Kitabı oku: «Curiosities of Olden Times», sayfa 6

STRANGE PAINS AND PENALTIES

Punishment is efficacious in deterring from crime only if it be certain and speedy. Severity is quite a minor point, and it will be found that the deterring effect of punishment is by no means proportionate to its cruelty.

The first requisite is certainty, for human nature is so constituted that if there be a chance of escape, ninety-nine out of a hundred will be found to run the risk. A slight punishment, if certain, is infinitely more likely to produce the required results than the most terrible exhibition of cruelty upon representative criminals. If certainty be a main requisite, speediness is also necessary; lasting and cruel punishments harden but do not reclaim.

Of this our forefathers in the middle ages were profoundly ignorant. With an inefficient police, it was not to be expected that one tithe of the malefactors, then so numerous, should fall into the hands of justice, and the authorities endeavoured to make up for this imperfection by exaggerated severity, and by grotesqueness in the punishments they inflicted.

I have said our forefathers in the middle ages, for the Anglo-Saxons and Danes were far too sensible to resort to cruel or absurd penalties, when milder and reasonable ones would answer their purpose.

Thus the laws of Canute direct that the correction of a criminal should be so regulated that it may appear seemly in the eyes of Him who said, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us,” and they enjoin that the judge should not be unduly severe, but lean rather to a gentle punishment; and also that if it appeared likely that the criminal was fully penitent and inclined to amend, full mercy should be shown to him.

Indeed it was a feature characteristic of Saxon and Danish laws, that compensation should be aimed at and the reclamation of the criminal, rather than retribution. Capital punishments were sanctioned, but in all cases an opportunity was offered for the substitution of a fine. Thus, by the law of King Ina, if a thief were caught, he was sentenced to death, but his life could be redeemed by pecuniary satisfaction being made to the persons robbed. So the fine inflicted on a murderer was regulated according to the sum at which the life of the murdered party was valued; thus, if a man slew a freeman, he had to make compensation to the amount of one hundred shillings, but for the murder of a thrall a much less sum was demanded. If a freeman slew his thrall, he paid a nominal fine to the king for a breach of the peace; but if a slave killed his master, the doctrine of blood for blood was carried into effect, as the thrall had no personal property to pay in compensation for his crime.

Fines were imposed by the Anglo-Saxons for all kinds of personal injuries.

Thus by the laws of King Ethelbert, for breaking a man’s front tooth the fine imposed was six shillings, but a molar was regarded as worth only one shilling, and a canine tooth was valued at six. King Alfred however, revised these laws, and taking into consideration the fact that the molar is a double tooth, and that it is a very serviceable tooth besides, he raised its market value to fifteen shillings.

If a man struck out the eye of another and blinded him, he was obliged to make satisfaction with fifty shillings, and one who was in a troublesome mood and had plenty of loose cash to dispose of, might break a neighbour’s rib for three shillings, and dislocate his shoulder for twenty. According to the decrees of the Witan, a fine of one shilling was enacted for crushing the finger-nail of a neighbour, but if the thumb-nail had suffered, three shillings was its value.

A testy Saxon might venture to pull the nose of his enemy if he had three shillings to spare, but then he had to be cautious, for if the pull were sufficiently violent to make the nose bleed, he had to pay six shillings. It was the almost universal custom throughout Europe that forgiveness should be judged according to the laws of their native country, and not according to the law of the land in which the offence was committed; and “thus,” says Dr. Henry, “the nose of a Spaniard was perfectly safe in England, because it was valued at thirteen marks, but the nose of an Englishman ran a great risk in Spain, because it was valued at twelve shillings. An Englishman might have broken a Welshman’s head for a mere trifle, but few Welshmen could afford to return the compliment.”

Among the Anglo-Saxons the penalty inflicted on coiners was the loss of one hand; hardly a cruel sentence in comparison with that which was inflicted during the middle ages, up to the close of the sixteenth century, namely, boiling alive in oil or water.

