Samedi: Chthonian Histories

We were watching The Green Mile last night and I began thinking about the pros and cons, for lack of a better expression, of capital punishment. It has certainly been proven that certain types of offenders, child molesters as an example that fits the topic, are not likely to be "rehabbed". Their rate of re-offense is virtually 100% and considering the lives they destroy, the argument for destroying them holds weight. But, continuing on the theme of the movie, when one sees a death such as that of poor Eduard Delacroix one can easily make a case for deleting the institution all together. Then, too, when John Coffey tells Paul Edgecomb that he's "tired of the pain, boss" we understand. Who wouldn't rather be executed than caged?

All this brings me to the horrific yet curious story of Robert Francois Damiens. Born in a small hamlet in the northern French province of Arras circa 1715, Damiens quite literally never amounted to much. He was apparently dishonorably discharged from the army and then held a series of jobs as a servant or laborer from which he was usually dismissed as well. He was probably bipolar, but who knew of such things then?

Damiens claim to fame, or infamy as it may be, was a half-hearted attempt on the life of King Louis XV. Damiens stabbed the king as he was descending a carriage and then made no attempt to escape. The king was subjected to a mere flesh wound, and perhaps a bit of embarrassment, but Damiens would suffer far, far worse.

Hauled off to a hasty trial, Damiens ranted and raved so much that he was tied down to a mattress when brought before his judges (as shown in the engraving above via Wikimedia). He was quickly convicted of attempted regicide and sentenced to die quite literally by torture. The last days of Robert Francois Damiens and Agnes, the miller's daughter hold much in common.

Like Agnes, Damiens became curiously stoic as the hour - or hours - of his death drew near. In his book Death, A History of Man's Obsessions and Fears, Robert Wilkins quotes from a contemporary source which describes Damiens' honorable behavior in the face of unbearable misery. Damiens had his skin seared with hot sulphur and then the executioner took steel pincers "which had been especially made for the occasion,, and which were about a foot and a half long" and ripped chunks of flesh from Damiens' calves, thighs, arms and chest. The contemporary source goes on to tell us that "though a strong, sturdy fellow, this executioner found it so difficult to tear away the pieces of flesh that he set about the same spot two or three times, twisting the pincers as he did so..." After this, each wound was filled with molten lead.

Damiens cried out "Pardon my God! Pardon, Lord!" we are told. Wilkins also says that "from time to time he would raise his head and look over his tortured body." He was then harnessed to horses at each limb but to no avail. The horses pulled so hard for well over half an hour that one collapsed in his harness and yet poor Damiens' limbs would not be ripped from his torso. At this point, the prisoner - doubtless in unimaginable pain - asked calmly that the priest standing by say masses for his soul.

After fresh horses were brought in, Damiens' legs were finally torn off. The execution then chopped the prisoner's arms from his body, evidently with a sword or axe. At this point, the executioner pronounced the man dead. The pamphleteer, however, begged to differ:

... the truth was that I saw the man move, his lower jaw moving from side to side as if he were talking. One of the executioners said that he was still alive when his trunk was thrown on the stake.

All of Damiens' body parts were reduced to ash and scattered to the four winds.

Damiens remained something of a bogey man in French memory and, after the Terror, it was rumored that Maximilien Robespierre was related to him. There appears to be no validity to this and it seems to have sprung from their only connection: both men were from Arras.

The disgusting yet dignified death of Robert Francois Damiens remains an obvious case of justice gone berserk. Surely unfortunate Damiens could have agreed with John Coffey when he said he was tired of the pain.

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

When modern historians discuss or write about the witch craze in Europe and the Americas, very little thought - if any - is given to the people who looked after those unfortunates accused of communing with Satan. Many times, in fact to a surprising large degree, the jailors are painted as one dimensional thugs reveling in the cruel treatment of their pitiable charges. It is much easier to focus on the horrors of torture than on the inner lives of those who administered the torture.

In his brilliant analysis of the Pappenheimer family ordeal that played out in early 17th century Munich, Germany, Highroad to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft, Michael Kunze turns his attention to the keepers of the accused. With surprising empathy and clarity he documents what his research has shown him about ironmaster Georg, the unwitting keeper of the jail known as the Falcon Tower, and his nameless, unenviable wife. Even as he tortured the Pappenheimers as well as Agnes the miller's daughter and her family, Georg's wife kept each one in fresh straw, clean water and warm stew.

