The quality of mercy...

The Romans were real barbarians. You know how they would deal with their criminals? Well, not with prison (or only if you were really important like Vercingetorix who's spent seven years in prison at which point Julius Caesar thought he was no longer useful to him and had him discreetly executed), however there was a reason for that, people back then worked all day just to feed themselves it would have been inefficient to send them to jail for minor offenses where they could be fed doing nothing. Some of them might even find this a kind of vacation from a never ending toiling without reprieve. So they had to find alternatives. Depending on the gravity of your offenses those were, the galleys ( like in that laughably inaccurate movie Ben Hur, more on that in another thread later), becoming gladiators (if they were lucky they could survive long enough to be freed), or slaves (slaves who sometimes had decent jobs and could earn and keep their money and sometimes buy their freedom back, like an ancestor of Julius Caesar did, how do you like that?, You've just been sentenced to punitive slavery but someday you'll buy your freedom back and one of your great grandchild will become head of state!!), the slaves were deprived of freedom (like our prisoners) but could enjoy the outside (unlike our prisoners). Some slaves were teachers and even as slaves they were authorized to punish their free pupils and demand their respect. For graver offenses the sentences were death and different sort of deaths depending on the crime. For grievous crimes, crucifiction. Jesus evidently was found guilty of fomenting sedition, which the romans took very seriously!



So here comes christianity to  change all that and free us of all this barbarity!


How would the christian countries deal with crime then? Not with prison (for the same reason as previously), so how? Well, not with slavery because it was decided that only people without a soul could be enslaved.  Yeah, one great notion that was introduced by christians (ignored by the Romans who had people of all skin colors in their society, at every levels) was racism. The christians introduced the notion that people of other races were not really people so it was ok to oppress them and to enslave them. After Christopher Columbus "discovered" America the Vatican said that it was ok to enslave the natives because they were soulless. After a few decades though it was decided that maybe they had a little soul, not like ours of course, but enough of one to make slavery... not ok. Black people people though, the same conclave concluded, were totally and definitely soulless so slavery for them was not only ok but recommended.

So now how to punish soulful people if you can't enslave them? Well, for one thing, death. You see death as a punishment was used much more often by medieval societies than by the romans. So yeah, you'll remain free, don't worry, but you'll be dead. Enjoy. 

But killing for every crime puts every crime at the same level so they had to get creative. They invented different kinds of death penalties. Depending on the crime your death would be painful but swift or very slow and excruciating! Plus you'd be tortured before they finally decided to kill you. So even if you were a criminal that had stepped over the limit (between life and death) you could still make matters worse for you. Torture was of course an ok and christian way to get someone to confess their crimes. In fact they really liked it when people confessed (it's sooo christian!) so they would torture them for a long time in very creative ways until they confessed.

By killing someone in long and creative ways, they would kill three birds with one stone:

1 - They could get rid for good of a criminal.

2- They would entertain the masses. Executions were public and the good christians found them very entertaining they even brought their children to see them. It was like TV, in a way. Truly reality TV even!

3- Seeing people who did something die in such horrible ways would discourage the good christians from doing the same thing themselves.

It's so christian, to watch sinners die in horrible ways and enjoy yourself in the process, isn't it? Jasmine must have been transported to modern times with a time machine.

I don't need to tell you the endless list of tortures that they invented back then, do I? Plus you can always google that up if you're really interested.

Also for minor offenses, the penalty was mutilation. For example foot crushing. They would put your foot in a vice and crush it slowly so that people could watch you cry for mercy and when it was over they'd let you go.


Another thing was entertainment. Christians liked to be entertained by deformed people... Freaks in a word. So what would they do? They would either abduct children or buy them from really poor families and then they would mutilate them, not gratuitously mind you, they would do it to make them... entertaining. How? Well, the most common way was to force them into dwarfism by putting them in a rigid frame and leave them there long enough to stunt their growth. You see, christians loved to see little people move around and do funny things, so this was a big seller.

Victor Hugo, for those of you who've heard of him, tells the story of a man who as a kid was mutilated so that his face would constantly seem to be laughing. It's called appropriately "The Man Who laughs." He was used as a child and a young grown up to entertain people with his "laughing face". 

Ah those christians, so creative, so merciful...