An old German code of laws gives the following horrible directions: “Should a coiner be caught in the act, then let him be stewed in a pan, or in a caldron half an ell deep for the body, so that the man may be bound to a pole which shall be passed through the rings of the caldron, and which shall be tightly strapped and bound to upright posts on either side, and thus he shall be made to stew in oil and wine.” A scene such as this was witnessed in Sweden in 1500, by Archbishop Olaus Magnus of Upsala, and instances without number might be cited from German and French city registers. Taking one town alone, Lübeck, we find that a poor fellow who gave himself out to be the dead king Frederick II., and who was probably an inoffensive madman, was thus put to death in 1287.

A second instance occurred in the year 1329, when the man was boiled in the market-place in the midst of a vast concourse of people. A similar sentence was pronounced in 1459, and again in 1471, but in this instance, at the last moment, in consideration of the earnest entreaty of the bishop, the sentence was commuted to burning alive on a pile of faggots, at the Mühlenthor. This poor wretch was less fortunate than the coiner Jacob von Jülich, who, when crouching in the caldron, and shrieking with agony, obtained the mercy of having his head struck off.

In the sixteenth century, coiners were hanged instead of boiled: till lately, however, the caldron which was used for this horrible purpose was visible in the market-place of Osnabrück.

A punishment much in vogue during the middle ages for those who were guilty of stabbing with intent to wound, but without causing death, was sufficiently terrible. The hand which had dealt the blow was placed upon a table with the fingers spread out, and the weapon which had been used was struck violently into the back of the hand, pinning it to the table, and the criminal had to draw his hand away without removing the knife. This was statute law pretty nearly throughout Europe, and it continued in force till the middle of the seventeenth century, but the Frisian laws permitted the penalty to be remitted if the culprit chose to pay compensation to the amount of twenty-five gulden.

In 1638, Count Anthony Gunter of Oldenburg ordered a post to be erected before the church, or in the market, and the criminal to be fastened to it by a knife driven through his hand; and thus he was to stand for three hours. This law was not abrogated in Germany till 1661.

Mutilation was common enough in the middle ages. We find in the laws of William the Conqueror —

“We forbid that criminals of any sort should be killed or hanged, but let their eyes be plucked out, or let their hands and feet be chopped off, so that nothing may remain of the culprit but a living trunk, as a memorial of his crime.” How different this from the tone of Saxon laws.

At Avignon, in 1245, false witnesses had their noses and upper lips cut away, and the same penalty was inflicted in Switzerland on blasphemers.

Eugène Sue suggested that capital punishment should be replaced by privation of sight. But if his system were carried into effect, those unhappy individuals who have either been born blind or have lost their sight by accident, would be compelled to carry about with them a certificate to the effect that they were honest men, as did the Arab grammarian Zamakuschari, who died in 1144. This writer, having had a foot frost-bitten in Kharism, carried ever about with him an attestation to the fact, signed by a number of persons of credit, so that no one would regard him as a criminal who had suffered mutilation.

Our own King John, according to Matthew Paris, invented a punishment of great cruelty. Geoffry, Archdeacon of Norwich, having offended him, he had him encased in a sheet of lead, which was folded round him and fitted to his shoulders like a cloak. The unhappy man died of the burden and of horror. “This,” says an Anglo-Norman writer, “is the judgment of ‘pain fort et dure’; to wit, the condemned shall be placed in a low chamber locked. And he shall lie naked on the ground without litter, bedding, or cloth, and without anything over him; and he shall lie on his back with his head to the west, and his feet to the east, and one arm shall be drawn to one quarter of the room by a rope, and the other arm in like manner to the other quarter, and in the same way shall his legs be extended, and upon his body shall be placed iron and stone, as much as he can bear; the first day he shall have three lumps of barley bread, but nothing to drink, and next day he shall drink thrice, as much as he wants, of water brought from near at hand to the prison, excepting that it be running water, and he shall have no bread, and this succession shall be followed till he dies.”

Can it be believed that such a terrible death as this was inflicted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, on the 25th of March 1586, and that the person who suffered was a woman, on the indictment “that she had harboured and maintained Jesuit and seminary priests, traitors to the Queen’s Majesty and the laws; and that she had heard mass, and the like.” The law of the land required that those who would not plead “guilty” or “not guilty,” should be made to plead, “by being laid upon the back on the ground, and as much weight laid upon the accused as he or she can bear, and that the accused shall so continue for three days, and should he or she still refuse to plead, then to be pressed to death, the hands and feet tied to a post, and a sharp stone set under the back.” The unfortunate woman, – her name was Margaret Clitheroe, – labouring under the idea that she was being martyred for her religion, whereas she was simply a victim to her own obstinacy in refusing to plead, endured this fearful death. Had she pleaded she would have escaped, for the evidence against her was of so slender a nature that she must have been acquitted. The judge, Clinch, who gave the sentence, did so with great reluctance, and only because, as the law stood, it was impossible for him to evade it.

