For centuries, Europe was a place where the spectrum of torture was extremely wide. But the executioners of the Old Continent had competition in China - because of lingchi.
Circle breaking, impaled, bloody eagle. Yes, Europeans were adept at causing suffering and inventing fanciful methods of inflicting death. Francois Ravaillac, the killer of King Henry IV of France Bourbon, might have known something about it. Before he gave up his ghost, his right hand was burned to charcoal, his body was torn with red-hot tongs, and the skin was peeled alive from his arms, legs, and chest . After soaking in boiling oil and pouring molten lead into the navel, the kingkiller was finally ripped apart by the horses.
With all its cruelty, these tortures were so merciful that it lasted only about 30 minutes. At the other end of the world, in China, one particular type of execution could take up to several days . Tortured for hours in unimaginable suffering, he waited for the gracious coming of death. This punishment had many names. Some called it "hovering death" , others "death by a thousand cuts." But her real name is lingchi .
Philosophy of death
Compared to Europeans, the Chinese had a fairly modest palette of legally prescribed methods of inflicting death. The type of execution used, of course, depended on the seriousness of the crime committed by the accused. The mildest form of the death penalty was strangulation by hanging . A level higher was decapitation, that is, the traditional beheading. They were sometimes associated with the exposure of the severed body part to the public.
Lingchi was reserved for the worst of criminals. Since Chinese law did not provide any specific instructions for carrying out executions, the act of lingchi varied from region to region . In its simplicity, however, it was an extremely cruel way of inflicting death. The convict was tied with straps to the pillory and parts of his body were systematically cut off with a sharp knife . The Lingchi could last for hours, even days. By the end, the condemned person might not look like a human at all. In terrible agony, he was balancing between life and death.
Lingchi was reserved for the worst of criminals.
According to the Chinese chronicles, the longest-tortured convicts subjected to this sentence was the eunuch Liu Jin hated by the imperial court . The execution, carried out in 1510 , was to last two days. Liu Jin gave up his ghost after making 3,000 cuts!
Kat usually started with the chest. The breast and surrounding muscles were methodically removed until bare ribs were visible. Then it went to the arms and thighs. Subsequent portions of the body were cut off from them. The rest of the execution depended on the executioner's personal creativity. On the one hand, he tried to inflict as much pain on the victim as possible, and on the other hand, he had to keep her alive as long as possible.
That's what Emperor Hongwu said
Literally translated lingchi means "death free like ice" (ling - ice, chi - delay, be late). The exact date on which the penalty was included among the official forms of enforcement is unknown. Most likely it happened during the reign of the Song dynasty (960–1279).
In the first centuries of existence, lingchi was used quite sporadically, and the execution had to be personally approved by the emperor. Everything changed during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) . At that time, this torture had its renaissance in China. It was used more than ever. The person who made lingchi exceptionally "popular" in China was Hongwu - the first Ming Emperor .
The person who made lingchi exceptionally "popular" in China was Hongwu, the first Ming emperor.
Interestingly, in the first years of his rule, this ruler was a supporter of the relaxation of the corporal punishment system. In his naivety he believed that:“ Controlling people is like controlling water. You have to follow their nature. By nature all people value life and hate death so the way to nurture them is to reduce penalties and suspend war. However, life quickly verified the ruler's pacifist views. Conspiracies in the Chinese court, which threatened the position of the emperor himself, caused Hongwu to make a shift in his thinking. He made lingchi used more and more often. While previously "death by a thousand cuts" was reserved only for the worst criminals, during the Ming Dynasty lingchi was used even for trivial crimes such as bribery.
Paradise Lost
For many inmates, it was non-physical suffering that was the worst of lingchi. Dismemberment and shredding into pieces closed the chance of life after death for the killed. Why the act of lingchi had such serious religious consequences, we learn, inter alia, with the so-called Jade Registry.
This 19th-century Chinese book of moralizing describes the complicated rules for evaluating the life of the deceased in the afterlife. Attached to it is an attachment called "Sixteen Punishments of the World of Light" contained a list of types of corporal punishment that could be used in China at that time . Interestingly, the worst kind of death according to the Jade Registry was the complete annihilation of the human body , his crushing and losing his physical form. However, such extreme executions have never been used. Only the next lingchi on the list was the ultimate and actually practiced method of administering justice.
Lingchi was a punishment that killed not only the body but also the soul.
The gradation of the severity of corporal punishment in this case was dictated not so much by the physical suffering of the convict, but primarily by religious consequences. The destruction of the human body in both the Buddhist and Confucian traditions blocked the soul's path to the afterlife. For both of these religions, it was extremely important in what condition the deceased was laid to the grave. The loss of physical integrity meant that man was deprived of the chance of rebirth (Buddhism) or eternal life in the afterlife (Confucianism). Lingchi was therefore a punishment that killed not only the body but also the soul.
Barbarian Far East
The nearly 1,000-year history of the use of lingchi in China ended in 1905. The last legally sanctioned execution of this type was carried out at that time . The last decades of the use of lingchi were also the time when this punishment was the most controversial. Except during the Ming Dynasty, "death by a thousand cuts" was not universal torture.
In the nineteenth century, however, incidental acts of lingchi became for Europeans evidence of the barbaric nature of the inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom . The political and economic penetration of China by European powers and the resulting tensions and armed conflicts (opium wars, the boxer uprising) made the image of the Chinese in the west extremely negative. Descriptions of the cruel acts of lingchi and photos of the massacred corpse were other arguments that confirmed this image. In their moral judgments, however, the Germans, the French and the English forgot that two hundred years earlier they had torn their convicts with horses themselves.
Bibliography:
- Brook, Bourgon, Blue, Death by a Thousand Cuts , London 2008.
- Donelly, The Big Book of Pain:Torture &Punishment Through History , Cheltenham 2012.
- Innes, The History of Torture , London 2017.
- Kuroski, Lingchi May Be The Most Terrifying Punishment In History , (accessed on:29/03/2022).