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"Tied to a corpse"


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I seem to remember from somewhere a horrible custom or practice, if someone kills someone else, the corpse is strapped to the murderer and he can't get free of it--and eventually he goes crazy or something. Maybe on some explorer's ship? I can't seem to find a reference to this, but I know I saw it somewhere. Does anyone recognize this?

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http://home.iprimus.com.au/buckomp/BriefHistAustralianMilLaw.htm

 

The harshness of military discipline in the Middle Ages is illustrated by reference to the Ordnances of King Richard I of England. For example, "whoever shall commit murder aboard ship shall be tied to the corpse and thrown into the sea: if ... on land ... tied to the corpse and buried alive or ... if a robber be convicted, boiling pitch shall be poured over his head and a shower of feathers be shaken over to mark him, and he shall be cast ashore".

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http://home.iprimus.com.au/buckomp/BriefHistAustralianMilLaw.htm

 

The harshness of military discipline in the Middle Ages is illustrated by reference to the Ordnances of King Richard I of England. For example, "whoever shall commit murder aboard ship shall be tied to the corpse and thrown into the sea: if ... on land ... tied to the corpse and buried alive or ... if a robber be convicted, boiling pitch shall be poured over his head and a shower of feathers be shaken over to mark him, and he shall be cast ashore".

 

I had envisioned that the person would die slowly as the maggots and infection spread to him. I'm not sure what is worse.

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and used it in a church teaching I gave. Here's a link:

http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Body%20Of%20Death

 

In the Bible, Paul ends Romans 7:18-19 by saying, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" Bible scholars have differing stances on that term, body of death, but there is a possibility that Paul was giving a visual example of how God views sin and compels his readers to view it the same. The ancients had a particularly cruel method of capital punishment that the Israelites would have been familiar with (although they did not use this method). A condemned criminal would have a corpse, not yet fully decomposed, chained to his own body, allowing the disease process to infect and eventually kill him. Here's the spiritual application: If we would see sin as a rotting corpse we're dragging around, we'd be more likely to ask God for the key to unchain it. Paul offers the key: "Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

 

May be more than you asked for, but I spent hours researching this last year and am happy to get to pull it out and revisit it...ok...maybe happy isn't the right word considering it's about corpses....:lol:

 

Blessings,

Julie

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