Category Archives: Religion

1780: British officer alarmed for his foreskin

In 1780, a British East India Company regiment was defeated at Polilore by troops of the Mysore kingdom. Several hundred British soldiers were captured, held prisoner and forced into slavery. Many were forced to labour until 1784 and a few as late as 1799. Approximately 300 of these prisoners were also forcibly circumcised by their Muslim captors.

One of the British prisoners was Irish-born lieutenant colonel Cromwell Massey, who kept a secret diary during his incarceration at Seringapatam. In November 1780, Massey wrote that he and his men were:

“Terribly alarmed this morning for our foreskins.”

Massey had good cause for concern: he was circumcised shortly after. So too was a junior naval officer, who later wrote:

“I lost with the foreskin of my yard all those benefits of a Christian and Englishman which were and ever shall be my greatest glory.”

Most of these captives were liberated when a much larger British force invaded Mysore in 1799 and toppled its Muslim ruler, Tipu Sultan. Cromwell Massey was among them. He returned to Britain and lived to the age of 103, dying in Ramsgate in 1845.

Source: Various, inc. diary of Cromwell Massey, 1780. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2016. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

c.1390: Flatulence to blame for lusty monks

Written around the turn of the 14th century, the Italian medical text Breviarium Practice suggests that flatulence is the cause of lustful behaviour among members of the clergy, particularly monks:

“In different monasteries and religious places, one comes across numerous men who, sworn to chastity, are often tempted by Satan. The principal cause for this is that every day they eat food that leads to flatulence. This increases their desire for coitus and stiffens their member. That is why this passion is called satyriasis.”

The belief that male erections were fueled by ‘hot winds’ emanating from the bowels was quite common in the late Middle Ages.

Source: Cited in Opera Arnaldi de Villanova, 1504. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2016. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1941: Ugandan wizard dispatched with unripe bananas

Fabiano Kinene, Seperiano Kiwanuka and Albert Iseja all appeared before a Ugandan court in 1941, charged with murdering an old man in their village. According to the defendants, the victim was practising witchcraft and they were acting to defend the village. Kinene claimed the victim was discovered in the middle of the night, “naked, with strange objects and acting surreptitiously”:

“They caught him performing an act which they genuinely believed to be an act of witchcraft… they killed him in the way which, in the olden times, was considered proper for the killing of a wizard… Death was caused by the forcible insertion of unripe bananas into the deceased’s bowel, through the anus…”

The court lowered the charge from murder to manslaughter, ruling that acts of attempted witchcraft might constitute a “grave and sudden provocation”.

Source: R v. Fabiano Kinene, 1941, cited in Ugandan Law Review. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2016. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1451: Squatting Swiss leeches banished, exorcised

In 1451, a landowner in Switzerland noticed that one of his ponds was choked with leeches so great in number they threatened his fish stocks. On the advice of his local clergyman, the landowner contacted the Bishop of Lausanne, Georges de Saluces, who immediately convened a hearing. Saluces ordered several of the leeches to be brought into Lausanne, to stand as representatives for the others and receive his ruling.

The outcome of the proceedings is recorded in Saluces’ memoirs and by other chroniclers, who report that the leeches were ordered:

“…to leave the district within three days. The leeches, however, proving contumacious [wilfully disobedient] and refusing to quit the country, were solemnly exorcised.”

Saluces’ decision to exorcise the leeches, while unorthodox and lacking any kind of precedent, was heartily endorsed by academics in Heidelberg. It also seemed to work:

“Immediately after its delivery the leeches began to die off, day by day, until they were utterly exterminated.”

Source: Cited in Georges de Saluces, eveque de Lausanne, 1844; and Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1862. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2016. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1394: Pig sentenced to death for blasphemy

In 1394, the people of Mortaign, France attended the execution of a local pig. The pig, which was female and apparently ownerless, had wandered into the local church, climbed onto a small altar or table and guzzled down consecrated wafers, set aside for the Holy Eucharist. The pig was promptly seized, put on trial, deemed to be guilty of blasphemy and hanged.

Source: Cited in Edward P. Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, 1987. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2016. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.