Certainly, not every inquisitorial dungeon was run like the Falcon Tower, but the little crack that Kunze opens onto the ironmaster's family's world is at the very least thought provoking. Here is an excerpt from the section entitled "A Day in the Life of a Jailor's Wife" (pp 291-292):

Very little has come down to us about the ironmaster's wife, who performed a range of lowly tasks in the Munich Falcon Tower. We do not even know her name. The prisoners, to whom she brought their meals and occasionally fresh straw for their cells, called her "the ironmaster's wife." We have to imagine a woman of about thirty, not ugly but not pretty either, not squeamish but not coarse. What with all the pain and squalor suffered by the inmates of the Falcon Tower, we are liable to forget that the jailor's wife did not have an easy life herself. The reason lay in her nature, which I believe I know something about, in spite of the meager information in our sources.

The ironmaster's wife was neither stupid nor dull nor harsh. She would have had to be all these things not to find life in the Falcon Tower hard. On the ground floor of the prison she acted as a housewife, looked after her husband and her children, cleaned and washed, placed a few flowers beneath the crucifix. On the northeast side of the building she had laid out a little garden in which a few vegetables and some wild flowers transplanted from the meadows struggled to exist, for very little sun found its way into the quadrangle between the high walls. In this way she tried to lead the life of simple, ordinary fold. But she knew that beneath her little domestic kitchen there lay a vault of horrors, while above it prisoners languished, chained to the walls of their evil-smelling hutches. She could hear the footsteps of these poor wretches on the wooden stairs as they were taken to the torture chamber for interrogation. She saw them in their pitiable condition following the torture. And when her scowling husband joined her and the children at their meagerly furnished table and said grace before the midday meal, she knew that the screams of his victims were still ringing in his ears. Was it possible to talk about the weather, the price of beef, or the Sunday picnic with the children that they had planned? Of course it was possible, and they did it, but they never ceased to be aware of the misery that surrounded them; conversation about everyday things always had an undertone of terror. The ironmaster's wife was unable to separate her official life from her private life as may have been possible in later ages, for the two were linked and interwoven. When she went shopping and did the cooking, she was doing it for the prisoners as well as her family. It was not uncommon for interrogations to take place in her living room. People in the street did not see her simply as a housewife; they avoided her as "dishonorable" on account of her husband's occupation.

He had not assumed office of his own free will. The record suggests often enough that he was no more coarse and violent of disposition than his wife was. He took no pleasure in the prisoners' suffering, but in all probability he was afraid of the power of the demons, whose presence he believed he could sense often enough as he practiced his cruel trade. What forced him to pursue his vocation? We do not know, we can only suppose that he himself had once been a prisoner and had been pardoned simply because there was need of a jailor. He was not permitted to "give notice," for, had he given up his office, he would once more have been treated as a prisoner, and possibly suffered punishment of death.

And so the horrible machine ground down both accused and jailor. And the jailor's wife as well.

Header: Prisoner by Bessonov Nicolay c 1988 via InquisitionArt (please know that Nicolay's art, while brilliant, is very realistic and very graphic; viewer discretion is advised)

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

On January 11, 1696, a group of the jurors who sat on the Salem witch trials four years earlier signed a "Confession of Error" meant to relieve those tried and executed of the taint of witchcraft. Curiously these jurors, trying so hard to wipe the blood of innocent men and women from their hands, turned around and blamed Satan. Again.

We whose names are under written, being in the year 1692 called to serve as jurors in Court at Salem, on trial of many who were by some suspected guilty of doing acts of witchcraft upon the bodies of sundry persons, We confess that we ourselves were not capable to understand, nor able to withstand the mysterious delusions of the Powers of Darkness and prince of Air *; bu t were, for want of knowledge in ourselves and better information from others prevailed with to take up such evidence against the accused as on further consideration and better information we justly fear was insufficient for the touching ** of lives of any.

Whereby we fear we have been instrumental with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon ourselves and this people of the Lord the guilt of innocent blood... We do therefore hereby signify to all in general, and to the surviving sufferers in especial, our deep sense of, and sorrow for our errors in acting on such evidence to condemnation of any person. And we do hereby declare that we justly fear that we were sadly deluded and mistaken, for which we are much disquieted and distressed in our minds, and do humbly beg forgiveness, first of God for Christ's sake for this error...

