Abstract
Drawing on recent research, this chapter argues that the violence of Roman crucifixion is only fully appreciated when the commonly ignored aspects of sexual violence are acknowledged. Seen in this fuller perspective, Roman crucifixion might be viewed in terms of four interrelated enactments of intolerance: an intolerance for the victim’s life; an intolerance for the victim’s dignity and humanity; an intolerance of memories of the victim; an intolerance for the victim’s standing before God. The final section of the chapter considers why the understanding of the cross in lived religion is distorted and sanitised to avoid any link to sexual violence. It suggests there should be a much wider debate on how the violence of the cross might be more appropriately recognized and remembered in lived Christianity, which might serve towards greater action and advocacy against all forms of violence and social intolerance.
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Notes
- 1.
Northern Ireland is a divided society with two historically opposed communities, which are politically committed to Irish Nationalism and British Unionism respectively. Unionists identify themselves as British and are committed to the continued union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain within the United Kingdom, rather than a united Ireland. During the 400 years of British settlement and rule in Ireland, political allegiances and ethnic identities became closely entwined with religious traditions. British Unionism was historically linked to Protestantism and Irish Nationalism to Catholicism. In the same way that the term ‘Republican’ came to be used for Irish Nationalists who accepted the legitimacy of armed struggle, the term ‘Loyalist’ typically refers to a militant Unionist who affirms staunch loyalty to the British crown, and Loyalist paramilitary groups were willing to take up arms to preserve the Union. During ‘the Troubles’ (1969–1998) Loyalist paramilitaries explained their existence and justified their actions as the defence of Protestant communities against attacks from the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). However, in practice, Catholic civilians presented a much softer sectarian target than the IRA. On the dynamics of conflict in Northern Ireland, see Ruane and Todd (1996).
- 2.
‘Joy-riding’ is a common term used when cars are stolen to be driven for entertainment and excitement, often by youths at night. The cars are then abandoned, but only after they have often suffered significant damage, and in some cases after being involved in crashes. ‘Knee-capping’ was a form of punishment favoured by paramilitaries, and was carried out with bars, hammers, or baseball bats, or with a bullet to the knee. Knee-cappings were used as a form of severe punishment. They were not intended to be fatal, but would be extremely painful and when done with a bullet they often left their victims with a permanent limp. After the peace process put political pressure on paramilitaries to decommission their guns, there were reports of knee-cappings being carried out with electrical drills from behind the knee.
- 3.
The UFF (Ulster Freedom Fighters) were a loyalist paramilitary group.
- 4.
In June 2001 major violence had flared at the Glenbryn–Ardoyne interface area of north Belfast when Loyalists blocked access to the Holy Cross Catholic primary school. The dispute attracted worldwide attention and lasted until nearly Christmas. In June 2002 the focus of attention shifted to the loyalist Cluan Place and nationalist Clandeboye Drive in Short Strand, East Belfast. Even with a 30 foot high ‘peace wall’ between the roads, violent incidents at the East Belfast interface continued to be reported on an almost daily basis through early November 2002.
- 5.
The iconography of Christ-like suffering sometimes gave rise to very powerful images during the Troubles, especially in the Catholic community. For example, images of bearded and long-haired Republican prisoners wrapped only in a blanket were seen by some Catholics as a reminder of Christ’s suffering. It is possible that hostility to this association might have influenced the nature of the attack on McCartan. Likewise, the reported crucifixion of Armenian girls by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 might reflect an intentionally sectarian form of execution in a religiously divided society. Muslims recognise Jesus as a prophet in Islam, but do not believe he was crucified. The use of crucifixion against the girls may therefore have been seen as an apt form of death, which parodied the Christian belief in crucifixion.
- 6.
I suspect that McCartan’s father is right, but for the purposes of this chapter will have to leave that question on one side. On the role of sectarianism in the confict in Northern Ireland, see Joseph Liechty and Ceclia Clegg (2001). Liechty and Clegg note that there is no commonly accepted defintion of the term sectarian, and that Catholic and Protestants will often disagree as to whether an act is sectarian.
- 7.
Other examples of recent crucifixion, which might have been examined for this purpose, include the reports of crucifiixon of Armenian girls in 1915 mentioned above. Dating from the same period, there is also a report of a Canadian soldier being crucified by the Germans in Belgium in 1915. More recent instances include accounts of Guatemalan women being crucified during the counter-insurgency wars of the 1980s, and crucifixion of the men by Islamic State or IS (formerly Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS) in 2014. Each one of these examples has its own distinctive features and merits careful attention. Sensationalist media headlines rarely address the similiarities and differences in these crucifixions. For example, the IS did not normally use crucifixions to execute, but to display the corpse of a victim who had already been hanged. Alternatively, IS might use a crucifixion device to punish and publicly display a live victim, but stopped short of killing him. As regards a sexual dimension to Roman crucifixions discussed below, IS crucifixions (in which all the known victims so far have been men) did not involve enforced nudity or sexual violations. By contrast, the crucifixions in Armenia and Guatemala involved extreme penetrative violation of girls and women.
- 8.
Presenting crucifixion in terms of intolerance promotes connections between crucifixion and the forms of intolerance discussed in other chapters in this volume. It would also be appropriate to develop a more detailed analysis of crucifixion in terms of contempt, humiliation, and degradation, but these will only be touched on indirectly in what follows.
- 9.
Whilst crucifixions were primarily directed at those that the Romans considered as ‘other’ and inevitably lesser to themselves, crucifixions might also have served as an indirect warning to Roman citizens and soldiers as well, as examples of what they should expect if they defied the power of the State. As a general rule, Roman citizens were not subjected to the shame of crucifixions, but under the Empire, the scope of crucifixion was extended more widely than during the Republic. It could be used as punishment for treason, or for soldiers who deserted, or for other serious offences committed by lower classes.
