burning at the stake

burning at the stake, a method of execution practiced in Babylonia and ancient Israel and later adopted in Europe and North America.

Spanish heretics suffered this penalty during the Inquisition, as did French disbelievers and heretics such as St. Joan of Arc, who was condemned and burned in 1431 in Rouen, France. In 1555 the Protestant bishops Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and John Hooper were condemned as heretics and burned at the stake in Oxford, England. Burning at the stake was a traditional form of execution for women found guilty of witchcraft. Most accusations of witchcraft, however, did not originate in the church but resulted from personal rivalries and disputes in small towns and villages.

In some cases of burning at the stake, mechanisms were provided to shorten the victim’s suffering. These included attaching a container of gunpowder to the victim, which would explode when heated by the fire and kill the victim instantly, and placing the victim in a noose, often made of chain, so that death occurred by hanging. In England, the burning of heretics ended in 1612 with the death of Edward Wightman; the country’s last execution for heresy (by hanging) occurred in 1697. Burning at the stake for crimes other than heresy continued into the 18th century.