Posthumous execution

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Posthumous execution is the ritual execution of an already dead body.

Examples include:

• Leonidas of Sparta, who was beheaded and crucified following his death in battle of Thermopylae.
• Li Linfu, Chancellor of Tang China during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong (712-756) in the latter years, and whose body was exhumed and executed for crimes of high treason by his rival Yang Guozhong, for his implication in the An Lushan Rebellion.
• Pope Formosus was put on trial and executed almost a year after he died.
• John Wycliffe (1328–1384), who was burned as a heretic 45 years after he died.
• Vlad the Impaler (1431–1476), who was beheaded following his assassination.
• King Richard III of England (1452–1485), who was hanged by his successor King Henry VII following his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field. His body was further desecrated following the Dissolution of the Monasteries and, according to legend, thrown into the River Soar.
• Pietro Martire Vermigli (1500–1562), who was burned as a heretic following his death.
• A number of the regicides of Charles I of England had died before the Restoration of King Charles II. Parliament passed an order of attainder for High Treason on the four most prominent deceased regicides: John Bradshaw the court president, Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and Thomas Pride. The bodies were exhumed and the first three were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. The most prominent was the former Lord Protector Cromwell, whose body - after said "punishment" - was thrown, minus its head, into a common pit. The head was finally buried in 1960. The body of Pride was not "punished" perhaps because it had decayed too much. Of the regicides still alive then, some were executed and others either fled or were imprisoned. For a full list see List of regicides of Charles I.
• The body of Rasputin, the Russian monk, was exhumed from the ground by a mob and burned with gasoline.
• General Gracia Jacques, a supporter of François Duvalier ("Papa Doc") (1907–1971), Haitian dictator, whose body was exhumed and ritually beaten to 'death' in 1986.
• Nils Dacke, leader of a 16th century peasant revolt in southern Sweden.

In Christian countries until relatively recently, it was believed that to rise on judgement day the body had to be whole and preferably buried with the feet to the east so that the person would rise facing God. A Parliamentary Act from the reign of King Henry VIII stipulated that only the corpses of executed murderers could be used for dissection. Restricting the supply to the cadavers of murderers was seen as an extra punishment for the crime. It follows that if one believes dismemberment stopped the possibility of resurrection on judgement day, then a posthumous execution is an effective way of punishing a criminal. Attitudes towards this issue changed very slowly in the United Kingdom and were not manifested in law until the passing of the Anatomy Act in 1832. However for many of the British population it was not until the twentieth century that the link between the body and resurrection was finally broken as cremation was only made legal in 1902. Respect for the bodies of the dead is still a sensitive issue in the United Kingdom as can be seen by the furore over the Alder Hey organs scandal when the organs of children were kept without parents' informed consent.

Notes

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Last updated on Thursday March 13, 2008 at 20:54:00 PDT (GMT -0700)
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