What was torture in medieval times

On 24 November , Hugh Despenser the Younger was judged a traitor and a thief, and sentenced to public execution by hanging, as a thief, and drawing and quartering, as a traitor. Additionally, he was sentenced to be disembowelled for having procured discord between the King and Queen, and to be beheaded, for returning to England after having been banished.

Immediately after the trial, Hugh was dragged behind four horses to his place of execution, where a great fire was lit. He was stripped naked, and Biblical verses denouncing arrogance and evil were written on his skin. He was then hanged from a gallows 50 ft 15 m high, but cut down before he could choke to death.

Hugh was then tied to a ladder, and in full view of the crowd had his genitals sliced off and burned in his still-conscious sight then his entrails slowly pulled out, and, finally, his heart cut out and thrown into the fire. Just before he died, it is recorded that he let out a "ghastly inhuman howl," much to the delight and merriment of the spectators. Finally, his corpse was beheaded, his body cut into four pieces, and his head was mounted on the gates of London.

This execution seems to have provided a template for legislation for later punishments for Treason in England. To be hanged, drawn and quartered was from the penalty in England for men guilty of high treason, although its use is first recorded during the reign of King Henry III.

Those convicted of treason were drawn by horse on a wooden hurdle to the place of execution. Once there, they were ritually hanged almost to the point of death, emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded and quartered chopped into four pieces.

As a warning against further dissent, their remains were often displayed at prominent places, such as London Bridge. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burnt at the stake. Many notable figures were subjected to the punishment, including over treasonable priests executed at Tyburn. Catholic plotters engaged in treasonable conspiracies like the Gunpowder Plot were hanged, drawn and quartered, as were some of those involved in sentencing Charles I to death.

During the Bloody Assizes hundreds of rebels were dispatched in less than a month. The Treason Act of , passed in the 25th year of Edward III's reign and still in force today was enacted at a time in English history when a monarch's right to rule was indisputable, and was therefore written principally to protect the throne and sovereign. The Act split the old feudal offence of treason into two classes. Petty treason referred to the killing of a master or lord by his servant, a husband by his wife, or a prelate by his clergyman.

Men guilty of petty treason were drawn and hanged, while women were burnt. High treason was the most egregious offence an individual could commit, and was seen as a direct threat to the king's right to govern. Attempts to undermine his authority were viewed with as much seriousness as if the accused had made a direct assault on his body, which itself would be an attack on his status as sovereign.

As such an attack could potentially undermine the state, retribution was considered an absolute necessity, for which the ultimate punishment was required. The practical difference between the two offences therefore was in the consequence of being convicted; rather than being drawn and hanged, men were to be hanged, drawn and quartered, while for reasons of public decency women were instead drawn and burnt.

The act declared that a person was committing high treason if engaged in one of the following seven offences:. After being sentenced, malefactors were generally held in prison for a few days before being drawn by horse to the place of execution, usually on a hurdle, their hands tied.

Once stripped of their clothing, they were taken to the scaffold and hanged for a short period, but only to cause strangulation and near-death. They were then disembowelled, and normally emasculated. Those still conscious at this point would have seen their entrails burnt, before their heart was removed. The body was then decapitated, signalling an unquestionable death, and quartered.

Each dismembered piece of the body was later displayed publicly, as a warning to others. The heads of the executed were often displayed on London Bridge, for centuries the route by which many travellers from the south entered the city.

On occasion accompanied by the parboiled quarters, such gruesome trophies served as a more permanent reminder of the penalty for treason. Before they were hanged, prisoners normally gave a public speech, expressing their remorse and asking for forgiveness.

John Ballard a preest, and first persuader of Babington to these odious treasons, was laid aloue vpon an hurdell, and six others two and two in like sort, all drawne from Tower hill through the citie of London, untu a field at the vpper end of Holborne, hard by the high waie side to saint Giles in the field, where was erected a scaffold for their execution, and a paire of gallows of extraordinarie hight On the first daie the traitors were placed vpon the scaffold, that the one might behold the reward of his fellowes treason.