* Satan
** some scholars translate this word as taking, although that opinion of etymology remains in question

You can read the Confession of Error in its entirety here

Header: Arresting a Witch by Howard Pyle from Harper's volume 67 1883 via Wikimedia

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

Yesterday was the Feast of All Saints, and today is the Feast of All Souls. Remembering the exalted and the humble alike, the two feasts combine nicely in the person of Maximilian Maria Kolbe. The priest who is now a saint in the Catholic Church walked through the underworld as surely as Agnes the miller's daughter. But his suffering has a completely different feeling about it. Perhaps it is the immediacy of modernity; or perhaps it is the way that the martyr took the mantel of darkness willingly and came out shining.

Kolbe was born on January 8,1894 in Zdunska Wola, Poland. By all accounts he was a sickly child and contracted tuberculosis at a young age. Long months in sanitariums allowed him time for contemplation and he was just out of boyhood when he joined the Franciscan order at the age of 16. Kolbe, whose middle name may give a hint at his predilection, had a passionate devotion to the Virgin Mary. In his book Maximilian Kolbe: No Greater Love, the saint's biographer and fellow prelate Boniface Hanley called him "animated by pious zeal" so that, despite his infirmities, Kolbe was always able to serve.

To this religious end, Kolbe formed the Knights of Mary Immaculate through which he hoped to revive the Medieval Marian devotion that had always been a feature of Catholicism in his native county. He then began an order of friars known as the City of the Immaculate which quickly grew in size to the larges religious community of men at the time. He took his love of the Virgin on a mission to Japan where he organized a branch of his order called the Garden of the Immaculate.

Kolbe was not one to rest on his laurels, despite growing bouts of tubercular incapacity. He returned to Poland in 1936 with the intent of expanding the City of the Immaculate and the journal that he had started before leaving for Japan. These goals were never to be fulfilled; the Nazis took over Poland in 1939.

History is rarely what we are taught. Unlike the belief of most modern school children, the Nazi's systematic genocide did not fall only upon the Jews. Homosexuals, Gypsies and Catholics - particularly those who had taken vows of any kind - were also on Hitler's list for eradication. Kolbe knew what awaited him under the Nazi boot and quietly prepared himself. He wrote:

I would like to suffer and die in a knightly manner, even to the shedding of the last drop of my blood, to hasten the day of gaining the whole world for the Immaculate Mother of God.

Kolbe was arrested and shipped off to Auschwitz in February of 1941. He was not allowed camp issued garments, but left in his thin cassock to shiver in the winter cold. Put to hard labor, he suffered brutal beatings due to his inability to keep up with the work. His condition worsened; every cough wracked his bruised, skeletal body and brought up clots of blood.

Through it all, Kolbe remained a light of cheerfulness to his fellow prisoners. He helped who he could and encouraged all of them, regardless of background or religion. Those who survived would remember him praying with them, joking and reminding them not to despair.

Yet more misery awaited when a prisoner from Kolbe's cell block managed to escape in July. As a punishment, the commandant picked 10 men who would be immured in a bunker and starved to death. One, Francis Gajowniczek, broke down in tears pleading that he could not die as he had a wife and child. It was then that Father Kolbe stepped forward and volunteered to take Gajowniczek's place. The commandant obliged; the ten men were marched into the underground room and sealed up behind a metal door.

The prisoners managed to get along for a time, drinking their own urine as long as they could. Kolbe became the group's defacto leader, praying, offering what succor he could and sitting with them as they faded away. The group was walled up on July 30 and by August 14, only four men - including Father Kolbe - were still clinging bitterly to life. The commandant, who had been monitoring the torture via cameras, became enraged at this refusal to simply die. He also wanted the bunker emptied for the holding of yet more prisoners. He ordered it opened and the four miserable, immobile stick-figures were injected with carbolic acid. This was administered intravenously, causing death by embolism. All ten bodies were incinerated in the camp's ovens.

In 1982, Maximilian Maria Kolbe was canonized by the Catholic Church. The man whose life he had literally saved, Francis Gajowniczek, was present at the ceremony. Pope John Paul II read from the Gospel of John: "Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends."

