On this date in 1738, the Jewish proselytizer Baruch Leibov was publicly burned in St. Petersburg along with a convert, retired Russian naval officer Alexander Voznitsyn.
The nobleman Voznitsyn met the Smolensk merchant Leibov in Moscow and the two became friends and spiritual interlocutors. In 1737, Voznitsyn’s wife denounced him for Judaizing as she began to notice that he’d stopped wearing a cross, would pray facing the wall instead of Orthodox icons, and avoided eating certain foods. It emerged too that his Christian confessor had not heard from him in a very long time, and that he had ordered peasants on his estate to destroy some icons.
Both men denied the charges at first, but Voznitsyn’s genitalia confessed his apostasy and after an application of torture, so did Voznitsyn’s mouth.
The subsequent punishment was remarkably harsh even in contemporaries’ eyes — via the curious insistence of the Empress Anna upon severity.
A rarely-used edict from the pre-Petrine 17th century was invoked against Voznitsyn for blaspheming; in the case of Leibov, it was necessary in order to fit him into the statute to construe his having “seduced” Voznitsyn into the Abrahamic faith during the two men’s religious bull sessions. Since Voznitsyn was a seasoned and educated man with a known predilection for spiritual seeking, this finding negated the entire qualifier; if Voznitsyn was “lured” or “deceived” into Judaizing then it was officially impossible for anyone to Judaize absent deception.
But in practice, it was likely the convert’s exceptional qualities that attracted such a demonstrative punishment — “so that such ungodly deeds are discontinued, and such a blasphemer as Voznitsyn and converter to Judaism as Boruch do not dare to deceive others: for the sake of such blasphemous guilt … both to be executed and burned.”
They died together before a vast concourse of gawkers near St. Petersburg’s Admiralty building.
On this day..
- 1942: Wenceslao Vinzons
- 1958: Nuri al-Said
- 1857: Danforth Hartson, again
- 1381: John Ball, radical priest
- 1936: Charlotte Bryant
- 756: Yang Guifei, favored concubine
- 1883: Leoncio Prado, for defending his homeland
- 1927: Three persistent escapees
- 1907: Qiu Jin, Chinese feminist and revolutionary
- 1953: John Christie, a little late in the day
- 1977: Princess Misha'al bint Fahd al Saud and her lover
- Themed Set: The Feminine Mystique
- 1685: James Scott, Duke of Monmouth