Blasphemy

The blasphemous stonedGérard Hoet and Abraham de Blois. It's an illustration of Bible FiguresP. de Hondt éditeur, La Haye, 1728, which represents the punishment that the blasphems should suffer according to the book of Leviticus.

blasphemy (from the Greek βλασφημία: blasphemía, 'to insult', and pheme, 'reputation& #39;) etymologically means 'offensive, insulting, contumelious, derisive word', but in its strict and generally accepted usage, it refers to 'verbal offense against divine majesty'. Throughout history there have been laws against blasphemy considering it a public crime against God, frequently punished with the death penalty -singularly in theocracies-.

The ban on blasphemy in France was abolished when the French Revolution developed the concepts of freedom of religion and freedom of the press.

Christianity

In the book of Leviticus of the Bible, the crime of blasphemy is mentioned and the corresponding punishment is stoning by the people. The Roman emperors sentenced the early Christians to death for committing the crime of blasphemy. In Justinian's Code, Novel 77, the death penalty is established for obstinate blasphemers against the Christian religion.

This repressive system was maintained in the Middle Ages and in the Modern Age. For example, in Corsica, according to the criminal statutes of 1571, “the blasphemer against God, or the Virgin, was punished the first time with a fine of 6 pounds, and 3, if it was against the saints; 20 pounds, for the second time in both cases; and for the third, with punishment of whipping and perforation of the tongue. In article 101 of the penal code of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, blasphemy uttered in a church or in another place at the time of celebrating liturgical acts was punished with imprisonment from two years and one day to five years. If it was uttered in a public place - where no sacred function was being celebrated - the sentence was lower: from one to six months in prison.

Canon Law

According to canon law, blasphemy was any word insulting God, distinguished by its seriousness between heretical blasphemy from non-heretical blasphemy and, by its object, between the direct blasphemy, which is uttered to God, and the indirect , which is uttered to the Virgin Mary, the saints, the Sacraments, etc. The Spanish Encyclopedia of Law and Administration or New Theater of Legislation of Spain and the Indies directed by Lorenzo Arrazola and published in 1853 specified the following:

Blasphemy, therefore, takes place: 1st. Denying God what is essential to him, like, God is not righteous2nd. Offensively attributing to him what disgusts his essence and attributes, such as, God is unjust3rd. DetestingOr cursingLike, For God's sake! Pronunciating the same injurious words against the Virgin Mary, the saints, the Sacraments, and things consecrated to God, or to his worship; and 5o. Even without asserting, denying or detesting, as stated, enumerating, or merely proposing, but with anger, contempt, or scorn, the name, attributes, qualities, and in his case the body, or parts of the body, of the objects included in the first four cases, as God's name! [...]
By translation, and according to the common opinion of the authors, blasphemy, generally non-heretic, is reputed, contumuous, and ungodly acts, even though they do not accompany the word, as spitting against the sky, with anger, or contempt, spitting at the images and objects of religious worship, threatening with ademans, etc., in a word all said or fact that would be injuria with respect to people and prophesied objects, it is blasphemy, or such respect of divinity, and sacred objects are recounted.

Blasphemy also included insults or gestures against priests when they were performing their sacred functions, especially within the church, and false and vain oaths (or not necessary). If the false oath was taken in court, it constituted a more serious crime: perjury.

As for penalties, the Church began to establish its own from the 13th century —until then it had been governed by the Justinian Code—. The first specific regulation was that of Pope Gregory IX who, around 1250, established that the blasphemer was condemned by his bishop to remain at the door of his church, without being able to enter it, for seven consecutive Sundays while the high mass was celebrated, and in the last of them, barefoot, without a cape and with a rope tied around his neck. He also had to fast during those seven Fridays, and on one of them feed three poor people, or at least one. He would also have to pay a fine of 40 sous if he was rich and 30 or less if he was not. In the event that he refused to serve the sentence, he would never be able to access a church and would not be buried in a sacred place when he died.

In the 16th century, Pope Leo X in the V Lateran Council toughened the penalties against blasphemers. If he was a cleric and had benefits, he would be deprived of it for a year, and if he reoffended, he would lose it, being unable to obtain new ones if he was convicted for the third time. As for the laymen, if he was a noble he would pay a fine of 25 ducats the first time, 50 the second and on the third occasion he would lose his nobility; if he was a commoner he would be imprisoned and if he reoffended a third time he would be exposed at the door of the main church with a crown as a symbol of his infamy. A fourth time he assumed life imprisonment or the galley sentence. Secular judges who did not impose the established punishments on those convicted of that crime were also guilty of blasphemy. On the other hand, the judges who were diligent, as well as the denouncers of the blasphemers, would receive a third of the fine imposed on them, in addition to ten years of leniency for each case.

Much more terrible were the penalties established by Pope Julius III in the Constitution of 1550, confirmed by Pope Saint Pius V in 1585. Repeated plebeian blasphemers would have their tongues pierced and if they persisted they would be flogged ——and paraded by the population—condemned to the galleys or banished forever. These same penalties would apply to those who did not report people they had heard blaspheme. Repeated priests who did not have benefits would be demoted and sentenced to jail or galley terms.

Criticism of the Enlightenment

In the 18th century, the European Enlightenment rejected the very concept of "blasphemy" and denounced it as a crime. The Marquis de Langle stated:

A blasphemous does not injure or injure anyone: it only offends God, who to avenge his offenses has death and has in his hands the rays

For his part, Voltaire wrote:

It's sad between us that what is blasphemy in Rome, in our Lady of Loreto, and in the rest of the canons of Saint Genarus, whether piety in London, in Stockholm, in Berlin, in Copenhagen, in Basel, in Hamburg, and it is even sadder than a country, in the same street, its inhabitants moisten one another with blasphemous... The first Christians were accused of blasphemous; but the supporters of the ancient religion of the Empire, the worshipers of Jupiter, who thus accused of blasphemy, were in turn condemned by blasphemous under Theodosius II.

Profanity in Islam

Islam condemns blasphemy, which is a crime included in numerous criminal laws in countries with a Muslim majority. At present, certain countries, such as Pakistan, are accused of making arbitrary use of this crime and of generating serious limitations on the religious freedom of non-Muslim minorities.