Ballard the preest, who was the first brocher of this treason, was the first that was hanged, who being cut downe according to judgement was dismembred, his bellie ript up, his bowels and traitorous heart taken out and throwne into the fire, his head also seuered from his shoulders was set on a short stake vpon the top of the gallows, and the trunke of his bodie quartered and imbrued in his owne bloud, wherewith the executioners hands were bathed, and some of the standers by but to their great loathing, as not able for their liues to auoid it, such was the throng besprinkled.

His sentence, passed at the Old Bailey, was pronounced:. That you be led to the place from whence you came, and from thence be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution, and then you shall be hanged by the neck and, being alive, shall be cut down, and your privy members to be cut off, and your entrails be taken out of your body and, you living, the same to be burnt before your eyes, and your head to be cut off, your body to be divided into four quarters, and head and quarters to be disposed of at the pleasure of the King's majesty.

And the Lord have mercy on your soul. Harrison was executed two days later, at Charing Cross. After being hanged for several minutes, half-choking, he was cut open. Watched by a large crowd of spectators, including the new king, Harrison reportedly leaned across and hit the executioner-resulting in the swift removal of his own head. His entrails were thrown onto a nearby fire.

Three days later his head adorned the sled which drew fellow regicide John Cooke to his execution, before later being displayed in Westminster Hall; his quarters were fastened to the city gates. In all, 13 men were hanged, drawn and quartered for their involvement in Charles's execution. Petty treason was abolished in Hanging, drawing and quartering was finally rendered obsolete in England by the Forfeiture Act of , which limited the death penalty for treason to hanging alone; although the Act allowed for the monarch to substitute beheading for hanging.

The heretic's fork was a torture device, consisting of a length of metal with two opposed bi-pronged "forks" as well as an attached belt or strap. The device was placed between the breast bone and throat just under the chin and secured with a leather strap around the neck, while the victim was hung from the ceiling or otherwise suspended in a way so that they could not lie down.

A person wearing it couldn't fall asleep. The moment their head dropped with fatigue, the prongs pierced their throat or chest, causing great pain.

This very simple instrument created long periods of sleep deprivation. People were awake for days, which made confessions more likely. Traditionally, the fork was engraved with the Latin word abiuro meaning "I recant" , and was used by the various Inquisitions. Impalement was a method of torture and execution in which a person is pierced with a long stake.

This method would lead to slow, painful, death. Often, the victim was hoisted into the air after partial impalement. Gravity and the victim's own struggles would cause him to slide down the pole. Death could take many days. Impalement was practised in Europe throughout the Middle Ages.

Vlad III Dracula, who learned the method of killing by impalement while staying in Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, as a prisoner, and Ivan the Terrible have passed into legend as major users of the method.

Impalement was Vlad's preferred method of torture and execution. His method of torture was a horse attached to each of the victim's legs as a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body.

Death by impalement was slow and agonising. Victims sometimes endured for hours or even days. Vlad often had the stakes arranged in various geometric patterns. The most common pattern was a ring of concentric circles in the outskirts of a city that constituted his target. The height of the spear indicated the rank of the victim. The corpses were often left decaying for months.

One of the most famous woodcuts of the period shows Vlad feasting in a forest of stakes and their grisly burdens outside Bra? This place was famously known as the Forest of the Impaled. This method of torture - or rather capital punishment - involved making an incision in the abdominal area, separating the duodenum from the pylorus, and attaching of the upper part of the intestine to a crank.

The crank would then be rotated to extract the intestines from the gastrointestinal cavity of the still conscious person. The outcome was always death, but not immediately. We have no images of real intesinal cranks, but martyrdom stories sometimes feature intestinal cranks, and the images illustrating these imaginary events are presumably as reliable as contemporary illustrations of tortures inflicted by not on Christians. An iron maiden German: Eiserne Jungfrau is a torture device, consisting of an iron cabinet, with a hinged front, sufficiently tall to enclose a human being.

It usually has a small closable opening so that the torturer can interrogate the victim and torture or kill a person by piercing the body with sharp objects such as knives, spikes or nails , while he or she is forced to remain standing.

The iron maiden is often associated with the Middle Ages, but there is no wholly unambiguous account of the iron maiden earlier than , Some Iron madens have earlier dates carved on them - but this is not a reliable way to date them, as dates can be added at any time.

Geoffrey Abbot attributes to a French officer the following account of discoi vering such a device in the dungeons beneath the headquarters of the Inquisition:.

