Online Encyclopedia

BURNING TO DEATH

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V04, Page 855 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
Spread the word: del.icio.us del.icio.us it!

BURNING TO

See also:
DEATH  . As a legal punishment for various crimes burning alive was formerly very wide-spread . It was
See also:
common among the Romans, being given in the XII . Tables as the
See also:
special penalty for arson . Under the
See also:
Gothic codes adulterers were so punished, and throughout the
See also:
middle ages it was the
See also:
civil penalty for certain heinous crimes, e.g. poisoning,
See also:
heresy,
See also:
witchcraft, arson, bestiality and sodomy, and so continued in some cases, nominally at least, till the beginning of the 19th century . In England, under the common law,
See also:
women condemned for high treason or petty treason (
See also:
murder of
See also:
husband, murder of master or
See also:
mistress, certain offences against the coin, &c.) were burned; this being considered more " decent " than
See also:
hanging and exposure on a gibbet . In practice the convict was strangled before being burnt . The last woman burnt in England suffered in 1789, the punishment being abolished in 1790 . Burning was not included among the penalties for heresy under the
See also:
Roman imperial codes; but the burning of heretics by orthodox mobs had long been sanctioned by custom before the edicts of the emperor Frederick II . (1222, 1223) made it the civil-law punishment for heresy . His example was followed in France by Louis IX. in the Establishments of 1270 . In England, where the civil law was never recognized, the common law took no cognizance of ecclesiastical offences, and the church courts had no power to condemn to
See also:
death .

There were, indeed, in the 12th and 13th centuries isolated instances of the burning of heretics .

William of Newburgh describes the burning of certain
See also:
foreign sectaries in 1169, and early in the 13th century a deacon was burnt by order of the council of Oxford (Foxe ii . 374; cf . Bracton, de Corona, ii . 300), but by what legal sanction is not obvious . The right of the
See also:
crown to issue writs de haeretico comburendo, claimed for it by later jurists, was based on that issued by Henry IV. in 1400 for the burning of William Sawtre; but
See also:
Sir James Stephen (Hist . Crim . Law) points out that this was issued " with the assent of the lords temporal," which seems to prove that the crown had no right under the common law to issue such writs . The burning of heretics was actually made legal in England by the
See also:
statute de haeretico comburendo (1400), passed ten days after the issue of the above writ . This was repealed in 1533, but the Six Articles Act of 1539 revived burning as a penalty for denying transubstantiation . Under Queen Mary the acts of Henry IV. and Henry V. were revived; they were finally abolished in 1558 on the accession of Elizabeth .
See also:
Edward VI., Elizabeth and James I., however, burned heretics (illegally as it would appear) under their supposed right of issuing writs for this purpose .

The last heretics burnt in England were two Arians,

Bartholomew Legate at Smithfield, and Edward Wightman at
See also:
Lichfield, both in Oro . As for witches, countless numbers were burned in most
See also:
European countries, though not in England, where they were hanged . In Scotland in Charles II.'s day the law still was that witches were to be " worried at the stake and then burnt "; and a
See also:
witch was burnt at
See also:
Dornoch so
See also:
late as 1708 .

End of Article: BURNING TO DEATH
[back]
BURNHAM BEECHES
[next]
BURNLEY

Additional information and Comments

There are no comments yet for this article.
» Add information or comments to this article.
Please link directly to this article:
Highlight the code below, right click and select "copy." Paste it into a website, email, or other HTML document.