In the spirit of Halloween I choose to take a little bit of a darker turn for this blog post and question the act of being burned at the stake. When thinking about someone burning at the stake who or what groups come to mind? For me, two groups of people come to mind: witches and heretics. Both were groups with long histories of being burned at the stake as punishments for their sins and crimes, mostly against the church doctrine. In relation to our class for this week, we have finally reached the point of our class where we are discussing Joan's sentencing and her death.Curious as to how the whole "public burning" went I searched YouTube and found a couple of clips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCpTIn66Nd0. This first clip is from the movie Elizabeth and features three heretics being burned at the stake. Notice that there are two men and one woman, all of which have had their heads shaved. This brings me to my first round of questions: 1) How often were women burned at the stake and for what crimes? 2) Why would a woman's head be shaved?
This second film clip is from The Messenger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzYa4B8R6yY. You'll have to skip-forward to around the time 2:22 to get to Joan's burning. This clip brings up several questions also. First, this film choose not to shave the prisoner's head-was the act of shaving one's head who was to be burned true? Secondly, was it "standard practice" to tie one's hands to the stake as well as shackle their feet to the stake as well? We have read several sources that detail Joan being shackled in her prison cell so I am curious to as what you all think about this film choosing to show Joan being burned at the stake but also shackled to it. Do you think this was only used in Joan's case because the English were so "fearful" of her?While I know this is a morbid topic of sorts, I do think it is an interesting topic to address. Joan herself was burned at the stake for being deemed a heretic and several eye-witness accounts are provided in the Retrial book where many regret having witnessed the scene and fear they were wrong in burning Joan. Was Joan an anomaly for the time; meaning, was being a woman who was sentenced to be burned at the stake common during this time period?
Sorry for having only presented more questions than answers in this post but on a topic like this I am curious to see what the opinions of others are.
Works Cited
"Joan of Arc-You Want to Confess." The Messenger. 1999. YouTube.
"Bloody Mary Burns Heretics." Elizabeth. YouTube.
All images from Google.
Bethany,
ReplyDeleteTo somewhat answer your first question, I found that non just women but men and women were burned for a few things. Heresy and witchcraft were the most common but people were also burned for homosexuality, adultery, theft, and murder. The source I found says that approximately 200,000 people were burned at the stake. I'm not sure how accurate this number is but it doesn't seem that far-fetched.
Chris
Work Cited
Smycken, A. (2014, June 28). Curious Tendency. Retrieved November 2, 2014.
Chris,
DeleteI wonder what one had to have stolen to be burned for being a thief? To me it seems that being burned for being a thief is a little extreme. I also wonder how often burnings for adultery and theft actually occurred?
Thanks for providing good discussion topics for tomorrow! I've written some of the questions down! I couldn't find your exact blog, Chris, but the # of 200,000 is used (perhaps) because of the estimates of Brian Levack in his first book on the witch-hunts, now revised in his third edition of the book at around 60,000-80,000 trials and half deaths, and 85% women. But that is mostly post-1450, and so is a different sort of beast than what we are discussing here. Joan's trial was mildly part of the medieval inquisitorial process, but the Spanish Inquisition and Roman Inquisition are later and more formal. Interestingly neither, and the Catholic church too, were very interested in burning witches, so we need to speak of the secular state as being responsible for many of the witch-hunts. This is why teaching the subject in a class, my Witch-hunts of Early Modern Europe, is a lot like dispelling many of the myths associated with Joan. For others, the work of James Given is helpful to show that the medieval inquisition was far less interested in burning than we think. Too bad for Joan though.
ReplyDelete