What your mother never told you …….
CHRISTIAN JUSTICE: The Gallows
Victims of the European Holy Inquisition (and also those condemned by the civil courts) were often condemned to death by being locked into a metal cage and suspended high up on a gibbet (a vertical post or wall with a high horizontal arm) to die. This was a slow death by starvation and thirst with no body movement allowed, often in full view of the townsfolk – in public places.
Mouth gags and face masks with smiles were strapped on to muffle all cries for help. Often the victim was fully naked to complete the humiliation and degradation.
For two-thirds of this Common Era, 1,400 years, hundreds of thousands of Europeans have been sent to the Gallows – an unpleasant form of unreasonable punishment, the exercise of power by authority.
Gibbets were a common site throughout Europe – at aristocrats’ palaces, every major road junction crossroads had them and some even attached to the walls of Cathedrals! The Gallows were a major feature of every town for centuries and formed the landscape of Europe . The intention was to control people by sending a clear warning – death for Heresy. (Heresy is to have thoughts, words or deeds outside those approved in the Catholic Holy Bible.)
In order to make it even more plain for onlookers, the victim was usually tortured and disfigured first.
Even after death, the rotting corpse would remain suspended until the bones fell apart.
Those gibbets located in remote wildernesses and swamps, could have the effect of utterly terrifying the simple villagers living near by. Similarly, simple Christian villagers had utter terror of even going near monks’ monasteries for fear of the torture practiced there.
These and many other terrible things continued on until Napoleon Bonaparte battled with the Catholic aristocrats and put an end to the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 CE and later in Spain to end the Inquisition there in 1808CE.
Beware! The Office of the Inquisition still continues on even today, but only in a room in the Vatican . The ‘Black Book’ on how to torture was available for inspection only a hundred years ago!
After that prolonged, traumatic experience, circuses toured Europe for the purpose of helping people to learn to smile and be happy again! They showed men dressed in exaggerated Italian Papal clothes, clowns, foolishly rolling about, and displays of strange animals and other amusing things all to make a memorable day out.
Warning:
Such pictures as may be seen, to instruct non-Christians on past Christian ethics and desires to control may provoke shuddering and revulsion.
Christianity!
The way of thinking, even now, remains hidden in the Christian message.
So, be warned!
Information from an Exhibition held at the Folk Museum, Freiburg, Germany. 1992.
Adjutorium, May, 2007