Death by burning

The cause of death is frequently determined by the respiratory tract, where edema or bleeding of mucous membranes and patchy or vesicular detachment of the mucosa may be indicative of inhalation of hot gases.

[14] Sometimes Roman immolation was carried out using the tunica molesta,[15] a flammable tunic:[16] ... the Christian, stripped naked, was forced to put on a garment called the tunica molesta, made of papyrus, smeared on both sides with wax, and was then fastened to a high pole, from the top of which they continued to pour down burning pitch and lard, a spike fastened under the chin preventing the excruciated victim from turning the head to either side, so as to escape the liquid fire, until the whole body, and every part of it, was literally clad and cased in flame.In 326, Constantine the Great promulgated a law that increased the penalties for parentally non-sanctioned "abduction" of their girls, and concomitant sexual intercourse/rape.

His rough contemporary, the juristical writer Callistratus, mentions that arsonists are typically burnt, as well as slaves who have conspired against the well-being of their masters (this last also, on occasion, being meted out to free persons of "low rank").

[20] The punishment of burning alive arsonists (and traitors) seems to have been particularly ancient; it was included in the Twelve Tables, a mid-5th-century BC law code, that is, about 700 years prior to the times of Ulpian and Callistratus.

[21] Beginning in the early 3rd century BC, Greek and Roman writers commented on the purported institutionalized child sacrifice the North African Carthaginians are said to have performed in honour of the gods Baal Hammon and Tanit.

However, some scholars have argued that these findings are not evidence of systematic child sacrifice, and that estimated figures of ancient natural infant mortality (with cremation afterwards and reverent separate burial) might be the real historical basis behind the hostile reporting from non-Carthaginians.

Earlier on, in Book 1, chapter 4, he relates of the conspiracy of the nobleman Orgetorix, charged by the Celts for having planned a coup d'état, for which the customary penalty would be burning to death.

Pope Gregory IX issued a papal bull denouncing an alleged practice among the Prussians, that girls were dressed in fresh flowers and wreaths and were then burned alive as offerings to evil spirits.

The Fire and Faggot Parliament met in May 1414 at Grey Friars Priory in Leicester to lay out the notorious Suppression of Heresy Act 1414, enabling the burning of heretics by making the crime enforceable by the justices of the peace.

[citation needed] Modern scholars have established that some 4,046 individuals in the time 1560–1773 received some sort of punishment from the Portuguese Inquisition, of whom 121 persons were condemned to be burned alive; 57 actually suffered that fate, while the rest escaped it, and were burnt in effigy instead.

Many scholars think that the first time death by burning appeared within explicit codes of law for the crime of sodomy was at the ecclesiastical 1120 Council of Nablus in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

[61] Notable individuals executed by burning include Jacques de Molay (1314),[62] Jan Hus (1415),[63] Joan of Arc (1431),[64] Girolamo Savonarola (1498),[65] Patrick Hamilton (1528),[66] John Frith (1533),[67] William Tyndale (1536), Michael Servetus (1553),[68] Giordano Bruno (1600),[69] Urbain Grandier (1634),[70] and Avvakum (1682).

Edward Wightman, a radical Anabaptist from Burton on Trent, who publicly denied the Trinity and the divinity of Christ was the last person burned at the stake for heresy in England in Lichfield, Staffordshire on 11 April 1612.

[99] The manner in which Johannes Thomas[100] was executed on 13 July that year is described as follows: Some feet above the actual pyre, attached to a stake, a wooden chamber had been constructed, into which the delinquent was placed.

[110] The last known burning by the Spanish colonial government in Latin America was of Mariana de Castro, during the Peruvian Inquisition in Lima on 22 December 1736[111] after she had been convicted on 4 February 1732 of being a judaizante (a person who was privately practicing the Jewish faith after having publicly converted to Roman Catholicism).

[115] The sources may manifest religious, legal, and political ideas quite an evolution from the chronological aspect and different from those that prevailed in early caliphates since the practice of burning convicted person is forbidden in the Sharia Law.

[120]Certain accursed ones of no significance is the term used by Taş Köprü Zade in the Şakaiki Numaniye to describe some members of the Hurufiyya who became intimate with the Sultan Mehmed II to the extent of initiating him as a follower.

The historian George Grote was among those regarding this story as having sufficient evidence behind it to be true, and points particularly to that the Greek poet Pindar, working just one or two generations after the times of Phalaris, refers to the brazen bull.

A papal nuncio, the later Pope Pius II witnessed the execution of Stewart and his associate Sir Robert Graham, and, reportedly, said he was at a loss to determine whether the crime committed by the regicides, or the punishment of them was the greater.

One detailed account of her supposed execution runs as follows: A gibbet was erected, under which a fire was made, and the prisoner being brought to the place of execution, was hung up in a large iron cage, in which were also placed sixteen wild cats, which had been catched in the woods for the purpose.—When the heat of the fire became too great to be endured with patience, the cats flew upon the woman, as the cause of the intense pain they felt.—In about fifteen minutes they had pulled out her entrails, though she continued yet alive, and sensible, imploring, as the greatest favour, an immediate death from the hands of some charitable spectator.

The English commentator adds his own view on the matter:However cruel this execution may appear with regard to the poor animals, it certainly cannot be thought too severe a punishment for such a monster of iniquity, as could calmly proceed in acquiring a fortune by the deliberate murder of such numbers of unoffending, harmless innocents.

[145] According to historian Pushpa Sharma, stealing a horse was considered the most heinous offence within the Mongol army, and the criminal would either have molten lead poured into his ears, or alternatively, his punishment would be the breaking of the spinal cord or beheading.

[148]While the earliest record of death by burning in Japan appears in "Nihonshoki", on Ishikawa no Tate and Iketsuhime during the reign of Emperor Yuryaku, the contemporary code of law hasn't survived and the historical authenticity of this event is uncertain.

[162]The actual manner of the roasting process was described by the missionary pioneer David Cargill, in 1838: When about to be immolated, he is made to sit on the ground with his feet under his thighs and his hands placed before him.

[173] Benjamin B. Ferencz, one of the prosecutors in the Nuremberg trials after the end of World War II who, in May 1945, investigated occurrences at the Ebensee concentration camp, narrated them to Tom Hofmann, a family member and biographer.

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, burning people standing inside a pile of tires is a common form of murder used by drug dealers to punish those who have supposedly collaborated with the police.

[citation needed] In May 2015, a sixteen-year-old girl was allegedly burned to death in Río Bravo, Guatemala, by a vigilante mob after being accused of involvement in the killing of a taxi driver earlier in the month.

[188] In Chile during public mass protests held against the military regime of General Augusto Pinochet on 2 July 1986, engineering student Carmen Gloria Quintana, 18, and Chilean-American photographer Rodrigo Rojas de Negri, 19, were arrested by a Chilean Army patrol in the Los Nogales neighborhood of Santiago.

[190][191] More recently, during the 1980 New Mexico State Penitentiary riot, a number of inmates were burnt to death by fellow prisoners, who threw flammable liquids into locked cells and ignited the fuel using blowtorches.

[192] In South Africa, extrajudicial executions by burning were carried out via "necklacing", wherein a mob would fill a rubber tire with kerosene (or gasoline) and place it around the neck of a live person.