What is a "rendezvous with a corpse", or the most terrible types of execution in history

It is fair that any criminal should be punished, and it is in the inevitability of punishment that the main educational effect lies. Once upon a time there was a simple principle of "an eye for an eye" and the trial of the attacker was carried out by the victims themselves or their relatives, choosing a punishment corresponding to the severity of the offense. But then the state took over the right to judge and punish, and there was no trace of the former justice.

Legal arbitrariness, the desire to keep the people in fear and the sick imagination of the executioners gave rise to terrible types of executions, which were applied at the discretion of the authorities. (Careful! Shocking content).

The Persians were great masters of executions and torture, so it is not surprising that they invented one of the most disgusting and terrible punishments. This execution was best described by the ancient Greek writer Plutarch, who happened to witness it. The Greek was present at the execution of one of the Persian soldiers named Mithridates, who said too much at the feast.

This Persian committed a terrible crime by the standards of his state — he attributed to himself the feat that King Artarkserks performed. The monarch found out about this and ordered the execution to be applied to the chatterbox, which was called "scafism". First, the victim was stripped naked and smeared with honey and jam. This was done in order to attract flies, bees and wasps.

At the same time, the unfortunate man was forcibly watered with honey and milk to cause him severe diarrhea. When the stomach and intestines of the executed were filled, his body was enclosed in a barrel, leaving only his head and limbs outside. Then the poor guy was thrown into the pond, where he was to end his days.

This is how the unfortunate man, sentenced to spaceflight, looked like

Mithridates swam in a barrel, which was gradually filled with his feces and suffered unbearably because insect larvae were tearing his body inside the container. A few days later, tissue necrosis and general poisoning of the body with decomposition products began.

The Persian screamed incessantly, experiencing inhuman torments, and begged for death, but his cries only fed him so that he would not die prematurely. According to Plutarch, the braggart's torment lasted for many days and his screams were interrupted only for a while until he lost consciousness from pain.

The Chinese were not inferior to the Persians in ingenuity and cruelty. Popular in The celestial execution of "lynch" appeared before our era and was last used in 1905. The name of this execution translates from Chinese as "long inhuman death", but more often it is called "death by a thousand cuts".

Execution by a thousand cuts

The condemned man was stripped and tied to a post around which the executioners gathered with their tools — knives, razors, scissors. The victim was inflicted many non-fatal, but very painful wounds with cutting objects. They were cut slowly and carefully, but at the end of the execution they could disperse and cut off even a limb from a dying person.

This execution had a double meaning. Firstly, the condemned man died for a long time and painfully from blood loss and pain shock. And secondly, in China they believed that the human body is inviolable and if it is damaged or dismembered, then he will be crippled in the afterlife.

There were several types of lynching. The first, the most humane, began with the fact that the victim's throat was cut, and all the damage was already inflicted on his body. In the second case, the convict was drugged with opium so that he did not feel pain and remained conscious, watching as pieces were separated from his body. In the third method, the victim was first blinded so that she could not see the tormentors and the execution itself, but could fully concentrate on her suffering.

The execution process. Documentary chronicle

But even after the unfortunate man died, he was not left alone. The body of the criminal was dismembered and cremated so that he could not fully exist in the world of the dead, or the corpse was sold to pharmacists and healers who made powders, potions, potions and talismans from it. In this case, there was also practically nothing left of the dead man for the afterlife.

The famous Japanese katanas, made by famous gunsmiths, were tested in ancient times on bamboo stalks, bales of rice straw and even thin sheets of metal. This test was considered a real art and was called "tameshigiri". But in the Edo era, swords began to be tested on criminals sentenced to death.

A criminal prepared for "tameshigiri"

The bound man was placed on a small hill, no more than half a meter. Then lines were drawn on his body, along which it was planned to dissect the body into parts. After that, one or more samurai struck with swords, checking the sharpness of the blades and testing the hardness of their hands.

First, the criminals had their arms and legs cut off, then they cut the body in half and finally deprived of the head. The sword masters knew well how to strike so that the victim would stay alive as long as possible. There were even special names for the lines that were struck: "Tabi gata" is an incision on the ankle, "o-kesa" is a diagonal wound of the thigh.

The test of the sword on the villain

In Japanese folklore, there is an anecdote associated with this type of execution. One day, one of those sentenced to be dissected with swords before his execution sadly said that if he had known that he would be killed in this way, he would have swallowed more stones on purpose to annoy the samurai and damage their precious swords.

But intricate executions existed not only in Asia, but also in Europe. The real masters of murder were the Etruscans who inhabited the Apennine Peninsula before the Roman Empire was formed. Later, the noble Romans revived this terrible method of execution and called it Nupta Contagioso (marriage with the dead).

Tying the condemned to the body of his victim

A person sentenced to this method of death was tied to a corpse in a special way. The ancient poet Virgil describes this in his poem The Aeneid as "face to face, hand to hand." After that, the bundle of the dead and the condemned is laid on the ground and left alone.

The dead body, having begun to decompose, attracts a lot of insects and is quickly covered with a layer of larvae. Worms eat not only the dead man, but also the person tied to him, who suffered and loudly begged for mercy. A philosophical meaning was laid in this execution — the corpse was perceived as a mirror image of the criminal. Most often, the killer and his victim were tied together — it was believed that an invisible close connection arose between them.

All the described executions were carried out in public, for the edification of others. In general, the visibility of punishment used to be valued very highly and many terrible structures were invented specifically to intimidate the people, for example, the Paris Montfaucon - the largest and most terrible gallows in history.