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Wednesday 4 April 2018 16.30 - 18.30
E-4 CRI04 Justice Inscribed on the Body: Maiming Corporal Punishments in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages
MAP/OG/006 Maths and Physics
Network: Criminal Justice Chair: Marion Pluskota
Organizers: Filippo Carlà-Uhink, Christine Alexandra Kleinjung Discussant: Marion Pluskota
Filippo Carlà-Uhink : Castration as Punishment in Ancient Rome
In ancient Rome castration was practiced, mostly on slaves, in order to obtain eunuchs, who were highly desired for specific kinds of assistance and service; self-castration was also common in some religious circles, as among the adepts of the goddess Cybele. But next to these practices, castration was adopted throughout ... (Show more)
In ancient Rome castration was practiced, mostly on slaves, in order to obtain eunuchs, who were highly desired for specific kinds of assistance and service; self-castration was also common in some religious circles, as among the adepts of the goddess Cybele. But next to these practices, castration was adopted throughout the centuries of Roman history also as a form of bodily punishment, of justice inscribed onto the body. The use of castration in this sense changed radically with time, from the Roman Republic down to Late Antique law, while one main aspect remained steadily firm: as a punishment, castration was practiced on those people who had, with their crime or breach of morality, abdicated their role as normative males within society. The bodily punishment is therefore a physical embodiment and “realization” of what the “criminal” had already done to his masculine nature and status. This does not mean primarily, in spite of what one might think, that castration was used to punish homosexual intercourse – this is a quite late evolution, which characterizes the Christian Empire from the 4th century CE onwards. In earlier times, castration was not a legitimate punishment imposed by law but a frequent, and generally socially accepted, form of vendetta against men responsible of sexual misconduct, such as adultery, basing on the idea – widespread in Roman mentality – that not being able to control one’s own lust through reason is typically feminine. Imperial legislation intervened at different moments trying to control and limit the use of castration as a private punishment, also upon one’s own slaves, but without relevant success. It is the aim of this paper to analyze the use of castration as a private or as an institutional punishment throughout Roman history, highlighting the ways in which it served to underline the “unmanly” behavior of the criminal, and thus to mark him for the rest of his life within society, investigating at the same time what constituted a breach of manliness serious enough to cause such a consequence, and how such ideas and discourses of masculinity, sexual offence, and punishment changed over time, with a particular attention for the evolution brought by the Christianization of the imperial court and legislation. (Show less)

Christine Alexandra Kleinjung : Mutilated Popes and Blinded Bishops. Bodies, Wounds and Clerical Office
Bodily punishments can cause undeletable marks on the bodies of the punished people, which inscribe on the body of the criminal a sign of their crime. Blinding, as castration, was in the Middle Age a gender-specific form of punishment, acted only upon men. Their use can therefore be interpreted also ... (Show more)
Bodily punishments can cause undeletable marks on the bodies of the punished people, which inscribe on the body of the criminal a sign of their crime. Blinding, as castration, was in the Middle Age a gender-specific form of punishment, acted only upon men. Their use can therefore be interpreted also in relation to gender norms, as to discourses of power. Both forms of punishment, indeed, are strongly related to specific political and social positions and to the role of the body in the social structure of the time. The body played a central role not only in relation to war, but also for clerical office: bishops and popes were therefore subject to bodily punishments of this kind as well as other members of the elite. This paper will focus on them, and discuss some examples of blinded and mutilated clerics from the 9th and 10th century, as Pope Leo III (799), Pope Formosus (897), bishop Hinkmar of Laon (869) and bishop Herod of Salzburg (955). Traditionally, blinding was a punishment for the crime of treason. In the case of bishops, though, this punishment and other forms of mutilation are used also in cases of malpractice and simony. Such crimes are not easy to define: their conception changed steadily through time and is at every stage differently loaded in an ideological sense. An analysis of the argumentative and narrative constructions surrounding such corporal punishments of clerics will therefore provide innovative results for a better understanding of discourses on power and authority in the early middle ages. (Show less)