In the reign of James I., we learn from Sir Walter Scott, a Highland chief in Ross, of the name of M’Donald, hearing that a poor widow had determined to go on foot to Edinburgh to see the king, and obtain from him justice against the chief, sent for her, and telling her that the way was long, and that she would require to be well shod for the journey, had a blacksmith brought, and made him nail her shoes to her feet, in the same way in which horses are shod. The widow, however, was a woman with a will of her own, and as soon as she had recovered, she betook herself on foot to Edinburgh, and casting herself at the feet of the king, besought of him punishment on the tyrannical chief. King James, indignant at her treatment, had M’Donald seized along with twelve of his accomplices, and had iron soles nailed to their feet. They were exposed in this condition to the public gaze, and were then decapitated.

When Richard Cœur de Lion was on his way to the Holy Land he drew up a code of criminal laws by which discipline was to be maintained among his troops. One of these contains the following article: – “If any one is convicted of theft, boiling pitch shall be poured over his head, and then a pillowful of feathers shall be shaken over it, so that the fellow may be certainly recognised. And he shall be abandoned on the first land where the vessel touches.”

This reminds me of the trick played by certain wags on a poor nun in 1198. They covered her with honey, rolled her in feathers, mounted her on horseback, and paraded her about the town. Philip Augustus, hearing of this, had the unfortunate jokers seized and plunged into a vat of boiling water.

A curious ordinance in force at Dortmund, in Westphalia, A.D. 1348, required that, “if two women quarrel so as to come to blows, and at the same time use abusive language, they shall be required to carry, the whole length of the town along the High Street, two stones weighing together one hundred pounds, attached to chains. The first woman shall carry them from the east gate to the west gate, whilst the second goads her on with a needle fastened to the end of a stick,” and both are directed to wear the lightest of all possible costumes. “The second is then to take the stones upon her shoulders and to carry them back to the east gate, the first applying the same stimulus.” This punishment was common all over Germany. In Lübeck the stones were shaped like bottles, in other places they were rudely-carved heads of women with protruding tongues; and in some towns they were in the shape of cats. At Hamburg a procession of women sounding cows’ horns was part of the programme, and at Worms a band of bell-ringers.

The old English cucking-stool for shrews is well known; it was common abroad also, with some customs peculiarly foreign. For instance, the unfortunate persons who had to do penance for their shrewish tongues were sometimes put into a large hamper, or a cage, and so suspended to a gallows, in the evening to be plunged, basket and all, into the nearest pond.

In the museum at Cahors the iron cage in which shrews were dipped is still shown.

Fools’ caps have long served as punishment in village schools, but their use in them was probably derived from the legal practice of condemning certain delinquents to the use of peculiar caps. Thus in Germany some minor crimes were punished by the culprit being sentenced to sit all day on a post in the middle of a canal, with a tall scarlet steeple cap on his head. In Rome, bankrupts were condemned to wear in public black bonnets of a sugar-loaf form. At Lucca they wore them of an orange colour; and in Spain they bore in addition an iron collar.

The ancient Roman manner of punishing parricide, by casting the murderer into the water in a sack which contained as well a cock, an ape, and a serpent, was not unused in the middle ages, and we find it threatened in an ordinance of the Provost of Paris, published on 25th June 1493, in which all persons sick with smallpox are bidden leave Paris at a day’s notice, or suffer the penalty above mentioned.

I might extract accounts of the most fearful of punishments which the cruelty of man could devise, from Oriental sources, but the barbarities practised by the Mussulmans are sickening through their excessive cruelty. Suffering enough has been undergone in our own quarter of the globe, and that too at no great distance of time from the age in which we live.

I will instance, in conclusion, the painful account of the execution of Balthazar Gerard, who assassinated William of Orange, on the 10th of July 1584, as given by Brantôme. “First he was racked with extraordinary cruelty, without his uttering a word, except that he persisted in his former assertion.