In a recess in the subterranean vault, next to the private hall where the interrogations were conducted, stood a wooden figure, carved by the monks, and representing the Virgin Mary.

A gilded halo encompassed her head, and in her right hand she held a banner extolling the glory of her Faith. It appeared to us at first sight that, despite the silken robe adorning her, she wore some kind of breastplate which, on closer examination, was seen to be stuck full of extremely sharp, narrow knife-blades, the points being directed towards the spectator.

The arms and hands were jointed, controlled by machinery concealed behind a curtain. One of the Inquisition staff was commanded to set it in motion, and when the figure extended its arms, as though to press someone most lovingly to its heart, a Polish grenadier was ordered to substitute his well-filled knapsack for an imaginary victim. The effigy hugged it closer and closer, and when finally it was made to unclasp its arms, the knapsack had been perforated to a depth of two or three inches, and remained hanging on the points of the projecting daggers.

Persons accused of heresy, or of blaspheming God or the Saints, and obstinately refusing to confess their guilt, were conducted into this cellar, at the furthest end of which, numerous lamps placed around a recess, threw a variegated illumination of the gilded halo, and on the figure with a banner in her right hand.

At a little altar standing opposite to her, and hung with black, the prisoner received the sacrament, and two ecclesiastics earnestly besought him, in the presence of the Mother of God, to make a confession. On her bosom thy hardened heart will be melted; there thou wilt confess. All at once the figure began to extend its arms; the prisoner was led to her embrace; she drew him nearer and nearer, pressed him almost imperceptibly closer and closer, until the spikes and knives just pierced his chest.

Abbot, Geoffrey April New York: St. Martin's Press. The iron maiden of Nuremberg was anthropomorphic. It was probably styled after primitive "Gothic" representations Mary, the mother of Jesus, with a cast likeness of her on the face. The "maiden" was about 7 feet 2.

Inside the tomb-sized container, the iron maiden was fitted with dozens of sharp spikes. Several nineteenth century iron maidens are on display in museums around the world. It is possible that some Iron Maidens were originally designed as a kind of coffin torture with the spikes added later.

The first reference to an execution with the Maiden that has yet come to light stems from August 14, , although the instrument had been in use for several decades by then. The Judas cradle was a tall stool shaped device with a metal or wooden pyramid on top. The victim would be stripped, bound with ropes, and suspended above the device. They would then be lowered, usually very slowly, on to the device, making the pyramid enter the vagina, anus or scrotum.

The amount of pain the device inflicted could be changed in several ways. The victim could be rocked, they could be dropped repeatedly onto the device, one leg could be lifted, olive oil could be spread on the pyramid, or brass weights could be hung from the victim's legs. Sometimes to prolong torture the victim would be suspended above the device over night, and torture would continue the next morning.

The device was rarely, if ever, cleaned. If victims did not die from the device, they almost always died from infection. Torture with the Judas Cradle could last several hours to several days. Apart from the agonising pain one suffered, the humiliation was the primary attraction for this method of torture. Whenever the victim fainted from the pain, the torturer would lift the victim until the tortured person was "awake" again to commence with the process. The Judas Cradle was used in several different countries, each having their own names for it.

It is also known as the Judas Chair. A similar device, known as a horse, is sometimes said to have been used in Prussia to discipline soldiers. This device was not designed to break the skin. See also Wooden Horse.

In the Middle Ages mutilation was popular. As well as branding, Church and Civil authorities carried out a range of mutilations, lopping off hands, feet, ears, tongs, lips, noses, breasts and genitals. In England ear lopping was particularly popular. Pamphleteers attacking the religious views of the Anglican episcopacy under William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had their ears cut off, including Dr. In Scotland a Covenanter, James Gavin of Douglas of Lanarkshire had his ears cut off for refusing to renounce his religious faith.

The Church had little incentive to publicise the tortures it used, but was much keener to illustrate fictitious martyrdoms, which by happy happy coincidence features exactly the same range of tortures. This version of the pear has also been referred to as the "Pear of Confession", the "Pope's Pear" these due to reports that such devices were used during the Inquisition ; the "oral pear", "vaginal pear", or "anal pear"; and just "The Pear".

