Royal Blinding

Moderator: MOD_nyhetsgrupper

Svar
Wanda Thacker

Royal Blinding

Legg inn av Wanda Thacker » 16 des 2007 00:16:03

Is anyone on the list aware of the reason that Medieval rulers blinded their relatives who had tried to overthrow them or who they themselves had overthrown?

I wonder if the punishment was symbolic. Maybe meaning if you could not see, you could not lead.

Wouldn't it have just been more efficient to execute them? Some people who were blinded died anyway.

Wanda Thacker



Use what talents you possess; the woods would be verysilent if no birds sang except those that sang best.
- Henry Van Dyke, 1852 - 1933




Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel asfree to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?
- Rose FitzgeraldKennedy, 1890 - 1995




Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feelsbending beneath her, still she sings away all the same,knowing she has wings.
- Victor Hugo, 1802 - 1885


My Scrap Journaling Blog: http://lascorpia64.wordpress.com/ Check it out for journaling prompts RECENTLY UPDATED, A LOT OF QUOTES
MY LAYOUT BLOG http://introspectivescrapping.blogspot.com/
http://wandasscrappingfreebies.blogspot.com/
POLITICAL OPINIONShttp://www.myspace.com/politica ... rrectrants

D. Spencer Hines

Re: Royal Blinding

Legg inn av D. Spencer Hines » 16 des 2007 00:27:36

Sending A Signal To Others...

Among Other Reasons.

DSH

"Wanda Thacker" <wanda_t36@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.802.1197760455.4586.gen-medieval@rootsweb.com...

Is anyone on the list aware of the reason that Medieval rulers blinded
their relatives who had tried to overthrow them or who they themselves had
overthrown?

I wonder if the punishment was symbolic. Maybe meaning if you could not
see, you could not lead.

Wouldn't it have just been more efficient to execute them? Some people
who were blinded died anyway.

Wanda Thacker

Gjest

Re: Royal Blinding

Legg inn av Gjest » 16 des 2007 00:35:05

On Dec 15, 3:13 pm, Wanda Thacker <wanda_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Is anyone on the list aware of the reason that Medieval rulers blinded their relatives who had tried to overthrow them or who they themselves had overthrown?

I wonder if the punishment was symbolic. Maybe meaning if you could not see, you could not lead.

Wouldn't it have just been more efficient to execute them? Some people who were blinded died anyway.

Killing someone of the royal blood is a bad precedent for a king to
set. Blinding was considered more humane and just as effective in
removing the competition, and if the person died anyhow, then that
must have been God's will.

taf

Peter Stewart

Re: Royal Blinding

Legg inn av Peter Stewart » 16 des 2007 00:42:37

"Wanda Thacker" <wanda_t36@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.802.1197760455.4586.gen-medieval@rootsweb.com...
Is anyone on the list aware of the reason that Medieval rulers
blinded their relatives who had tried to overthrow them or who
they themselves had overthrown?

I wonder if the punishment was symbolic. Maybe meaning if you
could not see, you could not lead.

Wouldn't it have just been more efficient to execute them? Some
people who were blinded died anyway.

There is a commandment against killing, but not against blinding.

For a useful discussion of this subject, see Geneviève Bührer-Thierry's
'Just Anger' or 'Vengeful Anger'? The Punishment of Blinding in the Early
Medieval West, in _Anger's Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle
Ages_, edited by Barbara Rosenwein (Ithaca & London, 1998).

Peter Stewart

Nathaniel Taylor

Re: Royal Blinding

Legg inn av Nathaniel Taylor » 16 des 2007 00:56:40

In article <mailman.802.1197760455.4586.gen-medieval@rootsweb.com>,
Wanda Thacker <wanda_t36@yahoo.com> wrote:

Is anyone on the list aware of the reason that Medieval rulers blinded their
relatives who had tried to overthrow them or who they themselves had
overthrown?

I wonder if the punishment was symbolic. Maybe meaning if you could not see,
you could not lead.

Wouldn't it have just been more efficient to execute them? Some people who
were blinded died anyway.

Yes, and their dying was often criticized as a failure on the part of
the person who blinded them. On 15 April 818 Louis the Pious had his
nephew Bernard, King of Italy, blinded, following Bernard's unsuccessful
rebellion against the 817 division (ordinatio imperii) which effectively
disinherited him. The job was botched and Bernard died two days later
(either from infection, or from suicide--as the Astonomer suggests).
Blinding was a Byzantine tradition for putting rivals out of the way
(blinding them would render them unfit to rule according to tradition)
without actually killing them (which would have been an unpardonable
sin). This happened a few times in the Carolingian dynasty.