Judith Mengler : „…and if the nose is completely shattered and gulped down by the dogs...“. Some Remarks on the Perception and Relation of Corporal Punishment and Injuries in the Treatises of Late Medieval Surgeons
Corporal punishment was not only designed to destroy the body or parts of the body of the delinquent, it was also meant to inscribe the crime, the sin, and the offence against God and the people into the body of the offender and, in doing so, to build awareness of ... (Show more)
Corporal punishment was not only designed to destroy the body or parts of the body of the delinquent, it was also meant to inscribe the crime, the sin, and the offence against God and the people into the body of the offender and, in doing so, to build awareness of the committed misdeeds in the minds of the onlookers. But what if the mark of disgrace was not the result of the criminal justice, but of an accident or honourable fight at war? If the nose was not cut off by the executioner, but by an enemy threatening country, crown, and one’s own family? Since corporal punishment was intended to call up certain associations, misinterpretations of other kinds of injuries were nearly inevitable. The surgeons of the 14th and 15th centuries were aware of this issue. They incorporated it into their assessment of wounds and offered procedures to their patients, although in the strictly medical sense unnecessary, which should modify and improve the physical appearance of the wounds and the resulting scar. Besides, they had to treat the results of (intentional or accidental) nonlethal corporal punishment and had to be at least as inventive and creative as the punishments and castigators. In my paper, I will give some examples of the handling and the considerations of the described problems. I will focus on medical treatises of the 14th up to the early 16th century; especially the works of Henri de Mondeville (c. 1260-1316), Heinrich von Pfolsprundt (circa 1400-1466), and Hieronymus Brunschwig (circa 1450-1512) will be examined. (Show less)

Christian Rollinger : A Wave of Mutilation. Facial Amputation as Punishment in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire
Scholars have long ago noticed a trend of increasingly harsh bodily punishments in Roman imperial and late antique jurisprudence, a form of “judicial savagery” (MacMullen) seemingly at odds both with the Roman legal tradition and the establishment of Christianity as dominant religion of the Empire. While the rise of Christianity ... (Show more)
Scholars have long ago noticed a trend of increasingly harsh bodily punishments in Roman imperial and late antique jurisprudence, a form of “judicial savagery” (MacMullen) seemingly at odds both with the Roman legal tradition and the establishment of Christianity as dominant religion of the Empire. While the rise of Christianity has been used to explain the abolishment of notorious forms of executions, such as ad bestias or by crucifixion, it is under the Christian emperors that both lethal and non-lethal punishments become ever crueller (and not only to modern sensibilities). Beginning with Montesquieu in the 18th century, scholars have sometimes presumed that harsh penalties were prevalent in times of tyrannical rule and that, since the late Roman empire was itself a degradation of the ‘high’ empire of the Antonines, the quasi-tyrannical government of the ‘Dominate’ went hand in hand with extravagantly vicious forms of penal punishment.
Modern scholarship has rightly rejected both notions and the works of Foucault (inter alia) have shown the close connection between societal contexts and norms on the one hand, and the forms and extremes of penal systems. In this view, penalties of mutilation and/or amputation were a distinct and expressive manifestation of judicial norms inscribed on the body of the convicted. Late antique and early Byzantine law prescribed the amputation of hands or feet for a number of crimes, but this paper will focus mostly on facial mutilation meted out as imperial justice. This included brandings and tattoos (sometimes consisting of individual letters, sometimes of whole texts) on the face, blinding either by gouging out the eyes or by fire, but also and especially the amputation of the nose or one or both ears. This will be the main focus of this paper, which will explore the motivations and reasoning behind this specific form of punishment, as well as its societal, cultural and political context. Non-lethal punishments were intended to serve multiple purposes, including but not limited to the ‘traditional’ uses of corporeal punishments (i.e. retribution and deterrence). Since facial wounds, in particular, were almost impossible to conceal, the convicted were reminded daily – and reminded others – of the swift functioning of imperial justice. Their degraded bodies were embodied law and their exclusion by society a logical consequence.
A difference must be made, however, regarding the individuals punished in this way. On the one hand, judicial codes such as the Corpus Iuris Civilis or the later Ecloga routinely prescribe amputation of nose, ears and other appendages for a wide variety of crimes. On the other hand, nasal amputations have become famous as typical punishment reserved for political opponents and usurpers, meted out both as punishment and to preclude the victims from further political ambitions, as, in the late antique/early Byzantine mindset, only physically intact persons could ever aspire to the highest offices – or so the widely-held and seldom questioned view has it. Famously, however, physical imperfections did not always work as effective barriers from the imperial office, as illustrated by the nose-less emperor Justinian II. The paper will thus first discuss facial mutilations as part of the routine administration of justice and then move on to a close reading of individual cases of political opponents suffering mutilations. (Show less)



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