A pear shaped instrument, consisting of four leaves that slowly separated from each other as the torturer turned the screw at the top. This device was used during the Middle Ages as a way to torture women who conducted a miscarriage, liars, blasphemers, and homosexuals. A pear-shaped instrument was inserted into one of the victim's orifices: the vagina for women, the anus for those considered to be male homosexuals, and the mouth for liars and blasphemers.

The instrument consisted of four leaves that slowly separated from each other as the torturer turned the screw at the top. It was the torturers decision to simply tear the skin or expand the "pear" to its maximum and mutilate the victim. The Pear of Anguish was usually very adorned to differentiate between the anal, vaginal and oral pears. They also varied in size accordingly. This torture very rarely caused death, but was often followed by other torture methods. The choke pear or pear of anguish is the modern name for a type of instrument displayed in some museums, consisting of a metal body usually pear-shaped divided into spoon-like segments that could be spread apart by turning a screw.

The museum descriptions and some recent sources assert that the devices were used either as a gag, to prevent people from speaking, or as an instrument of torture.

The instrument was inserted into the victim's mouth, and then slowly spread apart as the screw was turned. There is no contemporary first-hand account of those devices or their use. The earliest mention is in F. Palioly would have used a mechanical gag to subdue a wealthy Parisian while he and his accomplices robbed the victim's home. Further mentions of the device appear in the 19th century. They are also mentioned in Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue as "Choak Pears," and described as being "formerly used in Holland.

There are a number of extant examples of ornate and elaborate, pear-shaped devices with three or four leaves or lobes, driven by turning a key that rotates the central screw thread, which spreads the leaves. Peine forte et dure Law French for "hard and forceful punishment" was a method of torture formerly used in the common law legal system, in which a defendant who refused to plead "stood mute" would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon his or her chest until a plea was entered, or as the weight of the stones on the chest became too great for the condemned to breathe, fatal suffocation would occur.

The procedure was recorded by a 15th-century witness: "he will lie upon his back, with his head covered and his feet, and one arm will be drawn to one quarter of the house with a cord, and the other arm to another quarter, and in the same manner it will be done with his legs; and let there be laid upon his body iron and stone, as much as he can bear, or more Common law courts originally took a very limited view of their own jurisdiction.

They considered themselves to lack jurisdiction over a defendant until he had voluntarily submitted to it by entering a plea seeking judgement from the court. A criminal justice system that punished only those who volunteered for punishment was unworkable; this was the means chosen to coerce them. Many defendants charged with capital offences refused to plead, since by refusing they would escape forfeiture of property, and their heirs would still inherit their estate.

If the defendant pleaded guilty and was executed, their heirs would inherit nothing, their property escheating to the Crown. Peine forte et dure was abolished in the Kingdom of Great Britain in , although the last known actual use of the practice was in In refusing to plead was deemed to be equivalent to pleading guilty. This was changed in to being deemed a plea of not guilty.

Today, in all common law jurisdictions, standing mute is treated by the courts as equivalent to a plea of not guilty. Giles Corey was pressed to death during the Salem Witch Trials in the s. He is mentioned in Arthur Millar's play, The Crucible. The picquet alternately spelled piquet is a form of punishment or torture. A particularly fiendish example is shown on the right where a French Revolutionary woman is being subjected to it. It was more commonly a military punishment in vogue in late medieval Europe that was sufficiently cruel and ingenious to be characterised by some as a method of torture.

The punishment of the picquet required extremely simple equipment, a stake with one end in the ground and other, exposed end, facing upward. The exposed end would be sharpened to a rounded point. The malefactor, typically a soldier who had disobeyed orders, had one thumb was suspended from a tree, while the sole of the opposite naked foot was balanced on top of the stake.

The point of the stake was sharp enough to jab into the bony interstice and cause considerable discomfort, but not sharp enough to draw blood. To relieve pressure upon the suffering foot, the prisoner relegated all his weight to the thumb, all but tearing the thumb from its socket, which could, in turn, only be relieved by shifting weight onto the tortured foot. The procedure could be continued for as short a duration as a few hours, or as long a duration as twenty-four hours or even forty-eight during extreme cases.

The punishment did not cause lasting harm but was tremendously effective in reminding the sufferer of the supremacy of military discipline. The pillory was a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, formerly used for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse, sometimes lethal.