Rest in peace, Father Kolbe. Like Agnes, you've earned it.

Header: 1939 photograph of Maximilian Kolbe via Wikipedia

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

After spending the last three Fridays with the harrowing tale of Agnes the miller's daughter, I for one am ready to turn to lighter fare. And what could possibly more feather light and squeaky clean than the good folks at Disney explaining the origins of Hallowe'en? That's right; nothing. This video was originally released in 1984; essentially when dinosaurs roamed the earth. See if you recognize any of the cartoon clips used in it and in particular watch for the footage from the original Haunted Mansion; that alone dates this thing.

A word of warning: Just watch the video and ignore the comments - they are worse than the creepy looking hooded Druids in the video. Trust me.

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

Today's post is the third and final installment of the unfortunate story of Agnes the Miller's Daughter. Read the first here and the second here.

From October through the winter, Agnes the miller's daughter knew nothing but torment. Only three spaces were allowed to her: her cell in the Falcon Tower in Munich, the torture chamber on the main floor, and the stairways in between. Her head and body were shaved, her limbs were bent and crippled from the horrors of strappado and her mind was all but gone with fear and confusion. She reported seeing the Devil and feeling him in all her limbs.

She was visited by a priest who sang hymns over her as she sat like a rag doll in the corner of her cell. He brought altar boys and incense; the sound and smell must have been almost more than she could bear. But this brief visit did not stop Judge Wangereck from putting Agnes to the question. Even after she was baptized with a new name - Ursula - the terror and pain did not stop.

One morning, which must have seemed like any other if time had any meaning at all, Agnes now Ursula was brought into the chamber. She had to lean on her goaler, an ironworker by trade name Sebastian Georg. There is no evidence that Georg took his job voluntarily but he did it without complaint. He saw to the prisoner's in the torture chamber while his wife took care of their food, bedding and chamber pots.

As Agnes entered the room, Wagnereck caught sight of a bandage around her neck. There was a noticeable bloody spot and he took a moment to ask the girl what had happened. If he sounded concerned, which he may very well have, Agnes probably did not notice.

Georg told Wagnereck that he had "found the prisoner in a pool of blood" that morning, a stab wound in her neck. Agnes finally spoke up and her words very much reveal the horrible state of mind through which she perceived her world:

I did it myself. Today at seven o'clock, a little time before you worshipful gentlemen came to the Falcon Tower. That was when the Devil came to my window dressed like a farmhand and said the rogues - he meant you worshipful gentlemen - the rogues will come back to you now and have you put to the torture again. Look, make away with yourself! That way you'll escape their torture. Otherwise they'll chop off your head and do fearful things to you. You can do it in a flash. In my cell there is a hole in the wall and I had a knife hidden there. And when the Devil coaxed me like that, all at once it was lying in my lap, and in a flash I stuck it in my throat, and cut myself. But our Lord surely did not want me to kill myself, because when I went to stab myself with my left hand, seeing as how I use my left hand for all my work, I simply pushed the left hand away with my right. After that, I fell to the floor.

It was revealed that Agnes had the knife secreted in her cell for two weeks. Master Georg's wife confirmed that a knife had gone missing around that time. Though the girl's cell was searched, the knife was never found. The spin would later be that the Devil himself had taken it away.

But there was no pity for an injured Agnes now Ursula. She would be put to the question on seven more occasions and dangled by her wrists behind her back if she could not answer correctly or refused to name other witches. Insanity stalked poor Agnes. At night in her freezing cell, if she did not see the Devil she saw the ghost of her father, mercifully killed by the torment she currently suffered. He would sit by her quietly, saying nothing but sighing now and then.

In March of 1601 Agnes the miller's daughter, now known by her "Christian" name Ursula, was taken to a field outside the gates of Munich. Here a pyre had been erected and she, along with her mother and other conspirators named by mutual acquaintances, would lose her life to the awful misery of fire. The flames were supposed to burn the Devil out of the witch; the final agony was supposed to lift up the soul to God. Saints are made in such ways.

