{"id":478,"date":"2005-08-03T17:18:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-03T17:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=478"},"modified":"2005-08-03T17:18:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-03T17:18:00","slug":"478","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=478","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

“Witches” who were about to die<\/strong><\/p>\n

The walls of a dungeon in Palermo, Sicily, have yielded grafitti left by condemned prisoners in the 17th and 18th centuries. Some of the prisoners would have been condemned for sorcery, says this account<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anyone dragged [to that dungeon] was unlikely to emerge alive as the Inquisition was notoriously ruthless with suspected heretics, soothsayers, blasphemers and friends of the Devil. “In fact, many of the victims were simply intellectuals or artists whom the Church considered a threat to its power,” explained the head of restorers, Domenico Policarpi<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Indeed, the average Sicilian back then was probably illiterate and incapable of writing anything much on prison walls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Witches” who were about to die The walls of a dungeon in Palermo, Sicily, have yielded grafitti left by condemned prisoners in the 17th and 18th centuries. Some of the prisoners would have been condemned for sorcery, says this account. Anyone dragged [to that dungeon] was unlikely to emerge alive as the Inquisition was notoriously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-478","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":975,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=975","url_meta":{"origin":478,"position":0},"title":"Review: Apocalypto","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Not one to rush into things, I finally watched Mel Gibson's slightly a-historical movie of Mayan imperial collapse, Apocalypto, a gory but amazing adventure story.My father was a big fan of historian Will Durant, so I got the impact of the Durant epigram about the fall of empires at the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12617,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12617","url_meta":{"origin":478,"position":1},"title":"“W\u00e6lcyrge or Witchcraft: Identifying Heathendom in late Anglo-Danish England”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 10, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"? Just one of many presentations from the just-finished online conference\u00a0 Performing Magic in the pre-Modern North. Here, Ross Downing deals with such issues as whether witchcraft and Heathenry were defined differently in the time of King Alfred the Great in the late 9th century, including details as the execution\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Anglo-Saxon England\"","block_context":{"text":"Anglo-Saxon England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=anglo-saxon-england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9978,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9978","url_meta":{"origin":478,"position":2},"title":"Sherlock Meets Poe? Sherlock Meets Lovecraft?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 23, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I am reading one of the Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child \"Agent Prendergast\" mysteries right now ,Crimson Shore. Pendergast is a New Orleans-raised rich eccentric (New York mansion, manservant) with a twenty-something assistant\/ward, Constance, possessed of \"an old-fashioned beauty.\" He has FBI credentials, but apparently answers to no one in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Salem\"","block_context":{"text":"Salem","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=salem"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=am2&o=1&a=1455525944","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2736,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2736","url_meta":{"origin":478,"position":3},"title":"Lawyers Comment on the Pagan Prison Chaplain Case","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Of all the discussions of the prisoner \"free exercise of religion\" issue that produced a lawsuit brought by California volunteer Pagan prison chaplain Patrick McCollum, I recommend that you read\u00a0 Wiccan lawyer Hecate Demetersdatter's explanation. The appeals court has not decided on the rightness or wrongness of the basic question,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":629,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=629","url_meta":{"origin":478,"position":4},"title":"Writing on wallsI briefly considered\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Writing on wallsI briefly considered live-blogging the \"Wiccan\" episode of Wife Swap. But if I did, it would be all \"'What a jerk,' M. muttered\" and \"'Oh! My! God!' M. shrieked.\"So I'll leave that to others. But I predict a new meme: instead of Wiccans sacrificing goats, it will be\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1700,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1700","url_meta":{"origin":478,"position":5},"title":"The ‘Old Religion’ of Pendle Hill","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"In the early 17th century, a condemned witch goes to the gallows, saying under her breath an incantation of the Old Religion. Only the incantation invokes the Virgin Mary, Ave, Regina Caelorum, and the old religion is Roman Catholicism, made virtually synonymous with treason during the reigns of Edward VI,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}