Like the lesser punishment called the stocks, the pillory consisted of hinged wooden boards that formed holes. In the pillory the head and hands were inserted in these holes.

In stocks the feet were inserted. In some variations both hands and feet were inserted. The boards were then locked together to secure the captive. Different pillories could accommodate one, two, three or more people. The word is documented in English since , and stems from Old French pellori, itself from medieval Latin pilloria, perhaps a diminutive of Latin pila "pillar, stone barrier.

Pillories were set up to hold petty criminals outside churches, in marketplaces, crossroads, and other public places. They were often placed on platforms to increase public visibility of the punished offender. Often a placard detailing the crime was placed nearby. These punishments generally lasted only a few hours. Time in the pillory was more dangerous than in the stocks, as the pillory forced the offender to remain standing and exposed.

A criminal in the stocks could expect to be abused but his or her life was not targeted. A prisoner in the pillory was presumed to have committed a more serious crime and usually triggered a more aggressive reaction from the public. As part of the punishment, crowds would throw rubbish, ordure and other objects at the captive pilloried offender.

With hands trapped, he or she could not avoid thrown objects whether harmless items like rotten food, or injurious ones such as heavy stones, which could and often did result in blinding, permanent maiming, or death. The criminal could also be sentenced to further punishments while in the pillory: humiliation by shaving of some or all hair or regular corporal punishment.. A pillory could also serve as a "whipping post", for birching, caning or permanent mutilation such as branding or having an ear cut off, as in the case of John Bastwick.

After , use of the pillory was restricted in England to punishment for perjury or subornation. It was abolished as a form of punishment in England and Wales in , but the stocks remained in use until The last person to be pilloried in England was Peter James Bossy, who was convicted of "wilful and corrupt perjury" in He was offered the choice of seven years transportation or one hour in the pillory, and chose the latter.

In France, time in the "pilori" was usually limited to two hours. It was replaced in by "exposition", and abolished in The poteau was a simple post, often with a board around only the neck, and was synonymous with the mode of punishment. This was the same as the schandpaal "shamepole" in Dutch. The carcan, an iron ring around the neck to tie a prisoner to such a post, was the name of a similar punishment that was abolished in A criminal convicted to serve time in a prison or galleys would, prior to his incarceration, be attached for two to six hours depending on whether he was convicted to prison or the galleys to the carcan, with his name, crime and sentence written on a board over his head.

A permanent small tower, the upper floor of which had a ring made of wood or iron with holes for the victim's head and arms, which was often on a turntable to expose the condemned to all parts of the crowd. Like other permanent apparatus for physical punishment, the pillory was often placed prominently and constructed more elaborately than necessary. It served as a symbol of the power of the judicial authorities, and its presence was a deterrent, like permanent gallows or a gibbet.

In Portugal several pelourinhos, typically on the main square or in front of a major church or palace, are now counted among the major local monuments, several bearing the emblems of a king or queen. In Spain it was called picota. There was a variant, called a barrel pillory, or Spanish mantle, used to punish drunks. It fitted over the entire body, with the head sticking out from a hole in the top.

The criminal was put in either an enclosed barrel, forcing him to kneel in his own filth, or an open barrel, also known as "barrel shirt" or "drunkards collar" after the punishable crime, leaving him to roam about town or military camp and be ridiculed and scorned.

Another variant was the finger pillory, in which a person could be trapped by locking a bent finger in it. The rack is a torture device that consists of an rectangular, usually wooden frame, raised from the ground, with a roller at one end or both ends, having at one end a fixed bar to which the legs were fastened, and at the other a movable bar to which the hands were tied.

The victim's feet were fastened to one roller, and the wrists chained to the other. The torturer turned a handle causing the ropes to pull the victim's arms. Eventually, the victim's bones were dislocated with a loud crack, caused by snapping cartilage, ligaments or bones. If the torturer kept turning the handles the limbs would eventually be torn off.

This method was mostly used to extract confessions, not confessing meant that the torturer could stretch more.

Sometimes, torturers forced their victim to watch other people be tortured with this device to implant psychological fear. Many Knights Templar were tortured with the rack. The limbs collected from this and other punishments of the time were "emptied by the hundreds".