The family who called Agnes, her father and her mother witches suffered even more than the miller and his kin. The now famous Pappenheimers would know a grisly death march rarely rivaled in the annals of the witchcraft trials. Their story is one of governments finding the least of their people and using them as an "example." The sad story of Agnes the miller's daughter may be but a footnote to theirs, but it should be well remembered. There but for the grace of some great spirit go we...

Header: Burning of Witches at Baden c November, 1585 via Wikipedia

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

When Agnes the miller's daughter was brought once again before Judge Wagnereck she had been in her drafty cell in Munich's Falcon Tower for more than a month. Her clothes had been taken from her and replaced by a shapeless and doubtless itchy wool robe. She was probably thin; the accounts imply that she had refused food. She was certainly not the defiant young woman she had been only a few short weeks before. And now she stood across the table from a man she would soon imagine as an arch-fiend. A man who was well fed, well rested and unfortunately full of news and questions.

Wagnereck first informed Agnes that he and all his fellows present knew her for a witch. The evidence said as much. She should not trouble herself with denials that would only endanger her immortal soul.

She said, we imagine in a clear voice: "Although you speak to me a great deal about my soul's salvation, I am not a witch."

The judge then pounced: did Agnes know that her father was dead, his neck broken by the Devil in his cell?

Agnes reeled a bit, stunned by the hard blow. But she righted herself: "I am sorry for it."

Seeing that one strike would not do, Wagnereck continued. "If you do not give up your recalcitrance, we are given no choice but to put you to the question."

"If it must be so," Agnes continued, "then so it must be in the name of the Lord. Jesus Christ was also tortured."

Probably in a fit of rage by now, Wagnereck ordered the girl's wrists tied behind her back. She was then hoisted up by those wrists to dangle in exquisite agony just inches above the forgiving floor. She whimpered as her tortures stared at her, none of them in any hurry to relieve her pain. Just when the misery must have seemed unbearable, Wagnereck unleashed his hardest pitch:

Did Agnes know that her mother, Anna, had confessed to being a witch? Did she know that Anna had also revealed that Agnes had been consecrated to the Devil? Did she know that the judges were aware she had been a witch sense she was twelve years old?

This broke the wall of strength that Agnes has manage to build for herself. This and, most probably, the blinding agony of torture. "If my mother says I am a witch, then I might just as well be one."

Agnes was let down and Wagnereck began the questioning. "Who taught you witchcraft?"

"I'd just as well say my mother. I'll just have to put up with being a witch - " by now sobbing uncontrollably " - Oh dear mother! Go on! Make us suffer both of us!"

"Where did you first meet the Devil?"

A loud sigh emanated from Agnes: "I have never seen a devil in my born days."

With that, she was hoisted up again and Agnes screamed out in abject misery: "I have repented and suffered for all my sins! I have seen the Devil at home!":

Wagnereck left the poor innocent dangling above the floor as he pummeled Agnes with a laundry list of questions: What form did the Devil take? What did he give her for her soul? What malefice did she make in the Devil's name?

Agnes answered as best she could, making up a jumbled, hodge-podge tale of flying ointment and witches Sabbaths. Eventually, the shallow breathing forced on the girl by her insanely painful position took its toll; Agnes began to lose consciousness.

At this point, the record says that Agnes "suddenly began to talk in a strange manner." She said "my only work is but in prayer," and "If I am not pleasing, I wish I should become so." Then she raised her head as best she could and addressed her tormentor: "Sir, I give you praise and thanks that you have taken care of me. Spare my mother as little as you spare me. My father and my mother are also witches.... Oh! My soul is all a-tremble... How brightly the sun is shining."

This brought on a brief fit of pity. Agnes was lowered to the floor and given a bit of water. She asked for holy water, "that I might become a child of redemption" but there is no record that her request was granted. Instead the respite was cut short. Agnes was pulled up once more and the questioning continued.

The torture went on, probably for hours. Agnes was subjected to more and more misery, let go and then jerked up again, when she could not fathom what it was that Wagnereck wanted her to say. She must confess to killing babies and eating their flesh, but she probably could not comprehend such an abomination. Of course the judge would not put words in her mouth. Why he would not is easy to imagine.

Finally Agnes succumbed to her misery. She feinted away and was unbound and taken back to her cell. But only for a while. She was returned to the torture chamber in the afternoon but this time no torture was necessary. Like her mother, Agnes said whatever her tormentors wanted to hear. Tales of cannibalism, murder, and sex with demons all spilled out of her mouth; she said things she had probably never imagined before. It didn't matter though. As long as it kept her from the agony in the corner of the room it didn't matter one little bit.

