List of ways people dishonor the dead

The following is a list of ways people dishonor the dead:

  • Body snatching is the secret removal of corpses from burial sites. A common purpose of body snatching, especially in the 19th century, was to sell the corpses for dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools.[1]
  • Damnatio memoriae Latin phrase meaning "condemnation of memory", indicating that a person is to be excluded from official accounts.[2]
  • Decanonization is the removal of a person's name from the calendar of saints; the opposite of canonization.
  • Desecration of graves involves intentional acts of vandalism or destruction in places where humans are interred and includes grave sites and grave markers.
  • Gibbeting is any instrument of public execution (including guillotine, executioner's block, impalement stake, hanging gallows, or related scaffold), but gibbeting refers to the use of a gallows-type structure from which the dead or dying bodies of criminals were hanged on public display to deter other existing or potential criminals.[4]
  • Grave robbery is the act of uncovering a grave, tomb or crypt to steal commodities.
  • Headhunting is the practice of hunting a human and collecting the severed head after killing the victim, although sometimes more portable body parts (such as ear, nose or scalp) are taken instead as trophies.
  • Human trophy collecting involves the acquisition of human body parts as trophy, usually as a war trophy, or as a status symbol of superior masculinity. Psychopathic serial murderers' collection of their victims' body parts have also been described as a form of trophy-taking; the FBI draws a distinction between souvenirs and trophies in this regard.[5]
  • Maschalismos is the practice of physically rendering the dead incapable of rising or haunting the living in undead form.
  • Necrophilia is sexual attraction towards or a sexual act involving corpses.[6]
  • Posthumous execution is the ritual or ceremonial mutilation of an already dead body as a punishment.

See also

References

  1. ^  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Body-Snatching". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 112.
  2. ^ Omissi, Adrastos (28 June 2018). Emperors and Usurpers in the Later Roman Empire: Civil War, Panegyric, and the Construction of Legitimacy. OUP Oxford. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-19-255827-5. Archived from the original on 7 November 2021. Retrieved 6 December 2021.
  3. ^ Gantt, Darin (24 July 2014). "Modell family wants to press charges against grave urinator". Pro football Talk. Archived from the original on 6 December 2021. Retrieved 6 December 2021.
  4. ^ Pettifer, Ernest (1992). Punishments of Former Days. Winchester: Waterside Press. p. 83. ISBN 978-1-8-72870-05-2.
  5. ^ Harold Schechter; David Everitt (4 July 2006). The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. Simon and Schuster. p. 290. ISBN 978-1-4165-2174-7. Archived from the original on 7 January 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2011.
  6. ^ Goodwin, Robin; Cranmer, Duncan, eds. (2002). Inappropriate Relationships: The Unconventional, the Disapproved, and the Forbidden. London, England: Psychology Press. pp. 174–176. ISBN 978-0805837421.