Crucifixion
Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment in which the condemned is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross, beam or stake and left to hang until eventual death.
His death is the most prominent example of crucifixion in history, which in turn has led many cultures in the modern world to associate the execution method closely with Jesus and with Christian spirituality.
The English term cross derives from the Latin word crux,[8] which classically referred to a tree or any construction of wood used to hang criminals as a form of execution.
Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE–65 CE) states: "I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet.
"[14] According to Josephus, during Emperor Titus's Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE), Roman soldiers nailed innumerable Jewish captives to crosses in various ways.
[27] A foot-rest (suppedaneum) attached to the cross, perhaps for the purpose of taking the person's weight off the wrists, is sometimes included in representations of the crucifixion of Jesus but is not discussed in ancient sources.
[34] The find in Cambridgeshire (United Kingdom) in November 2017 of the remains of the heel bone of a (probably enslaved) man with an iron nail through it, is believed by the archeologists to confirm the use of this method in ancient Rome.
The test subjects had no difficulty breathing during experiments, but did suffer rapidly increasing pain,[40][41] which is consistent with the Roman use of crucifixion to achieve a prolonged, agonizing death.
[43] There is scholarly support for several[42] possible non-asphyxiation causes of death: heart failure or arrhythmia,[44][45] hypovolemic shock,[41] acidosis,[46] dehydration,[36] and pulmonary embolism.
[49] However, in his Histories, ix.120–122, Greek writer Herodotus describes the execution of a Persian general at the hands of Athenians in about 479 BC: "They nailed him to a plank and hung him up ... this Artayctes who suffered death by crucifixion.
However, Rabbinic law limited capital punishment to just 4 methods of execution: stoning, burning, strangulation, and decapitation, while the passage in Deuteronomy was interpreted as an obligation to hang the corpse on a tree as a form of deterrence.
Seneca the Younger wrote: "I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet".
[61] Crucifixion was generally performed within Ancient Rome as a means to dissuade others from perpetrating similar crimes, with victims sometimes left on display after death as a warning.
Crucifixion was intended to provide a death that was particularly slow, painful (hence the term excruciating, literally "out of crucifying"), gruesome, humiliating, and public, using whatever means were most expedient for that goal.
This hypothesis is rejected by William A. Oldfather, who shows that this form of execution (the supplicium more maiorum, punishment in accordance with the custom of our ancestors) consisted of suspending someone from a tree, not dedicated to any particular gods, and flogging him to death.
[62] Tertullian mentions a 1st-century AD case in which trees were used for crucifixion,[63] but Seneca the Younger earlier used the phrase infelix lignum (unfortunate wood) for the transom ("patibulum") or the whole cross.
Cicero, for example, described crucifixion as "a most cruel and disgusting punishment",[75] and suggested that "the very mention of the cross should be far removed not only from a Roman citizen's body, but from his mind, his eyes, his ears".
[83] Seneca the Younger recounts: "I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet.
Justin Martyr calls the seat a cornu, or "horn,"[96] leading some scholars to believe it may have had a pointed shape designed to torment the crucified person.
[101] The preference for crucifixion over the other punishments mentioned in the verse or for their combination (which Sadakat Kadri has called "Islam's equivalent of the hanging, drawing and quartering that medieval Europeans inflicted on traitors")[104] is subject to "complex and contested rules" in classical jurisprudence.
[101] Cases of crucifixion under most of the legally prescribed categories have been recorded in the history of Islam, and prolonged exposure of crucified bodies was especially common for political and religious opponents.
Petra Schmidt, in "Capital Punishment in Japan", writes:[112]Execution by crucifixion included, first of all, hikimawashi (i.e, being paraded about town on horseback); then the unfortunate was tied to a cross made from one vertical and two horizontal poles.
[117] It has been reported that crucifixion was used in several cases against the German civil population of East Prussia when it was occupied by Soviet forces at the end of World War II.
"[120][121] Nicu Haas, from the Hebrew University Medical School, examined the ossuary and discovered that it contained a heel bone with a nail driven through its side, indicating that the man had been crucified.
[126][127][128] In 2017, The Standard News Channel reported on a series of crimes against civilians, including women being hung up trees[129] Crucifixion is still used as a rare method of execution in Saudi Arabia.
When, in 2002, 88 people were sentenced to death for crimes relating to murder, armed robbery, and participating in ethnic clashes, Amnesty International wrote that they could be executed by either hanging or crucifixion.
[150][151] On 22 January 2014, Dmytro Bulatov, a Ukrainian anti-government activist and member of AutoMaidan, claimed to have been kidnapped by unknown persons "speaking in Russian accents" and tortured for a week.
His captors ultimately left him in a forest outside Kyiv after forcing him to confess to being an American spy and accepting money from the US Embassy in Ukraine to organize protests against then-President Viktor Yanukovych.
Also, since at least the mid-19th century, a group of flagellants in New Mexico, called Hermanos de Luz ("Brothers of Light"), have annually conducted reenactments of Christ's crucifixion during Holy Week, in which a penitent is tied—but not nailed—to a cross.
[164] This tradition is sometimes practiced in other regions of the United States, such as in Appalachia, where members of Protestant churches stage mock crucifixions wherein worshippers hang from straps on the crosses during Good Friday re-enactments.
