Today’s Inherently False Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger are known as the authors of the quintessential handbook for witch-hunters, Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of the Witches), which was published in 1486, and which has been described by Rossell Hope Robbins, in his Encyclopedia of Witchcraft & Demonology, as:
… without question the most important and most sinister work on demonology ever written. It crystallized into a fiercely stringent code combining previous folklore about black magic with church dogma on heresy and, if any one work could, opened the floodgates of the inquisitorial hysteria. It sought to make effective the biblical command of Exodus xxii.18: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’
The book, which was republished in at least 13 editions up to 1520, and reprinted in another 16 between 1574 and 1669, was designed to provide detailed guidance for the civil authorities, so that they could take over the inquisition of witches from the religious courts, and go directly to the sentencing and execution of the condemned. It is divided into three parts. The first discusses the necessity for the inquisitors thoroughly to understand the enormity of the heresy of witchcraft; and the second describes the doings of witches, how they may be detected, and how they may be countered. It is the third part that was to have such a horrific influence. It was probably written by Kramer, who had considerable practical experience of the subject, and it provides the rules for taking legal action against witches and securing their conviction. It describes the examination of witnesses, and the arrest, imprisonment, questioning, and the torture of the accused.
Torture was necessary because it was generally accepted that a witch could not be condemned without her (or his) own confession of guilt. And a voluntary confession was considered insufficient: only a confession obtained through pain and torment could be assumed to come truly from the heart. As one writer pointed out, many convicted witches were regular attendants in church, and no one would have suspected them of witchcraft if they had not been tortured, when they confessed to all sorts of sinful practices.
Few churchmen perceived that the logic of this argument was inherently false: that the torture would invariably be continued until a confession was obtained. One poor woman, shortly before her execution, told her minister that her confession, and her denunciations of others named as accomplices, were false. He begged her to recant and – even if she could not save herself – redeem the lives of the innocent. But she replied:
Look Father, look at my legs: they are like fire – ready to burn up – so excruciating is the pain. I could not bear to have so much as a fly touch them, to say nothing of submitting once more to torture. I would a hundred times rather die that endure such frightful agony again. I cannot describe to anybody how terrible the pain actually is.
Culled from: The History of Torture
Update Du Jour!
You may recall last year’s morbid fact on the recipient of the first face transplant, poor Isabelle Dinoire, whose dog devoured her face when she was unconscious from an attempted suicide. Well, she apparently died on April 22 of this year from transplant complications. R.I.P., Isabelle… and another woman’s face.
I don’t know how well known this is, but Dinoire’s replacement face came from a woman who was *successful* in her suicide attempt.
Back when this story first appeared, I and some other people flashed on the French film Les Yeux Sans Visage, AKA Eyes Without a Face, wherein a surgeon kidnaps young women and removes their faces, in an attempt to cure his daughter’s disfigurement, for which he feels responsible.
Great film, with some very striking (and ghoulish) imagery, especially for its time.