Pain and Torture used for Healing?
In a strange way, every human is connected by pain. We all avoid because, for lack of a better word, it's painful. However, before I read Constance Classen's The Deepest Sense, I was not truly aware of how the Church used pain as a form of reforment during the Middle Ages.
I was already aware that torture was a part of the judicial system in the Middle Ages, but I simply thought it was because those accused of crimes needed to be made examples of. I never knew that someone's conviction in court could easily change while being tortured. But more often than not, torture was used before execution as to strengthen the collective social body and seperate the deeds of the offender.
Such was the case for the Spanish Inquistion. On a seperate but similar note, upon reading Classen's section on torture, I was reminded of a scene from Mel Brook's History of the World Part 1, in which the horrorific and brutul treatment of the jews was portrayed as a light-hearted broadway show performance.
The purpose of the musical skit is to really showcase the pain and suffering from the Jews (being locked in stockades, hanging from walls, and burns from a red hot poker) for what the Inquisition claimed was holy righteousness. But that being said, I never would have expected to find any sort of logic or reasoning behind medieval torture, but I somewhat understand it when looked at through the "pain perspective".
BTW, the Inquisition Song is my favorite part of Mel Brooks' History of the World Part 1. But then again, making fun of pain and gallows humor is an important part of my Jewish tradition's effort to cope with trauma. That said, I agree with you that Classen (and I think Glucklich as well) does a great job of making us aware of the different "logics" of inflicting and experiencing pain that we're not used to thinking about. I wonder how much the medieval idea of torture you mention to separate the physical body culpable for the sins it did from the salvageable (i.e., "save-able") soul is at play, or if there's also some sense for those religious people inflicting pain on themselves through hairshirts, flagellation, and extreme fasting of seeking to feel something, anything, even pain, intensely. That seems to me to be a more modern reason why modern people willing subject themselves to pain, whether it's to see a disturbing and painful movie or play performed, or to engage in extreme, body-punishing athletic or other physical activities. (marathons, ballet, even BDSM, etc.).
ReplyDeleteThat is a very interesting point JBK. Last semester in my psychological anthropology class we discussed the infliction of pain on oneself for religious purposes (through Glucklich's work), as a way to show appreciation and repayment to gods for the gifts they granted. People would promise to repay the gods by walking on hot coals, and hanging by nails ect. They saw it as entertainment and sacrifice for the gods through exercising their human qualities.
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