He also ordered blinding and castration as a punishment for thieves. Henry I of England blinded William, Count of Mortain, who had fought against him at Tinchebray in 1106. King William was also accused of making the killing of a hart or hind in a royal forest into a crime punishable by blinding, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle claims that this was made up to tarnish the King's reputation. In the 11th century, William the Conqueror used blinding as a punishment for rebellion to replace the death penalty in his laws for England. According to some accounts of the story, Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria died from a heart attack upon seeing the returning blind soldiers. This earned Emperor Basil II the nickname of 'the Bulgar Slayer'. The last soldiers had only one eye gouged out, and these one-eyed men were ordered to lead their blind friends back to their commander. He put them into groups of 100 and blinded 99 in every group. Vazul (before 997 – 1031/1032) of the Hungarian royal House of Árpád was blinded at the order either of his cousin King Stephen I or of his queen, Gisela.Īfter the Battle of Kleidion of 1014, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II had captured several thousand soldiers from the Bulgarian Empire. 500 – 565) at the order of the Emperor Justinian is probably apocryphal. The blinding of Byzantine general Belisarius ( c. In the Middle Ages, blinding was used as a penalty for treason or as a means of rendering a political opponent unable to rule and lead an army in war. This form of torture was also applied to the virgin martyrs Saint Tatiana and Saint Hripsime, according to their stories. For example, Saint Lucy's torturers tore out her eyes.
Įarly Christians were often blinded as a penalty for their beliefs. In the Bible, Samson was blinded upon his capture by the Philistines. Oedipus gouged out his own eyes after accidentally fulfilling the prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother. In the Byzantine Empire and many other historical societies, blinding was accomplished by gouging out the eyes, sometimes using a hot poker, and by pouring a boiling substance, such as vinegar, on them. The punishment has been used since Antiquity Greek mythology makes several references to blinding as divine punishment, which reflects human practice. It was used as an act of revenge and torture. Rembrandt van Rijn, 1636, Städel Frankfurtīlinding is a type of physical punishment which results in complete or nearly complete loss of vision.
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