“Then, before he died, for eighteen days he was tortured with excessive cruelty. On the first day he was taken into the public square, where there was a caldron of boiling oil, into which was thrust the arm which had dealt the blow. On the morrow this arm was chopped off, and it fell at his feet. He calmly moved it with his foot, and pushed it before him down from the scaffold. On the third day his breast and the front of his arm were plucked with red-hot pincers; on the following day his back and the back of his arm, and legs, were treated in the same manner. This was continued for eighteen days, and after each torture he was conducted back to prison, he all the while enduring his sufferings with great constancy. The greatest torture of all that he endured, except death, was when he was bound naked in the middle of the square, and around him at a little distance waggon-loads of charcoal were set on fire, and thus he was wrapped in flame. The poor sufferer bore the roasting for a long while, and then at last he lost patience and cried out; whereupon he was removed. For the final torture he was broken on the wheel, but he did not die at once, for they had only broken his legs and arms, so as to make him linger. Thus he lived for six hours, imploring some one to bring him a drop of water, but no one had the courage to give it him. At length the officer was entreated to put an end to this scene, and to strangle him, lest he should die in despair, and so his soul perish. The executioner approached, and when close to him asked how he felt. The tortured man replied, ‘As you left me.’ But when the cord was produced to be put round his neck, he raised himself, as though fearing death, as he had not feared it before, and said to the executioner: – ‘Ah! pray leave me alone. Do not torture me any more! Pray let me die as I am!’ So having been strangled, his life closed. Awful were the torments he endured!”

WHAT ARE WOMEN MADE OF?

In the palmy days of childhood we were taught in nursery jingle, and we implicitly believed, that little girls were made of

 
Sugar and spice
And all that’s nice.
 

But, growing older, we learned to our disappointment that they were produced from Adam’s rib; and when we asked why woman was made of that particular bone, we were told because it was the most crooked in Adam’s body.

“Observe the result,” preached Jean Raulin, in the beginning of the sixteenth century: “man, composed of clay, is silent and ponderous; but woman gives evidence of her osseous origin by the rattle she keeps up. Move a sack of earth and it makes no noise; touch a bag of bones and you are deafened with the clitter-clatter.”

This observation did not fall to the ground; it was repeated by Gratian de Drusac in his Controversies des Sexes Masculin et Féminin, 1538. The learned in medieval times did not spare women. Jean Nevisan, professor of law at Turin, who died in 1540, is harder still on them in his Sylva Nuptialis. Therein he audaciously asserts that woman was formed by the Author of Good till the head had to be made, and that was a production of the great enemy of mankind. “Permisit Deus illud facere dæmonio.”

But the Rabbis are equally unsparing. They assert that when Eve had to be drawn from the side of Adam she was not extracted by the head, lest she should be vain; nor by the eyes, lest they should be wanton; nor by the mouth, lest she should be given to tittle-tattle; nor by the ears, lest she should be inquisitive; nor by the hands, lest she should be meddlesome; nor by the feet, lest she should be a gadabout; nor by the heart, lest she should be jealous; but she was drawn forth by the side; yet, notwithstanding these precautions, she has every fault specially guarded against, because, being extracted sideways, she was perverse.

Another Rabbinical gloss on the text of Moses asserts that Adam was created double; that he and Eve were made back to back, united at the shoulders, and that they were severed with a hatchet. Eugubinus says that their bodies were united at the side.

Antoinette Bourignon, that extraordinary mystic of the seventeenth century, had some strange visions of the primeval man and the birth of Eve. The body of Adam, she says, was more pure, translucent, and transparent than crystal, light and buoyant as air. In it were vessels and streams of light, which entered and exuded through the pores. The vessels were charged with liquors of various colours of intense brilliancy and transparency; some of these fluids were water, milk, wine, fire, etc. Every motion of Adam’s body produced ineffable harmonies. Every creature obeyed him; nothing could resist or injure him. He was taller than men of this time; his hair was short, curled, and approaching to black. He had a little down on his lower lip. In his stomach was a clear fluid, like water in a crystal bowl, in which tiny eggs developed themselves, like bubbles in wine, as he glowed with the ardour of Divine charity; and when he strongly desired that others should unite with him in the work of praise, he deposited one of these eggs, which hatched, and from it emerged his consort, Eve.