- 10.
Roman practice was more extreme and far more degrading than the suffering of devotees in some Catholic countries, especially the Philippines, who voluntarily submit themselves to a mock form of crucifixion on Good Friday. These crucifixions, which involve being tied or nailed to crosses and suspended, can be extremely painful but are not intended to be fatal.
- 11.
On the historical evidence and writings, see especially Martin Hengel’s authoritiative 1977 work. This has recently been updated and supplemented by an even more comprehensive survey of ancient writings by John Granger Cook (2014). Other recent significant scholarly studies include David W. Chapman (2008) and Gunnar Samuelson (2011).
- 12.
There is debate on whether crucifixion was a punishment that was exclusively reserved for men, but there appear to be at least some reports of women being crucified. Josephus mentions the crucifixion of a freed woman in Rome (Ide), who collaborated with Priests of Isis to deceive a woman of the equestrian order (Paulina). Tiberius had Ide and the Priests crucified and the Temple of Isis destroyed; see Josephus, Antiquities 18.79–80. Josephus reports this immediately after his well-known passage on the life of Jesus, whom Pilate condemned to the cross and who gave his name to ‘the tribe of Christians’ (Josephus, Antiquities, 18.65–66). The common assumption that most victims of crucifixion were men is probably correct, though the absence of definitive records leaves room for some uncertainty. If women were also crucified, it is quite possible that the number of women who suffered in this way has been dramatically underestimated.
- 13.
This investigation takes up and elaborates the main lines of my 1999 article.
- 14.
- 15.
It is evidence of the stigma around sexual violence and the degree to which the understanding of the cross has been sanitised and distorted over nearly 2000 years of Christian history that the strong and explicit links between crucifixion and sexual violence have not been recognised or addressed in either lived religion or in academic scholarship. There is no discussion of sexual violence in Hengel’s work, and even the recent and informative studies by Chapman, Samuelson, and Cook (noted above) are silent on it.
- 16.
Despite an extraordinary amount of material that has been published since the 1990s on the clerical sexual abuse scandal, and the suffering of clerical abuse victims, the significance of Jesus as a victim of sexual abuse and whether this might be helpful or not to other victims of sexual abuse still has barely been explored. An important exception to this is the recent book by the Australian priest Michael Trainor (2014).
- 17.
Hengel offers no comment on whether the impalement of genitals might have been widespread, and what it might suggest about other forms of sexual abuse as part of crucifixion.
- 18.
On the continuing relative invisibility of male victims of sexual violence in contemporary conflicts, see Apperley (2015).
- 19.
Whilst it is not possible to do justice to Raphael’s full argument, it should be noted that it relates these experiences to the wider debate in post-Holocaust theology on the presence or absence of God at Auschwitz, and discussions of God’s hiddenness. Raphael suggests that the question ‘Where was God in Auschwitz?’ needs to be looked at alongside the question ‘Who was God in Auschwitz?’, which she answers in terms of God’s accompanying holy presence as Shekhinah. The word Shekhinah (from the root shakan) is grammatically feminine, and has been a focal point for Jewish feminist writing. Raphael argues that recognition that God was present as Shekinah, and shared in the degradation experienced by Jewish women, is crucial for the wider discussion on where God was at Auschwitz. Despite the powerful forces of destruction ranged against the women, and against Shekinah, supportive acts of relational care, cleaning, and compassion towards each other meant that Shekinah remained present, despite the Nazi efforts to the contrary.
- 20.
In light of the discussion in the previous section on the use of animals to dehumanise, it is noteworthy that this mentions reports of dogs specially trained to sexually violate girls.
- 21.
Since then, an important collection by Sonja Hedgepeth and Rochelle Saidel (2010) has provided extensive documentation of a wide range of sexual abuses endured by Jewish women and children during the Holocaust.
- 22.
Matthew appears to amend this slightly to ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani’, probably to explain why the bystanders thought Jesus was calling to Elijah (Mt. 27.47). Both Mark and Matthew record that the time was the ninth hour (about 3 pm) and shortly before his death.
- 23.
Powerful critiques have been offered of the violence which is often implied and sometimes explicit in traditional theories of the Atonement. Feminist scholars have offered particularly strong criticism of the patriarchal violence that is taken for granted in some of these Atonement theories. See especially Brock and Parker (2002). Adding an awareness of the sexual violence to the power behind these critiques is likely to make the questions that they raise all the more urgent.
- 24.
See, for example, We Will Speak Out (WWSO), a global coalition of Christian-based NGOs, churches and organizations working to address sexual violence as a global problem. The coalition was established in March 2011, at the launch of a Tearfund research report, Silent No More: The Untapped Potential of the Worldwide Church in Addressing Sexual Violence (Teddington, Middlesex: Tearfund, 2011). This report highlights the untapped potential and challenges of the worldwide Church to prevent and respond to sexual violence, based on research in Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda. The coaltion also participated in the Global Summit to End Sexual violence in Conflict that took place in London, 10–13 June 2014. See also the Inter Faith Declaration on Mobilising Faith Communities to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, Lancaster House, London, 9–10 February 2015.
- 25.
This article (Tombs 2014) takes up the challenge presented by the Tearfund report and suggests ways in which it might be addressed in biblical studies and theology to address sexual violence against women and children, and also against male victims.
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Tombs, D. (2017). Lived Religion and the Intolerance of the Cross. In: Ganzevoort, R., Sremac, S. (eds) Lived Religion and the Politics of (In)Tolerance. Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challenges. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43406-3_4
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