Inside The History Of Immurement, The Execution Method That Entombed Victims Alive

One of history's cruelest forms of capital punishment dating back to the days of ancient Rome, immurement has the victim sealed inside an enclosed space and left to die slowly.

Wikimedia CommonsA depiction of the immurement of a nun, 1868.

Throughout history, immurement, also known as live entombment, was a cruel form of punishment in which a person was enclosed in a tight confinement without an exit. A person could, for example, be stuffed inside a locked coffin or a wooden box. Or, perhaps, brick walls are constructed around them from which they can not escape.

One famous example of this vile practice comes from Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Cask of Amontillado,” which tells the story of a man recounting to a friend how he had his revenge on a former acquaintance by luring him into the catacombs with the promise of a highly prized cask of wine. The story’s narrator then describes how he chained his enemy to the wall and proceeded to seal him into his tomb with brick and mortar, leaving him to die a miserable death within:

“I resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason-work, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within.”

And though Poe’s 1846 work is indeed one of fiction, the process of immurement is frighteningly real, with a history as dark, if not darker, than Poe’s story.

The Cruel History Of Immurement As Capital Punishment

The history of immurement dates back centuries with examples of the practice being found on almost every continent.

Immurement was typically used as a form of capital punishment, in which a slow death was the justice handed down for a given crime. The second use of immurement, just as horrid and cruel and perhaps even more disturbing, was for human sacrifice — and it was believed that this practice would bring good fortune to those performing the sacrifice.

One of the earliest uses of immurement dates back to the Roman Empire, when it was used as punishment for a class of priestess known as the Vestal Virgins. The Vestals were girls from respected Roman families and considered to be free of mental and physical defects. They had taken a strict vow of celibacy and committed themselves to tending to a sacred fire honoring Vesta, the goddess of home and family.

Wikimedia CommonsAn early 18th-century painting illustrating the dedication of a Vestal, by Alessandro Marchesini.

If a Vestal Virgin broke her vow of celibacy, however, she was to be punished with death and buried in the city. Spilling the blood of a Vestal was forbidden though, and under Roman law no person was to be buried within the city, which meant that the Romans had to get creative.

According to A School Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, after being condemned by the college of pontifices, a Vestal’s executioners would prepare for her a very small vault in the ground, usually containing a couch and small amount of food and water. The Vestal would be led into the vault where she would be left to die a slow and likely agonizing death.

Punishment of a similar manner was also handed down in the Middle Ages by the Roman Catholic Church to nuns or monks who had broken a vow of chastity or expressed heretical ideas.

Unlike the Virgin Vestals, these shamed nuns and monks were to be sealed in a tomb not to die within mere days, but instead to live out a slightly longer life of complete isolation. Known as “vade in pacem” or “go into peace,” the punished would go without any sort of contact or sight to the outside world, only having their food dropped to them through a small opening.

While it’s convenient to dismiss such torturous capital punishment as the practice of the distant past, immurement has been used far more recently. Accounts of immurement as recent as the early 20th century have been noted in Mongolia and what was then the Persian Empire (now Iran).

Live Entombment As A Punishment In More Modern Times

One of the earliest accounts of immurement in Persia came in the 17th century from a gem merchant, Jean Baptiste Tavernier, who noted stone tombs on the plains with thieves encased in the stone up to their necks. Tavernier wrote that the men were left with their heads exposed “not out of kindness, but to expose them to the Injury of the Weather, and Assaults of the Birds of Prey.”

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