Christian Settipani's account, in _La prehistoire des Capetiens_, p.
213, cites the Astronomer and a couple other near-contemporary sources
on this, as well as a 1990 article by Karl Ferdinand Werner on Louis the
Pious.

Nat Taylor
http://www.nltaylor.net

Peter Stewart

Re: Royal Blinding

Legg inn av Peter Stewart » 16 des 2007 01:48:53

"Nathaniel Taylor" <nltaylor@nltaylor.net> wrote in message
news:nltaylor-CF23F7.18564015122007@earthlink.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net...
In article <mailman.802.1197760455.4586.gen-medieval@rootsweb.com>,
Wanda Thacker <wanda_t36@yahoo.com> wrote:

Is anyone on the list aware of the reason that Medieval rulers blinded
their
relatives who had tried to overthrow them or who they themselves had
overthrown?

I wonder if the punishment was symbolic. Maybe meaning if you could not
see,
you could not lead.

Wouldn't it have just been more efficient to execute them? Some people
who
were blinded died anyway.

Yes, and their dying was often criticized as a failure on the part of
the person who blinded them.

The blinding itself on the other hand was not considered as a success of the
perpetrator, in the West or in the Byzantine empire, but at best as an evil
necessity.

A famous example is that of Romanos IV Diogenes in 1072. He was sent to a
monastery after his eyes were gouged out in the interests, if not at the
behest, of his step-son Michael VII (Parapinakis) Doukas. The victim died
just over a month after his mutilation, but this was criticised by
Atteleiates as a wicked deed quite apart from the consequence.

One of the likely instigators, Michael Psellos, wrote a letter to Romanos
rhetorically questioning whether to mourn his fate or hail him as a martyr,
concluding that his sight would be restored and his eyes would be kissed in
heaven. Of course even that can't have been a perfect consolation, when he
didn't know how very soon this would happen.

Peter Stewart

Hickory

Re: Royal Blinding

Legg inn av Hickory » 16 des 2007 02:36:02

To the best of my memory, blinding was supposed to render an
individual handicapped and, therefore, less than a man, which was
assumed to more or less automatically make it impossible for such an
individual to be considered as a candidate for future kingship. Kings,
being anointed to God and, spiritually speaking, sacrificed to God to
serve his will, were, by analogy with Biblical passages concerning
sacrificial animals, to be both spotless and whole. Byzantine rulers,
by the way, often took things one step further, by having troublesome
male relatives castrated, thus both making them incapable of being
considered for future kingship and also incapable of secretly
producing children capable of successfully seizing the throne later.
Hikaru

Peter Stewart

Re: Royal Blinding

Legg inn av Peter Stewart » 16 des 2007 02:48:27

"Hickory" <hkitabayashi@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:e261bae0-2d86-467b-a123-8b018d57c89a@q3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
To the best of my memory, blinding was supposed to render an
individual handicapped and, therefore, less than a man, which was
assumed to more or less automatically make it impossible for such an
individual to be considered as a candidate for future kingship. Kings,
being anointed to God and, spiritually speaking, sacrificed to God to
serve his will, were, by analogy with Biblical passages concerning
sacrificial animals, to be both spotless and whole. Byzantine rulers,
by the way, often took things one step further, by having troublesome
male relatives castrated, thus both making them incapable of being
considered for future kingship and also incapable of secretly
producing children capable of successfully seizing the throne later.

So why were men who were naturally blind or impotent, or for that matter
leprous or disfigured - presumably from acts of God - not considered to be
ineligible for kingship?

Peter Stewart

CE Wood

Re: Royal Blinding

Legg inn av CE Wood » 16 des 2007 07:45:02

They certainly were ineligible in Celtic kingdoms. Being born lame or
with a club foot kept several from kingship.

CE Wood

On Dec 15, 5:48 pm, "Peter Stewart" <p_m_stew...@msn.com> wrote:
"Hickory" <hkitabaya...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:e261bae0-2d86-467b-a123-8b018d57c89a@q3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...

To the best of my memory, blinding was supposed to render an
individual handicapped and, therefore, less than a man, which was
assumed to more or less automatically make it impossible for such an
individual to be considered as a candidate for future kingship. Kings,
being anointed to God and, spiritually speaking, sacrificed to God to
serve his will, were, by analogy with Biblical passages concerning
sacrificial animals, to be both spotless and whole. Byzantine rulers,
by the way, often took things one step further, by having troublesome
male relatives castrated, thus both making them incapable of being
considered for future kingship and also incapable of secretly
producing children capable of successfully seizing the throne later.

