Punishing the Dead

Above we see the corpse of Pope Formosus, put on trial by his successor, Pope Stephen VI, in the year 897.  Formosus' body was exhumed at the command of Stephen and tried for several reasons at a Church Synod which has come to be called, for obvious reasons, "The Cadaver Synod."

To the surprise of no one, Formosus was found guilty.  It seems that an unfortunate Deacon was selected either to represent the corpse or speak for it.  I wonder what kind of defense was offered by the deceased.  I like to think of the corpse and its lawyer/advocate/representative huddling together regarding strategy or how to respond to questions asked.  I suspect their conferences were either very short or very long.   I'm ashamed to admit that I've also pictured the Deacon manipulating the corpse as a ventriloquist's doll, a la Charlie McCarthy or Senor Wences, while responding to the prosecutor's examination.

The corpse was duly punished.  Three fingers of its right hand were chopped off (they were used for blessing the unworthy).  All of the Formosus' acts were annulled, and the body was ultimately thrown in the Tiber, something of a Roman tradition in pagan and Christian times.

This wasn't the only time we exhumed and punished corpses.  There are more than a few famous or infamous instances of posthumous execution.  That of Oliver Cromwell is equally notorious.  After the Restoration his body was dug up, hung in chains in public, and beheaded, in vengeance it seems for regicide in connection with Charles I.

Desecration of the dead is far more common.  If what has been alleged is true, then members of the Israeli Defense Force have done this in cemeteries in Gaza.  The body-snatching done to supply corpses to medical schools is referenced fairly often in the media, and this would seem to me to constitute desecration regardless of whatever advancement in medical care took place as a result, if any.  And of course it isn't unreasonable to claim that archaeologists desecrate the bodies of those they dig up, routinely it seems, despite the fact that it is especially clear in some if not all cases that those who once lived did not want their remains disturbed.  Desecration in the name of knowledge has been excused, for one reason or another.

Why punish the dead, though?  Why "execute" them?  In the case of Formosus it can be said that Stephen VI had practical, political goals in mind in staging the macabre trial.  The trial resulted in the annulment of the acts of Formosus as Pope, something which could have been quite useful to Stephen and his friends.  But it's unclear why it was thought that putting his corpse on trial was needed to accomplish the nullification.  Are the dead entitled to due process?

In Cromwell's case, however (or rather in the case of his corpse) it would seem that vengeance was the primary if not the only reason for the posthumous execution.  It's possible also that it was thought that the effort involved in the show was justified as it might serve to convince all of the danger of regicide--Behold, Charles II may be saying, if you kill a king even your mortal remains won't be safe from vengeance!

It's hard to believe that it was thought that the dead would be harmed in some way by what was done to their corpses, but this was apparently true in some cases.  Native Americans (if that appellation is still appropriate) are said to have mutilated the dead bodies of their enemies so they wouldn't have the use of whatever part of their bodies was mutilated in the afterlife.  In ancient Greece, the failure to grant funeral rights and treat dead bodies with respect seemingly doomed their souls to a piteous afterlife.  Achilles refused to agree to Hector's suggestion that they each promise that the victor won't dishonor the corpse of the loser.  He roped Hector's body to his chariot and dragged him around the city of Troy in full sight of his mother and father.

There appears to be no question that defiling a corpse is considered taboo in most cultures.  It must require a good deal of hate to violate that taboo.  And a kind of need as well.  When the object of your hate is dead, what would prompt you to violate his corpse except the feeling that mere death isn't enough to satisfy you?  Death is not enough in some cases, for some of us at least.

I suppose this is another way in which we humans are distinct from other living organisms.  We're not content that our enemies die, we wish to punish those we hate even beyond death and have pursued that goal in ways which are highly imaginative.  This must be why some take comfort in the belief that others are writhing in Hell, for all eternity.  

What a piece of work is man, as Hamlet would say.

Collective Lunacy

There's something about our times that brings to (my) mind the phenomenon known as mass hysteria as well as other names.  It's appeared now and then in our history.  Most examples known began to take place in the medieval period and have continued since then.  It's interesting that we don't hear much about similar events taking place in ancient times.  That fact is worthy of study, but not here, not now.

Above is a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger of an example of Dancing Plague which took place in the 16th century in Belgium.  There were earlier manifestation of that plague, such as the one which took place in the 14th century in Aachen, Germany.  A woman left her home in that case, and began dancing in the street (or what passed for one at that time) for no apparent reason and to no purpose.  She kept dancing for days.  Others began to dance as well.  They also kept dancing.  It's said that thousands did the same eventually.  They stopped dancing eventually, also for no apparent reason.

Sources tell us that efforts were made to stop the dancing, with no effect.  Among the efforts was hiring musicians and (normal) dancers in the hope that when they stopped playing and dancing the (abnormal) dancers would stop as well.  This makes a certain sense, if anything does.  It didn't work.

I wonder if that's what's going on in the painting by Brueghel, given the presence in it of men depicted playing bagpipes.  Men are shown trying to restrain the dancers as well; but it's possible that grabbing the arms was a part of whatever dance was taking place.

My favorite historical example of mass hysteria is the case of the Meowing Nuns of France.  One of the nuns in a particular convent began to meow like a cat one day.  Others began to meow.   Eventually, all the nuns would gather together to meow at particular times of day, as they normally would to pray together, one would think.  The association of cats with Satan was thought significant.  Soldiers were brought in, and they whipped and tortured the nuns until they agreed to stop meowing.  I wonder if they continued to meow when the soldiers left, but in secret.

