Burning at the stake was a form of execution practiced at least since Babylonia and ancient Israel. Treason, heresy, and witchcraft were among the crimes for which this choice of capital punishment was most frequently used. Death by fire was a slow and painful execution. Occasionally, if a large fire was ignited, the victim would suffocate before the flames touched her skin. Most of the time suffering was part of the plan; therefore, the fire was deliberately made small. In this situation, death could take up to an hour and would usually be the result of blood loss or heat stroke.

Various methods are known to have been used to burn people at the stake. In one, the stake was driven into the ground and the prisoner was fastened with chains or iron rings. The stake would then be surrounded by a low pile of burning wood. The second method, popular with witch burnings, involved hanging the prisoner from the bonfire and stacking the firewood high enough so that bystanders could not see his face as it burned. Another method was to tie the prisoner to a ladder that was suspended from a frame over the fire.

The Japanese practiced a brutal variation of burning at the stake. The prisoner was hung upside down by his feet, with his head in a well. A platform enclosed the prisoner’s neck and the fire was lit on top of that platform. This method kept the head away from smoke and fire, prolonging agony and postponing death for as long as possible. Burning was the capital punishment that the Old Testament often recommended for crimes involving sexual misconduct. Some of the Bible verses on this topic include:

Genesis: Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has become a prostitute; and furthermore, behold, she is with child of fornication. And Judah said, Bring her out, and let her be burned.

Leviticus: If the daughter of any priest… desecrates herself by fornicating, desecrates her father: she will be burned with fire.

Leviticus: If a man takes a wife and her mother, it is impiety; they will be burned with fire, he and they; so that there is no iniquity among you.

Unfortunately, this barbaric method of punishment was used to some degree, throughout the world, for over a millennium after the Old Testament was written. Burning at the stake was used by Christians and non-Christians alike. The fourth century writer, Eusebius of Caesarea, recorded the scene of a death sentence passed by the Emperor Maximian. Maximian was a zealous pagan who did not tolerate Christians. The victim was a man named Apphianus (also known as Amphianus), who had converted to Christianity. According to Eusebius, Apphianus’s feet were first wrapped in oil-soaked cotton and then set on fire. In his words:

The martyr was hung at a great height, so that, with this terrible spectacle, he would strike terror into all who looked on, while at the same time his sides and ribs were torn with combs, until he became a mass. swelling all over, and the appearance of his countenance was completely changed. And for a long time his feet were burning with an intense fire, so that the flesh of his feet, as it was consumed, fell like molten wax, and the fire broke out into his very bones like dry reeds.

In 1307 France, a sect called the Templars was suppressed and many of its knights were burned at the stake. This action seemed to spark a nationwide witchcraft obsession. By 1,350, 1,000 people had been prosecuted for witchcraft and 600 of them had been sentenced to burning. In 1401, Henry IV signed the Statute of Heresy, which gave clergy the power to arrest anyone they believed guilty of heresy, which is any religious opinion contrary to current popular ecclesiastical dogma. Those who refused to recant were burned at the stake.

Perhaps one of the most infamous cases occurred in 1431, when Joan of Arc was accused of witchcraft and heresy and was publicly burned at the stake. Henry VIII’s Catholic daughter, Maria I (Bloody Mary), ordered at least 274 Protestants burned for heresy. One of Mary’s many victims was Dr. John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, who, in 1555, was burned in front of 7,000 spectators. An eyewitness, Henry Moore, wrote about the event in his book The history of the persecutions of the Church of Rome and the complete Protestant martyrdom. Part of what he said below:

Finally, as the fire renewed, his strength gave out, and his hand was caught in the iron that surrounded him. Shortly after, the entire lower part of his body consumed, he fell to the iron that bound him, into the fire, amid horrible screams and cheers from the bloodied crew that surrounded him. This holy martyr spent more than three quarters of an hour consuming…

Death by burning was a popular method of execution during the Spanish Inquisition. The first Inquisition, established by Pope Gregory IX in 1231, took place mainly in northern Italy and southern France. The better known second Spanish Inquisition was sanctioned by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478 at the request of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile. By some estimates, the number of victims burned during the second Spanish Inquisition numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Most of the victims appeared to have been women. Children were also frequently burned along with their parents when they were found to be heretics.

King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella appointed the Dominican Tomás de Torquemada as Inquisitor General. During his fifteen-year career at the head of the Inquisition, Tomás de Torquemada was personally responsible for burning more than 2,000 people at the stake. His targets were primarily non-Christians and recent converts.

A particularly gruesome ritual during the Spanish Inquisition was the Auto-da-Fe (Act of Faith). This ritual was held on Sundays, as well as other holidays, when large crowds were available to attend. People who were considered heretics were secretly rounded up the night before and brought before the inquisition panel. These alleged heretics were then tortured until they confessed or died of their injuries.

On occasion, the panel would pardon a person who asked to reconcile with the church. That person would then have to endure the penance of being whipped half-naked through the streets of the city for six successive Fridays. Heretics who refused to reconcile or who had relapsed were sentenced to public burning.

The following is taken from a bystander’s rather disturbing and overly visual account of a burning during the Middle Ages:

You could see the white bones peeking out as the man’s skin and flesh slowly separated from the skeleton and fell, in a curtain of pink and orange and red, toward his feet, which were festooned with flame. A more detailed description follows: Thousands of spectators witnessed these burnings and could take three quarters of an hour to die.

In 1629 Burgstadt Germany burned 77 of its 3,000 citizens for witchcraft.

Colonial America also did its share of burning at the stake. In 1741, 29 blacks and 4 whites were sentenced to death for the crime of conspiring to burn down New York City. Of those 33 people, 22 were hanged and 11 burned at the stake. Unfortunately, burning is still used in some areas of the world. South Africa and Haiti sometimes execute prisoners using a method called a collar. The collar is made by forcing a rubber tire, filled with gasoline, around the prisoner’s chest and arms. The tire is then set on fire, causing the rubber to melt into the victim’s flesh.

In the late 1990s, several North Korean Army generals were executed by burning alive in Pyongyang, North Korea. In 2006, in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, at least 400 women were burned alive. And in the first half of 2007, in Kurdistan, Iraq, approximately 200 women suffered the same fate.