ssed to the Turks, and the stories of torture and death
inflicted in southeastern Europe, or in modern Persia, show knowledge
and inventive skill far beyond what the same peoples have otherwise
shown. The motives have been religious contempt, hereditary animosity,
and vengeance, as well as political and warlike antagonism.

+238. Torture in the Roman empire.+ The Roman emperors lived in a great
fear of supernatural attack. There was a very great interest for many
people in the question: When will the emperor die? Many, no doubt, made
use of any apparatus of astrology or sorcery to find out. To the emperor
and his adherents this seemed to prove a desire that he should die, and
was interpreted as treasonable. The Christians helped to develop
demonism. They regarded all the heathen gods as demons. As they gained
power in society this notion spread, and there was a great revival of
popular demonism. By the _lex Julia de Majestate_ torture might be
applied to persons charged with treason, and the definition of treason
was greatly enlarged. Torture was used to great excess under Tiberius
and Nero. In the fourth century, after the emperors became Christians,
it was feared that persons who hated them would work them ill by sorcery
with the aid of the demons, formerly heathen gods. Sorcery and treason
were combined and strengthened by a great tide of superstition which
overspread the Roman world.[527] The first capital punishment for heresy
in the Christian church seems to have been the torture and burning of
Priscillian, a Manichaean, at Treves, in 385, with six of his adherents,
by the Emperor Maximus. This act caused a sensation of truly Christian
horror. Of the two bishops who were responsible, one was expelled from
his see; the other resigned.[528] In 579 King Chilperic caused
ecclesiastics to be tortured for disloyal behavior. About 580 the same
king, having married a servant maid, an act which caused family and
political trouble, upon the death of two of her children, caused a woman
to be tortured who was charged with murdering the children in the
interest of their stepbrother. She confessed, revoked her confession,
and was burned. Three years later another child of the queen died, and
several women were tortured and burned or broken on the wheel for
causing the death by sorcery.[529] Pope Nicholas I, in 866, opposed the
use of torture as barbaric, and the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals take the
same position in regard to it.