page_title: Adultery
section_title: Other historical practices
hierarchical_section_title: Adultery / Cultural and religious traditions / Other historical practices
caption_attribution_description: English: This bas-relief from Bamberg Cathedral depicts the trial by ordeal of the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich II's wife, Kunigunde. After being accussed of adultery she proved her innocence by walking over red-hot ploughshares.
context_page_description: Adultery is extramarital sex that is considered objectionable on social, religious, moral, or legal grounds. Although the sexual activities that constitute adultery vary, as well as the social, religious, and legal consequences, the concept exists in many cultures and is similar in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. A single act of sexual intercourse is generally sufficient to constitute adultery, and a more long-term sexual relationship is sometimes referred to as an affair.
  Historically, many cultures considered adultery a very serious crime, some subject to severe punishment, usually for the woman and sometimes for the man, with penalties including capital punishment, mutilation, or torture. Such punishments have gradually fallen into disfavor, especially in Western countries from the 19th century. In countries where adultery is still a criminal offense, punishments range from fines to caning and even capital punishment. Since the 20th century, criminal laws against adultery have become controversial, with most Western countries decriminalising adultery.
context_section_description: In some Native American cultures, severe penalties could be imposed on an adulterous wife by her husband. In many instances she was made to endure a bodily mutilation which would, in the mind of the aggrieved husband, prevent her from ever being a temptation to other men again. Among the Aztecs, wives caught in adultery were occasionally impaled, although the more usual punishment was to be stoned to death.
  The Code of Hammurabi, a well-preserved Babylonian law code of ancient Mesopotamia, dating back to about 1772 BC, provided drowning as punishment for adultery.
  Amputation of the nose – rhinotomy – was a punishment for adultery among many civilizations, including ancient India, ancient Egypt, among Greeks and Romans, and in Byzantium and among the Arabs.
  In the tenth century, the Arab explorer Ibn Fadlan noted that adultery was unknown among the pagan Oghuz Turks. Ibn Fadlan writes that "adultery is unknown among them; but whomsoever they find by his conduct that he is an adulterer, they tear him in two. This comes about so: they bring together the branches of two trees, tie him to the branches and then let both trees go, so that he is torn in two."
  In medieval Europe, early Jewish law mandated stoning for an adulterous wife and her partner.
  In England and its successor states, it has been high treason to engage in adultery with the King's wife, his eldest son's wife and his eldest unmarried daughter. The jurist Sir William Blackstone writes that "the plain intention of this law is to guard the Blood Royal from any suspicion of bastardy, whereby the succession to the Crown might be rendered dubious." Adultery was a serious issue when it came to succession to the crown. Philip IV of France had all three of his daughters-in-law imprisoned, two (Margaret of Burgundy and Blanche of Burgundy) on the grounds of adultery and the third (Joan of Burgundy) for being aware of their adulterous behaviour. The two brothers accused of being lovers of the king's daughters-in-law were executed immediately after being arrested. The wife of Philip IV's eldest son bore a daughter, the future Joan II of Navarre, whose paternity and succession rights were disputed all her life.
  The christianization of Europe came to mean that, in theory, and unlike with the Romans, there was supposed to be a single sexual standard, where adultery was a sin and against the teachings of the church, regardless of the sex of those involved. In practice, however, the church seemed to have accepted the traditional double standard which punished the adultery of the wife more harshly than that of the husband. Among Germanic tribes, each tribe had its own laws for adultery, and many of them allowed the husband to "take the law in his hands" and commit acts of violence against a wife caught committing adultery. In the Middle Ages, adultery in Vienna was punishable by death through impalement. Austria was one of the last Western countries to decriminalize adultery, in 1997.
  The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert, Vol. 1 (1751) noted the legal double standard from that period, it wrote:
  "Furthermore, although the husband who violates conjugal trust is guilty as well as the woman, it is not permitted for her to accuse him, nor to pursue him because of this crime".
caption: After being accused of adultery, Cunigunde of Luxembourg proved her innocence by walking over red-hot ploughshares.
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