The inhabitants of Madagascar have a strange myth touching the origin of woman. They say that the first man was created of the dust of the earth, and was placed in a garden, where he was subject to none of the ills which now afflict mortality; he was also free from all bodily appetites, and though surrounded by delicious fruit and limpid streams, yet felt no desire to taste of the fruit or quaff the water. The Creator had, moreover, strictly forbidden him either to eat or to drink. The great enemy, however, came to him, and painted to him in glowing colours the sweetness of the apple, the lusciousness of the date, and the succulence of the orange. In vain: the first man remembered the command laid upon him by his Maker. Then the fiend assumed the appearance of an effulgent spirit, and pretended to be a messenger from heaven commanding him to eat and drink. The man at once obeyed. Shortly after a pimple appeared on his leg; the spot enlarged into a tumour, which increased in size and caused him considerable annoyance. At the end of six months it burst, and there emerged from the limb a beautiful girl.

The father of all living turned her this way and that way, sorely perplexed, and uncertain whether to pitch her into the water or give her to the pigs, when a messenger from heaven appeared, and told him to let her run about the garden till she was of a marriageable age, and then to take her to himself as a wife. He obeyed. He called her Bahouna, and she became the mother of all races of men.

There seems to be some uncertainty as to the size of our great mother. The French orientalist, Henrion, member of the Academy, however, fixed it with a precision satisfactory, at least, to himself. He gives the following table of the relative heights of several eminent historical personages: —

It is interesting to have the height of Eve to the decimal of an inch. It must, however, be stated that the measures of the traditional tomb of Eve at Jedda give her a much greater stature. “On entering the great gate of the cemetery, one observes on the left a little wall three feet high, forming a square of ten to twelve feet. There lies the head of our first mother. In the middle of the cemetery is a sort of cupola, where reposes the middle of her body, and at the other extremity, near the door of egress, is another little wall, also three feet high, forming a lozenge-shaped enclosure: there are her feet. In this place is a large piece of cloth, whereon the faithful deposit their offerings, which serve for the maintenance of a constant burning of perfumes over the midst of her body. The distance between her head and feet is 400 feet. How we have shrunk since the creation!” —Lettre de H. A. D., Consul de France en Abyssinie, 1841.

But to return to the substance of which woman was made. This is a point on which the various cosmogonies of nations widely differ. Probably the discoverers of these cosmogonies were men, for they seldom give to woman a very distinguished origin. But then the poets make it up to her. Nature, the singer of the Land of Cakes tells us,

 
Her ’prentice hand she tried on man,
And then she made the lasses, O.
 

Guillaume de Salluste du Bastas (b. 1544; d. 1590) composed a lengthy poem on the Creation, in which he does ample justice to the ladies. His poem was translated into Latin by Dumonin, and into German, Spanish, Italian, and English.

A specimen will suffice: —

 
The mother of mortals in herself doth combine
The charms of an Adam, and graces all Divine.
Her tint his surpasses, her brow is more fair,
Her eye twinkles brighter, more lustrous her hair;
Far sweeter her utterance, her chin is quite smooth,
Dream of Beauty incarnate, a lover and a love!
 

Our own Milton has done poor Eve justice in lines which need no quotation.

Pygmalion, says the classic story, which is really a Phœnician myth of creation, made a woman of marble or ivory, and Aphrodite, in answer to his prayers, endowed the statue with life. We do not believe it. No woman was ever marble. She may seem hard and cold, but she only requires a sturdy male voice to bid her

 
Descend, be stone no more!
 

to show that the marble appearance was put on, and that she is, and ever was, genuine palpitating flesh and blood.

“Often does Pygmalion apply his hands to the work. One while he addresses it in soft terms, at another he brings it presents that are agreeable to maidens, as shells, and smooth pebbles, and little birds, and flowers of a thousand hues, and lilies, and painted balls, and tears of the Heliades, that have distilled from the trees. He decks her limbs, too, with clothing, and puts a long necklace on her neck. Smooth pendants hang from her ears, and bows from her breast. All things are becoming to her.” – Ovid, Metam. x. 254-266.