Then there are the Biting Nuns of Germany.   A nun in a convent in the 15th began to bite her sisters,  They began to bite each other.  This biting behavior spread to other convents, not only in Germany but in Holland, and even to Rome.  The Biting Plague continued, it seems, for some centuries.  

Outbreaks of mass hysteria took place later than the Middle Ages.  The Salem Witch Trials are considered to be an example of it.  In the 1960s, a laughing epidemic broke out in Tanganyika, at a mission school.  The students began laughing, and continued to laugh for up to 16 days.  The laughing spread to other schools and the surrounding area, up to a radius of 100 miles from the school at which it began.  Subsequently, the laughing stopped.  The cause of the laughter is not definitely known.  I know I laugh whenever I think of nuns meowing together, but stop when I'm distracted from the thought of them.

These kind of outbreaks of hysteria are no longer attributed to demons.  Instead, anxiety, stress, psychosis and such are said to be causes.  Perhaps there's some kind of herd instinct involved.  We live in anxious and stressful times.  The hysteria, or whatever it may be, that spread centuries ago, whether by contagion or some other means, spread in a sense by contact or encounter with other people inexplicably dancing, meowing or biting.  The technology of those times limited exposure.  There's no limit now to exposure to the irrational.

So we have copycat killers or terrorists, who may find the details of the crimes of others easily.  All of us may witness the disturbing conduct of others, their speech and writing, instantly and directly, no matter how mad, unsupported, malicious, deceitful or harmful it may be.  Each of us is our own censor and guide to the lunacy on display, and how will we react to it if we haven't learned to make intelligent judgments?

To put it simply, we'll dance when others dance, bite when others bite, meow when others meow merely because others are doing it as well.  There is safety in numbers, and safety from the world when there are many we can join in disregarding it by denying it and pretending it to be otherwise.  Those who engaged in mass hysteria in the past were for the most part poorer and less educated than we are.  Their lives were shorter due to lack of good medical care and hygiene; they had much to fear, and there was much to cause anxiety.

That's not the case now, but judging from what we see and hear and do there's much to be afraid of in these times.  Perhaps that which drives people to see conspiracies everywhere regardless of evidence, consider convicted criminals as hostages for no good reason, classify slavery as something which could have been negotiated, and believe whatever it is certain people tell them to believe, is similar to what made them dance, bite, meow and do other ridiculous things.  Maybe it's a reaction in response to fear and anxiety which defies reason, and is a kind of escape.

How will artists depict the collective lunacy of our times?  

Homage to Cagliostro

Alessandro di Cagliostro, self-styled Count (and other things), f/k/a Giuseppe Balsamo, 18th century Freemason (of sorts), alchemist, magician, adventurer, con-man, forger, imposter and adventurer. spent his life defrauding the great and not-so-great of the Age of Enlightenment with remarkable success.  In a way he makes a mockery of that time, supposedly one featuring the triumph of reason over superstition.  As far as demonstrating its lack of reason, he's far better at it than the many Romantics of the 19th century and the postmoderns of the 20th, and their successors of the 21st, who try deny that Age's achievements.  They decried the limits and misapplication of reason; he made great gaping fools of the those who thought themselves reasonable.

He's generally depicted as above, either staring up at the heavens to his right or our left, like Mithras slaying the bull, or to his left our right.  There are many such drawings, paintings and busts of the Count.  Not a bad, or at least not a small, legacy for a relatively poor Sicilian who made good, or bad.  He purported to see a great deal up there, but also everywhere else; spirits, ghosts, treasures revealed to him through his own efforts or through those of his guides, generally angels or fellow mages, though deceased.  Many believed he did, and it seems he managed to live quite well for the most part together with his wife and partner in crime, Serafina, who it seems was quite as adept as he was in making fools of the rich and noble, though perhaps in different ways.  And so, despite being imprisoned now and then, most famously in the Bastille under suspicion of being involved in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, he made his mark on history.

He died in 1795, while imprisoned.  It seems to me he would have managed to show up as a subsidiary player in the French Revolution had he been free, enchanting Robespierre with his discussions with the Supreme Being.

It's interesting how much those he fooled so completely wanted so much to believe that he had occult powers and that there was a vast world of spirits and djinns, angelic and demonic, infesting our lives in the here and now and the afterlife.  And what a success he was in leading them on all sorts of wild goose chases.  Money, jewels, riches of all sorts were his, willingly donated, as it were, by his admirers.  He earned the respect and jealousy even of Casanova, no mean scoundrel himself, who knew him fairly well.  Aleister Crowley thought he was a reincarnation of the Count, and his misdeeds enthrall us even now.  

His great enemy was the Church, of course.  The Inquisition and the Jesuits pursued him and all Freemasons at that time, some even posing to be mystics and magicians themselves in order to learn what was needed to denounce him and others of his ilk.  Casanova himself was a kind of double agent for the Venetian Inquisition after he had fallen on hard times.

Is it possible we owe the agents of the Inquisition thanks for pursuing such con artists, preying on the foolish and hopeful, longing for meaning and gnosis--hidden knowledge known only to initiates?  Or were they merely hoping to do away with a rival encroaching on their territory?

We can't really claim to be more knowing and sophisticated than those he befuddled centuries ago, though.  Crowley managed much the same in bedazzling the gullible in the early 20th century, along with Madame Blavatsky and others.  The Rosicrucians and Freemasons who delved into alchemy, magic and Egyptian and Hermetic lore in Cagliostro's time are with us still, though perhaps not quite as preposterous in this as they once were.

Perhaps now we're merely more inclined to fall for other scams, those more secular and political, but still practiced by enchanters though of another kind.  Which kind of scam will prove more catastrophic for us and the world?