Sometime this method was limited to dislocating a few bones, but the torturer often went too far and rendered the legs or arms sometimes both useless. In the late Middle Ages, some new variants of this instrument appeared. They often had spikes that penetrated the victim's back - as the limbs were pulled apart, so was his or her spinal cord increasing not only in physical pain, but the psychological one of being handicapped. As the interrogation progresses, a handle and ratchet attached to the top roller are used to very gradually stepwise increase the tension on the chains, inducing excruciating pain.

By means of pulleys and levers this roller could be rotated on its own axis, thus straining the ropes until the sufferer's joints were dislocated and eventually separated. If muscle fibres are stretched excessively, they lose their ability to contract, rendering them ineffective.

One gruesome aspect of being stretched too far on the rack is the loud popping noises made by snapping cartilage, ligaments, or bones. One powerful method for putting pressure upon prisoners was to force them to watch someone else being subjected to the rack. A crueller variant of the rack included a rotating drum studded with spikes. The prisoner was tied face-down to this rack; as he was stretched, the rotation of the spiked roller against his abdomen gradually disembowelled and killed him.

Confining the prisoner on the rack enabled further tortures to be applied, typically including burning the flanks with hot torches or candles or using pincers with specially roughened grips to tear out the nails of the fingers and toes.

Its first employment in England is said to have been due to John Holland, 2nd Duke of Exeter, the Constable of the Tower in , whence it was popularly known as the Duke of Exeter's daughter. Being tortured on the rack was often referred to as being "put to the question".

In the question of its legality was raised by the attempt of the Privy Council to rack John Felton, the assassin of the Duke of Buckingham. The judges , unanimously declared its use to be contrary to the laws of England. The French introduced an "improvement" to the rack in the form of spiked rollers that were inserted under the spine of the victim, thus causing even more severe pain and damage. The term rack is also used, occasionally, for a number of simpler constructions that merely facilitate corporal punishment, after which it may be named specifically, e.

Several devices similar in principle to the rack have been used through the ages. One of these was the Wooden Horse, a device used to torture prisoners during the Roman Empire by stretching them on top of a tall wooden frame until the shoulders were dislocated followed by a violent drop into a hanging position and beating. When the wheel was turned, the person was stretched in a manner similar to the rack.

The Austrian Ladder was basically a more vertically oriented rack. As part of the torture, victims would usually be burned under the arms with candles.

A cheap and effective way to torture someone was with rats. There were many variants, but the most common was to force a rat through a victim's body usually the intestines as a way to escape. This was done as follows: The victim was completely restrained usually being tied to the ground or any horizontal surface.

He would then have slits cut in his belly. Hungry rats would then be placed in the slits to eat the victim from the inside. Gnawing the intestines usually took hours or days of agonising pain for the victim.

Unless stopped almost immediately this torture always resulted in eventual death through peritonitis if nothing quicker intervened. The victim was hung upside down and then sawed apart down the middle, starting at the groin. Since the condemned was hanging upside-down, the brain received a continuous blood supply in spite of the severe bleeding.

They would remain conscious until the saw severed the major blood vessels of the abdomen, and sometimes even longer. It was an A-frame shaped metal rack to which the head was strapped to the top point of the A, the hands at the mid-point and the legs at the lower spread ends; swinging the head down and forcing the knees up in a sitting position. The Scavenger's Daughter was conceived as a complement to the Duke of Exeter's Daughter the rack because it worked the opposite principle to the rack by compressing the body rather than stretching it.

The Scavenger's Daughter is rarely mentioned in the documents and the device itself was probably not much used. The bestt-documented use is that on the Irishman Thomas Miagh, charged with being in contact with rebels in Ireland. It may be in connection with Scavenger's Daughter that Miagh carved on the wall of the Beauchamp Tower in the Tower of London, "By torture straynge my truth was tried, yet of my libertie denied.

Thomas Miagh. Another victim of the Scavenger's Daughter was Thomas Cottam, from Lancashire who was executed for treason during the reign of Elizabeth I. It is also known as Skevington's gyves, as iron shackle, as the Stork as in Italian cicogna or as Spanish A-frame. Further it is known as Skevington's daughter, from which the more commonly known folk etymology using "Scavenger" is derived.

