Medieval torture.

Her Last view

Everyone is assembled at Place da Revolution as if the Queen Marie Antoinette is about to distribute rations, not that she is known for it. The drums are played in sync with the queen's heart beat pounding faster as the blade approaches her neck. This is a moment all spectators have been anticipating, screaming and cheering is heard until the drums stop. The Queen’s head falls into a basket while the rest of her body remains tied to the guillotine. Parisians believe she is destined for hell because she didn't love them enough, but in reality only God knows where her soul is. The silence only lasts a microsecond until cheering begins again, justice has been served.

See, Marie is very lucky, because the revolutionaries  decided a quick and painless death is good enough for treason.  They therefore institutionalized the Guillotine to be the standard punishment that everyone suffered regardless of class. Both Marie and her husband King Louis XIV had extra marital affairs but at the time, only Marie was at fault. If she wasn’t convicted with treason she would be tortured for infidelity.

I know feminism has come a long way because in the medieval times, women were punished for simply being human. A woman was at fault if she talked too much, if she didn't talk enough, if she didn't submit to her husbands, literally if she breathed.Not everyone was as gentle as Venetians to punish bickering with a mask. In other parts of Europe, she would be painfully prevented from talking with a shrew's fiddle or a scolds bridle or pear of anguish.

Scolds Bridle

Pear of Anguish about to be inserted in her mouth, her face tells it all.

Shrew's fiddle

 The punishment was even worse when she tried to fulfill their lives out of her very unfulfilling marriage. Sharp objects such as the cat's paw and/or the breast tonger were used to tear flesh off her body. Even if she didn't instantly from the actual tearing, the psychological torture and infection would eventually kill her. Infection was guaranteed because the torture devices were never cleaned, victim after victim.

Cat's Paw

The expression when subjected to a red hot breast ripper,  

Sexual crimes like infidelity and homosexuality, were also punished with the Judas Cradle. The victim would be tied in ropes, naked and then lowered to a pyramid like chair with a sharp spike. The intention was to tear the victim's orifice either the vagina or anus or both. As if that wasn’t painful enough, sometimes the chair was oiled, weights were added to the legs to hurt even more. Wait, there’s more, in some cases, the victim was bounced up and down the chair several times where either the victim or a spectator was forced to confess.

The Cradle

 Most torture devices in the medieval times were invented to extract confessions from heretics, a practice made legal and even holy, during the various religion inquisitions. This was a time when a group of institutions in the Catholic Church aimed to combat heresy with rather extreme means. Through these means, heretics were interrogated to confess either by being tortured themselves or watching a loved one being tortured. In addition to Judas Cradle, the following devices were used among others.

·         Strappado

The rope was pulled until the cracking sound of bones dislocation was heard.

·         The Rack

I can feel the bones fracturing

·         Heretic’s fork; It may not kill you but you wouldn't eat, sleep or breathe. 

Heretic's fork

·          Saw torture; blood rush to the brain prolonged the pain. The apostle Simon the Apostle is believed to have died this way. 

·         The iron maiden: The torturer pressed against the spikes to turn up the pain volume. I could confess to anything like this.

·         Head crusher; Apparently the brains of heretic people were dysfunctional, so crushing them would definitely cure them,.

Along side these devices, some other kind of torture continued simultaneously to make the victim speak. Only pure fanatics could resist such pain. These mini-torture devices include the following:

• Spanish boot/Malay boot; These were fitted to spike through the legs. They could always be made tighter.

• Tongue tearer

•  Knee splitter

·        

Imagine this placed while placed on the Judas Cradle

·         Thumbscrew/pillywinks

The face tells it all

     

The interrogation was meant to torture you until you pleaded guilty, and when you did, an exciting death awaited, that is if at all you were still alive. Death penalty came in the following forms.

Crocodile shears; They were intended to destroy those who attempted to murder the king. It was mostly used on men's penis' although fingers were also targets.

·       Hanged, drawn and quartered; a severe punishment reserved for high treason. The victim was drawn with horses to the execution site, then hanged almost to death, followed by emasculation, disemboweling to finally being quartered with four horses as shown below. Treason was definitely not for the weak.

Crucifixion; even Jesus wasn't excused.

·         Catherine Wheel: With fire at the bottom, the wheel was turned until the victim's bones broke.

·         Coffin torture: This was probably the longest since the victim was publically hanged in a coffin-like cage and left to rot for days with no help. 

·         Impalement: Imagine pole dancing but the poles pierces through your body instead. You feel pain and the only way out is death which not even gravity can speed up. If just imagining it disgusts you, one Romanian Emperor Vlad the Impaler actually enjoyed a meal while watching 250 people impaled.

Vlad , the impaler

·         Cement shoes; Although isolation can be unbearable, it doesn't beat being to heavy cement shoes, then dumped to die in the sea, alone. Being a very slow means of death, you are guaranteed a very memorable last  in your afterlife.

Brazen Bull;Invented in Greece, it was made to imitate the Bull burping as the victim slowly roasts in the heated belly.

For the love of the entertainment, even petty criminals were subjected to horrendous torture.Methods of torture included: 

         Rat torture: A rat cage was placed on the victim's abdomen and rats were forced to dig up the victim with fire on the other side. 

·         The tub: If you ever wondered if your own shit can kill you, now you know it can. All you have to do is sit in it like in the tub,while someones feeds you constantly to keep it flowing. 

I saw a lot more at the Torture Museum in Amsterdam which made me wonder if medieval Europeans were genetically different from us. The truth is they were not that different, they might have developed creative ways of torturing but that was actually done only in 1-2% of the cases. This is very close to the death penalty rate today which is also administered in different flavors. I know in Tanzania and many other countries, petty thieves are punished not by the law but by the mob through stoning and burning. Perhaps we are not that different at all. Crimes are bad but do we really need to abuse our right to a short, fragile life to prove the point? That I'd very much like to know.