and butchered? The women whose lives were devoted to Him, defiled. His temples looted, filled with the filth of the soldiery, and then destroyed. ”

“ The delicacy of woman may cause her to shrink from the bustle of public triumph, but when truth and holiness are brought to public scorn she is there to defend, to suffer, to die.
Can we conceive what this mob was, that led Jesus forth to death? Mobs in our day are brutal, but what were they then? Consider what the times must have been when scourging was an ordinary punishment for criminals, and crucifixion an ordinary mode of execution; what were the sights, the sounds, the exhibitions of brutality among which Mary and the women friends of Jesus followed him to the cross! ”

“ Two priests are likewise pictured in the act of offering bowls containing human blood to the idol and a third, mounted on a ladder, is pouring the contents of another bowl over its head. It is obvious how the constant associations of the earth-mother with sanguinary sacrifices and bloodthirstiness would, in time, give rise to the idea of a hostile, maleficent power, linked with darkness and devouring fire, who, under the aspect of the serpent-woman, waged an eternal warfare on the human race and clamored for victims and bloody sacrifices. ”

“ It has been often shown that the gladiatorial shows were originally a form of human sacrifice adopted through religious motives; that the rude nomadic life of savages rendering impossible the preservation of aged and helpless members of the tribe, the murder of parents was regarded as an act of mercy both by the murderer and the victim ”

“ Women and children could be seen led down the streets by their executioners, their flesh in ribbons, with candles burning in their wounds, singing with ringing voices before the silent spectators: “Verily from God we come, and unto Him we return!” As some of the children expired on the way their tormentors would fling their bodies under the feet of their fathers and sisters who, proudly treading upon them, would not deign to give them a second glance. ”

“ We are told that only twelve crimes were punished by death: idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, fraudulent prophesying, Sabbath-breaking, rebellion against parents, resistance to judicial officers, murder, homicide by negligence, adultery, incestuous marriages, and kidnapping. ”

“ Scarifying and mutilating the body has prevailed from a remote period of time, having possibly replaced, in the process of evolution, to a certain extent, the more barbarous practice of absolute personal sacrifice. ”

“ The Public Gallows
There are almost as many forms of execution as there are of torture. Fearful criminals, gross blasphemers,173 and the like might be killed by quartering: first their flesh might be nipped off by red-hot pinchers and hot lead poured into their wounds; then death comes as a release by attaching a strong horse to each arm and leg and tearing the victim into four parts. Witches, wizards, and heretics are, of course, burned, because they thus share the element of their patron, the devil. Most malefactors, however, find beheading or hanging the ordinary ending. ”