From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Re: [b-hebrew YHWH's attitude towards zonah
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 09:27:56 -0500
Dear Karl and Patrina,
I had always had the impression that virgins in temple service had a
responsibility to remain virgins. If a virgin violated her trust
(pregnancy being good proof of violation) she was automatically
fired.
HH: It could be worse than that. Philip Schaff in his History of the
Christian Church (vol. 2, 398) writes that
The noblest form of heathen virginity appears in the six Vestal
virgins of Rome, who, while girls of from six to ten years, were
selected for the service of the pure goddess, and set to keep the
holy fire burning on its altar; but, after serving thirty years, were
allowed to return to secular life and marry. The penalty for breaking
their vow of chastity was to be buried alive in the campus sceleratus.
Their persons (the virgins) were inviolable and sacred and their
blood could not be spilt. If a person sentenced to death met a vestal
virgin on his way to the execution, he was automatically pardoned.
The punishment for breaking the vow of chastity was death by burial
alive-the only way to kill a vestal without shedding her blood-in a
place known as the "Evil Fields", or Campus Sceleratus, just outside
the Servian Wall. Their lover would be flogged to death on the
Comitium. The execution of one or more vestal virgins were carried
out several times, but very infrequently.