One of the lesser punishments used was forcing people to wear masks, often metal and often designed to attract derision. They have locking devices to prevent them being removed. Typical features include a pig's snout or donkey's ears, or both. Bells are sometimes attached to attract attention to the wearer, as are whistles attached to a mouth-piece to make a sound every time the wearer breathed.

Although less vicious than many other tortures, they could still be painful and distressing especially if kept on for extended periods. As well as the inconvenience and public humiliation, the mask could make it difficult to eat, drink or sleep, and could attract violence from hostile mobs. They were used as punishments for various misdemeanours, most notably for uppity wives who scolded their husbands - a serious sin which contravened the bible's clear instruction for wives to remain subservient.

These masks were generally fitted with an attachment that projected into the mouth, depressing the tongue This caused further discomfort and could be designed to cause pain and injury. In any case it would make speech impossible.

These masks were known as Scold's Bridles. In Scotland such a mask was called a Branks. This is not a Shame Mask, but a mask used to conceal the identity of a political prisoner.

This is not a shame mask but an executioner's mask. It is a 17thth century iron executioner's mask in the Tower of London. The Shrew's Fiddle or Shame Fiddle was a wooden contraption, shaped roughly like a fiddle, that acted like portable stocks.

The Shrew's Fife or Noisemaker's Fife was a similar contraption, but shaped like a fife or flute. The Shame flute was specially designed to punish those who made bad music. This is a double Shrews' Fiddle at the torture museum in Freiburg im Breisgau. It was used when two women had an unseemly public argument. They were locked together facing each other, both equally helpless and humiliated.

It was mostly used to either extract or force victims into confessing a crime - regardless of whether they were actually guilty or innocent. Top 10 medieval dating tips by James Brigden. With no legal regulation, just about any type of torture was allowed and practiced, just take a look at some of these horrific examples of torture methods in the Middle Ages:.

To force confessions out of a victim a rat would be placed on their stomachs, covered by a pot. A popular torture device, the iron chair was a chair containing hundreds of sharp spikes.

The victim would be strapped onto the chair, and as the straps were gradually tightened, the spikes would tear deeper into the flesh. Perhaps the goriest and most unpleasant of them all, the Judas cradle forced the victims anus or vagina onto a sharp spike, and increased pressure was added sometimes with weights to gradually tear the insides of the victim apart.

Much as it sounds, this small yet agonising torture device involved placing a screw through the victims thumb and turning. Flogging was also commonplace. Beating the victim repeatedly, usually with a leather whip until they confessed or slipped into unconsciousness.

The cage was a metal cage just big enough to fit a human into but not big enough to move. Thing is, had this depth of ingenuity been applied to useful problems, we would probably have flown to the moon by Prayers to everyone. Your email address will not be published. Recognizing the value of the do-it-yourself movement of the last several years, thecoolist. Home Offbeat. For those of the macabre mindset, here are 26 fascinating medieval torture devices. Pear of Anguish View in gallery via turbosquid.

Judas Cradle View in gallery via pinterest. Iron Maiden View in gallery via hypnogoria. Spanish Donkey View in gallery via uberpunch. Really makes you wonder what the medieval fascination with vagina torture was… The Rack View in gallery via torturemuseum. Spanish Tickler View in gallery via lolwot. Iron Chair View in gallery via sevenhairs. The Collar View in gallery via notesfromcamelidcountry. The Tub View in gallery via imup2. Coffin View in gallery via pinterest.

Pillory View in gallery via ladydespensersscribery. Along with the coffin, the pillory revealed humanity itself as one of the worst torture devices. Brazen Bull View in gallery via thrillist. Strappado View in gallery via fredvanlente. Crocodile Shears View in gallery via pinterest. Lead Sprinkler View in gallery via darrenendymion. The Crucifix View in gallery via wikimedia.

Brodequin View in gallery via vdquynh. Tongue Tearer View in gallery via blumhouse. The Spider View in gallery via korupciya. Malay Boot View in gallery via wikimedia. Pilliwinks View in gallery via blumhouse. The Heretics Fork View in gallery via haikudeck. Ducking Stool View in gallery via yoliverpool. Breaking Wheel View in gallery via flickr. It was about gender because this shit was designed for women. I actually feel bad for the victims but the devices are fascinating.

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