Whose Names Mankind Tried to Erase from History: The Law on the Condemnation of Memory

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

When the death of a criminal was not enough, they resorted to a special punishment - the condemnation of memory. Then the condemned could completely disappear into oblivion. Sometimes it happened, but sometimes the execution of this harsh sentence gave the criminal true immortality. Alas, only in a figurative sense of the word.

The ancient custom of judging memory

Now it is called damnatio memoriae - "curse of memory" in Latin. The wording was unfamiliar to the Romans, but the phenomenon itself became familiar to antiquity. After death, the ruler had the opportunity either to become revered on a par with the gods, or to disappear forever from the people's memory. So that the name of the emperor or other high-ranking patrician would be forgotten as soon as possible, all his images, both graphic and sculptural, were destroyed; coins were withdrawn from circulation, on which the profile of this person was minted, any mention of him disappeared from the annals and laws.

The procedure of cursing memory should not be confused with ordinary vandalism, when works of art and various values are destroyed spontaneously, out of only hatred for the overthrown tyrant. No, this death penalty was quite official, it came into force only by the decision of the Senate. In addition to the destruction and alteration of material objects, it was decided to cancel all holidays and events created on the initiative or with the active participation of the convict. In especially dramatic situations, the family of the perpetrator was also subject to destruction: this happened after the conviction of the consul Seyan, who was captured and executed on charges of conspiracy. … Sejan's children were also killed.

In some cases, during the next change of power, the once deleted from memory was returned to the circle of those who are worshiped and praised by descendants. For example, the cursed Emperor Nero returned from oblivion after the accession to the throne of Emperor Vitellius. Archaeologists have unearthed two marble heads of Emperor Caligula, both of which were once part of full-length sculptures. After the punishment took effect and Caligula was ordered to "forget", the statues were beheaded in order to subsequently attach the head of the new emperor to them - Roman sculptors were sometimes very practical. As for the statues cast from metals, they, alas, were doomed to destruction, and it remains only to guess how many works of art history has lost due to the practice of damnatio memoriae.

During the existence of the empire, the curse of memory overtook dozens of Roman emperors and their closest relatives, including Marcus Aurelius, Agrippina - the mother of Nero, Messalina, Domitian.

But still, the honor of inventing such a punishment does not belong to Rome - the condemnation of memory existed before. In ancient Egypt, the pharaohs were subjected to the procedure for destroying memories and traces of existence - their images and names were chopped off the walls of tombs and temples. And Pharaoh Akhenaten went further - he imposed this punishment on the gods - first of all, on the “father” of all Egyptian rulers, the god Amun-Ra. Of course, later the status of the gods was restored and it was already Akhenaten's turn to be subject to posthumous sanctions.

In the IV century BC, the Greeks very unsuccessfully carried out this punishment, as a result of which the name of the criminal not only did not disappear from the people's memory, but also, on the contrary, went down in history forever. This was after the case of the burning of the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, which was carried out by a certain Herostratus, wishing to become famous. The culprit was executed and sentenced to oblivion, but the judges overdid it, carefully explaining to their contemporaries the name of the one who could no longer be mentioned. Similar incidents happened later. In the XIV century, the Venetian doge Faliero Marino was beheaded for the crimes committed. As one of the measures to destroy the memories of the criminal in the hall of the Grand Council, on the walls of which the doji were immortalized, the name of the executed was replaced with the inscription: "In this place was the name of Marino Faliero, beheaded for the crimes committed."

Condemnation of memory in Russia

The most significant and, paradoxically, known case of condemnation of memory in the Russian Empire was the story of Ivan Antonovich, the infant emperor, overthrown by Elizabeth on November 25, 1741. In this case, the ruler sentenced to oblivion, who at that time was a little over a year old, was spared. He was separated from his parents and family, received a different name and was forever deprived of his freedom and the opportunity to communicate with anyone other than his jailers.

At the behest of the new empress, immediately after the coup, it was ordered to destroy or properly amend all documents that featured the name of Ivan VI, confiscated odes in honor of his accession to the throne, including the authorship of Mikhail Lomonosov, the coins with the image of the prisoner were ordered to surrender, their storage was equated The name of Ivan Antonovich is not on the monuments dedicated to the Russian rulers - including the Romanovsky obelisk in the Alexander Garden in Moscow. Elizabeth fought the memory of her predecessor all her life.

Another empress, Catherine II, did something similar, after the Pugachev uprising, aiming to completely erase the memories of the revolt from history and from the people's memory. The house in which Emelyan Pugachev lived was burned down. Even the river Yaik, on which the Cossack uprising broke out, did not escape reprisals - it itself, of course, could not suffer, but the name was changed to the familiar to modern man "Ural".

How else did they try to erase from the memory of those condemned to oblivion

It was common during the Soviet era that names and figures disappeared not only from documents but also from photographs. Some semblance of the ancient damnatio memoriae was observed, for example, in the post-Soviet states, where monuments to Lenin were massively dismantled and geographical names reminiscent of the USSR were changed.

In the park of Saratoga in the USA there is an unusual monument depicting only a general's boot that was shot through. The inscription on the monument tells about who this work is dedicated to - a brilliant general who was wounded in the leg at this very place during the War of Independence. And that's all - the name of the brave man is absent on the monument. The general, whose name history has nevertheless preserved, was called Benedict Arnold, he was indeed one of the heroes of the Colonial War, but later tarnished his honor with embezzlement and was condemned to censure and oblivion. The general ended his days in England.

In some cases, the punishment of oblivion led to certain results and, possibly, added blank spots to historical science. But often, when applying this ancient sanction, the opposite effect occurred, which is now called the “Streisand effect”. This is a phenomenon that describes the rapid and widespread dissemination of information after attempts to remove it from the public domain. This effect is mainly achieved thanks to the Internet. The name arose after the American actress Barbra Streisand filed a lawsuit against the website that published photos of the California coast, where, among thousands of other pictures, was the house of Barbra herself. The court eventually rejected the claims, but during the process, the popularity of the photos, the removal of which the actress demanded, reached an unprecedented level. A month after the start of the dispute, the number of hits on the site reached half a million.

If any of those punished by the "curse of memory" deserved their bitter fate, then it is definitely not the heir to the Russian throne, Emperor Ivan VI. The story of his life is a drama related to the fact that one German family lost power over the Russian Empire and it turned into a tragedy.