So why were men who were naturally blind or impotent, or for that matter
leprous or disfigured - presumably from acts of God - not considered to be
ineligible for kingship?

Peter Stewart

Hickory

Re: Royal Blinding

Legg inn av Hickory » 16 des 2007 12:20:04

What was important in medieval society was ritual wholeness of body
and the not capacity to complete the sex act, something which was
deprecated by medieval Christianity, being a religion which valued
virginity not only in women but in men, too. I only remember two
medieval examples of lepers being kings, one of the crusader kings of
Jerusalem who became king as a small child and Robert I of Scotland in
his old age. In both cases, they became lepers after becoming kings
and neither became a king after becoming a leper. No castrated
individual that I can remember ever became a king in Europe during
Christian times, though examples of reaching high state office exist,
and one example in the early modern period of becoming head of state
exists in what is now Iran. As for the blind, the only case I am aware
of where someone blind from birth became a king in Europe was in that
of one of the 19th century kings of Hanover. A small number of blind
individuals can be shown to have become medieval heads of state after
having become, for one reason or another, blind after having passed
through childhood. One can assume that in such cases their blindness
did not result in the dissolution of their pre-existing power bases
which, over the course of history, has been a good thing, as each
successful assertion of power by a such a person has, in its own way,
helped to very slowly overcome the extremely strong prejudice that
existed almost universally in traditional European societies against
the physically handicapped. I truly wish there were more exceptions to
the rule than one can easily find and that, for the sake of the
handicapped, they had left more of an impression on history.

Peter Stewart

Re: Royal Blinding

Legg inn av Peter Stewart » 16 des 2007 13:08:04

"Hickory" <hkitabayashi@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:054fc1f6-d124-429b-8aab-8b68cc8c6082@l32g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
What was important in medieval society was ritual wholeness of body
and the not capacity to complete the sex act, something which was
deprecated by medieval Christianity, being a religion which valued
virginity not only in women but in men, too. I only remember two
medieval examples of lepers being kings, one of the crusader kings of
Jerusalem who became king as a small child and Robert I of Scotland in
his old age. In both cases, they became lepers after becoming kings
and neither became a king after becoming a leper. No castrated
individual that I can remember ever became a king in Europe during
Christian times, though examples of reaching high state office exist,
and one example in the early modern period of becoming head of state
exists in what is now Iran. As for the blind, the only case I am aware
of where someone blind from birth became a king in Europe was in that
of one of the 19th century kings of Hanover. A small number of blind
individuals can be shown to have become medieval heads of state after
having become, for one reason or another, blind after having passed
through childhood. One can assume that in such cases their blindness
did not result in the dissolution of their pre-existing power bases
which, over the course of history, has been a good thing, as each
successful assertion of power by a such a person has, in its own way,
helped to very slowly overcome the extremely strong prejudice that
existed almost universally in traditional European societies against
the physically handicapped. I truly wish there were more exceptions to
the rule than one can easily find and that, for the sake of the
handicapped, they had left more of an impression on history.

You don't appear to have understood the point of my question. Perhaps it
would be a more convincing argument if you can offer specific cases of men
who were actually barred from kingship due to physical deficiencies, whether
congenital or however these were acquired, as well as explaining the reasons
for others who were not disqualified in the same way.

Romanos IV Diogenes was one of numerous examples of a person who was already
a monarch before being blinded. You claimed this was done to "make it
impossible for such an individual to be considered as a candidate for future
kingship", yet now you say that continuing on the throne was in fact
acceptable despite physical imperfection - so presumably it was also
possible to go on reigning after having the eyes gouged out.

This indeed is what occurred in a few cases of deliberate blinding, that
obviously could be done by enemies who later fail as well as by those who
succeed as usurpers - so why bother to do it in the first place, if this was
not always followed by the effect you assert, of the person being somehow
too degraded in nature for anointing, when this had already taken place - as
sacraments are held to be - once and for all?

And precisely why blinding "to render an individual handicapped", rather
than, say, cutting off the hands, the feet or the tongue?

By the way, you are wrong about Balduin IV of Jerusalem: he was already
known to be a leper when he succeeded his father in 1174.

Peter Stewart

Hovite

Re: Royal Blinding

Legg inn av Hovite » 16 des 2007 16:52:02

On Dec 16, 11:18 am, Hickory <hkitabaya...@gmail.com> wrote:

As for the blind, the only case I am aware
of where someone blind from birth became a king in Europe was in that
of one of the 19th century kings of Hanover.

George V was not blind from birth, but became blind as a child.

His kingdom was taken from him by Prussia in 1866.

Svar

Gå tilbake til «soc.genealogy.medieval»