There is something tender and kindly in this myth; it represents woman as man would have her, pure as the ivory, modestly arrayed, simple, and delighted with small trifles, birds, and pebbles, and flowers – a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. But Hesiod gives a widely different account of the creation of woman. According to him, she was sent in mockery by Zeus to be a scourge to man: —

 
The Sire who rules the earth and sways the pole
Had spoken; laughter fill’d his secret soul:
He bade the crippled god his hest obey,
And mould with tempering water plastic clay;
With human nerve and human voice invest
The limbs elastic, and the breathing breast;
Fair as the blooming goddesses above,
A virgin’s likeness with the looks of love.
He bade Minerva teach the skill that sheds
A thousand colours in the gliding threads;
He call’d the magic of love’s golden queen
To breathe around a witchery of mien,
And eager passion’s never-sated flame,
And cares of dress that prey upon the frame;
Bade Hermes last endue, with craft refined
Of treacherous manners, and a shameless mind.
 

Hesiod, Erga, 61-79.

If such was the Greek theory of the creation of woman, it speaks ill for the Greek men; for woman is ever what man makes her. If he chooses her to be giddy and light and crafty, giddy, light, and crafty will she become; but if he demands of her to be what God made her, modest, and thrifty, and tender, such she will ever prove. This our grand old Northern forefathers knew, and they made her creation a sacred matter, and fashioned her from a nobler stock than man. He was of the ash, she of the elm; they called the first woman Embla, or Emla, which means a laborious female – from the root amr, aml, ambl, signifying “work.” “One day as the sons of Bör were walking along the sea-beach, they found two stems of wood, out of which they shaped a man and a woman. The first, Odin, infused into them life and spirit; the second, Vili, endowed them with reason and the power of motion; the third, Ve, gave them speech and features, hearing and vision.” This reminds one of the ancient Iranian myth of Ahoura Mazda creating the first pair, Meschia and Meschiane, from the Beivas tree. But the Scandinavians also spoke of three primeval mothers: Edda (great-grandmother), Amma (grandmother), and Mother, from whom sprang the three classes of thrall, churl, and earl. It is noticeable that these primeval women are represented as good housewives in the venerable Rîgsmàl, which describes the wanderings of the god Heimdal, under the name of Rîg. The deity comes to the hut of Edda, and at once —

 
From the ashes she took a loaf,
Heavy and thick, with bran mixed;
More beside she laid upon the board;
There is set a bowl of broth on the table;
There is a calf boiled, and cates the best.
 

Then he goes to the house of Amma, the wife of Afi.

 
Afi’s wife sat plying her rock
With outspread arms, busked to weave.
A hood on her head, a sark over her breast,
A kerchief round her neck, and studs on her shoulders.
 

He next enters the hall of Mother.

 
The housewife looked on her arms,
Smoothed her veil, and fastened her sleeves,
Her headgear adjusted. A clasp was on her bosom,
Her robe was ample, her sark blue;
Brighter her brow, fairer her breast,
Whiter her neck than purest snowdrift.
She took, did Mother, a figured cloth
Of white linen, and the table decked.
She then took cakes of snow-white wheat,
On the table them she laid.
She set forth salvers, silver adorned,
Full of game, and pork, and roasted birds.
In a can was wine, the cups were costly.
 

Not a word of disparagement of woman is found in those old cosmic lays. The sturdy Northerner knew her value, and he respected her, whilst the frivolous Greek despised her as a toy.

The Provençal troubadours caught the classic misappreciation of woman. Massillia was a Greek colony, and Greek manners, tastes, and habits of thought prevailed for long in the south-east of France. The troubadours idolised her, as an idol-puppet, but they knew not how to commend, and by commending develop in her those qualities which lie ready to germinate when called for by man – devotion, self-sacrifice, patience, gentleness, and all those homely yet inestimable treasures, the domestic virtues. Pierre de Saint Cloud, in the opening of his poem on Renard, has his fling at poor Eve. He says that Adam was possessed of a magic rod, with which he could create animals at pleasure, by striking the earth with it. One day he smote the ground, and there sprang forth the lamb. Eve caught the rod from his hand, and did as he had done; forthwith there bounded forth the wolf, which rent the creation of Adam. He struck, and the domestic fowls came forth. Eve did likewise, and gave being to the fox. He made the cattle, she the tiger; he the dog, she the jackal.