Eventually, as night fell, Agnes was allowed to return to her cell. Her limbs would swell unbearably and turn the most miserable colors of black and blue. She knew more awaited her as she lie in her dark, cold cell. But there wasn't anything at all that she could do. Agnes the miller's daughter, just one of so many who were made to tell lies that they themselves might learn to believe, tipped over into the dark pond of madness...

(The inevitable end of Agnes' story will appear here next Friday. Again, I am indebted to Michael Kunze for his tireless research and the book Highroad to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft.)

Header: Procession of the Guilty by Francisco Goya c 1812 via Wikimedia

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

As Hallowe'en draws nearer, our thoughts turn to ghoulies and ghosties and witches in pointy hats. My thoughts personally turn to the real "witches" of yesterday and today who were and are tortured, persecuted and either killed or driven to kill themselves. Imagined or real, these "servants of Satan" most typically come with female bodies and the fact that such persecution continues to this day all around the world is a sad commentary on just how far "civilization" hasn't come.

In honor of those who have lost and will lose everything to religious zealots, the next few installments of Chthonian Histories will be dedicated to the true story of a simple German girl who was given up by her unfortunate family, questioned, tortured and murdered in 1600.

Agnes was the daughter of a poor miller and his unfortunately ugly wife. They ran what was known as "the convent mill" in the village of Tettenwing in Lower Bavaria. Their mill did not thrive as it was considered haunted. Stories flew about their village that linked the mill itself, the miller and his family to everything from the sending of nightmares to causing plague. It was only travelers that patronized the mill and a traveler with grain to grind was an unusual occurrence in depressed times. The mill fell into disrepair. Local gossips whispered that the miller's wife was an ogress. And a witch.

The one bright spot around the mill was the miller's only surviving child: Agnes. Unlike her parents, Agnes was beautiful. At somewhere around the age of 16 in 1600, Agnes was the object of many a local farm boy's affection. Much to their mothers' dismay, these local sons brought Agnes gifts and got into brawls over her. Every now and then the sheriff would stop by to tell the miller to keep his daughter "in line." As if her beauty was something she could control. As if she put a spell on all the farm boys.

One summer day the sheriff came again, but this time he came with unfamiliar and well dressed men on horseback. They had come to search the house, they told the miller, for signs of "witchery". He and his family had been accused of practicing the dark arts for "these thirty years and more." That included his ogress wife and his enchantress daughter.

The miller protested, of course, but to no avail. It did not take long for the thugs that came along with the fine gentlemen to find a second hearth, built under the kitchen stairs. It was concealed behind a door and on it was a "pot containing a stiff paste, a congealed liquid, or something of the kind. That was no doubt witches' ointment."

The pot was confiscated, the miller and his family put in chains, and Agnes, along with her aging mother and father, was on her way to the notorious Falcon Tower in Munich.

The local judges went to work right away, subjecting Agnes to long, verbal interrogations but finding her "recalcitrant" and unwilling to confess to any knowledge of witchcraft or the devil. She informed the head judge, Wangereck, that she knew people called her parents ogres. All the same, the accusation was unjust and "would never be shown to be true of her, either."

Wangereck, intuiting what would truly break the young woman's spirit, put her in a dank cell for two months while he worked her parents over. The miller died after several rounds of the torture known as strappado (illustrated above). His wife, Anna, was also subjected to the heinous dislocation of various joints. Like her husband, she endured not only the horrible position of hanging from her wrists with her arms behind her back, but she also suffered the misery of having weights tied to her ankles to pull her knees and hips loose.

Anna confessed in a stream of wild babbling. She was returned to her cell where her swollen joints made it impossible to move from the straw bedding.

Meanwhile, Wangereck returned to lovely, recalcitrant Agnes...

(The tale of Agnes the miller's daughter continues next Friday. The majority of my research is indebted to the book High Road to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft by Michael Kunze, translated from German by William E. Yuill)

Header: Interrogation by Bessonov Nicolay via InquisitionArt (please note that Nicolay's art, while brilliant, is very realistic and very graphic; viewer discretion is advised)