punishment in Bruges

the medionaet: a less familiar surgeon’s duty during corporal punishment in bruges

Johan J. Mattelaer

Medieval justice regarded torture as a legitimate investigative method and corporal punishment as a disciplinary tool. From the early fifteenth century, the presence of a surgeon – described in this instance as a medionaet or médionat in French – was often required when torture was performed in the Low Countries. His task was to observe the torturer at work and to point out the best places for the amputation of a finger or a hand, and to monitor the victim and to intervene if the subject’s life was in danger. Cities like Bruges had a full-time executioner, known as the hangman, scharproc, executeur or scherprechter. Smaller towns, where demand was lower, turned where necessary to the municipal executioners of cities like Ghent, Ypres, Lille and Tournai. The hangman van Ghend, for instance, was called to Kortrijk in 1416 to cut off a let (hand or finger) from a certain Maertine ‘that justice be done’.

Torture came in many varieties: flogging, branding, cutting off the nose or the ears, chopping off fingers or hands, piercing the tongue, pulling out one or both eyes, and other corporal punishments (Fig. 24). There is virtually no reference to the presence of a surgeon in the case of executions (hanging, drowning, quartering, and beheading), even for the purpose of pronouncing the victim dead. Their attendance was only required when the victim was to be tortured or to undergo corporal punishment and was not supposed to die.

The earliest surviving texts on the subject refer to the care the surgeon was supposed to administer to victims of partial hanging. In 1297, for instance, the civic authorities paid Jan Quaethaer three pounds to cover the cost of treating the injuries he sustained having been hanged by his thumbs: Item hebdomada ante Ascencionem Domini Hannecken Quaethaer suspenso per pollices in domo sculteti pro lesione sua iij lb. This was also the case in Bruges in 1520, when the torture of Jan Neyts, a brewer’s journeyman, was postponed because of the severe winter. The Verluyt Bouck (sentence book) states: ‘However, given the great cold and frost and having been advised by the physicians and surgeons, who concluded that it would be dangerous to proceed with the punishment, the said punishment has been deferred until such time as the weather changes.’

Surgeons could also be tasked with showing the torturer the line of the joint when amputating

24 Corporal punishment in the sixteenth century. (From upper left) burning, hanging, blinding, cutting, breaking on the wheel, flogging, beheading and amputation of a hand. Woodcut from Tegler’s Der Laienspiegel (Mainz, 1508)

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red to one Jeanette De Vos, who was accused of witchcraft. We cannot help but wonder whether one or two of the figures wearing red cloaks we find in the background of Gerard David’s painting The Judgement of Cambyses are not in fact surgeons or physicians attending the execution (Fig. 25). Van Doorslaer defines the term medionaet as: ‘A task given to physicians, which is very curious and is worthwhile pointing out. When a criminal was condemned to torture, a doctor was required to attend its administration. In order, no doubt, to direct the application of the pain and to have the procedure stopped as appropriate. This attendance was paid for specially and is a constant feature in the municipal accounts.’ We also find the word medionaet in Het reglement provisionneel voor de stadsgezworene doctoors (‘Provisional Regulations for Sworn Municipal Physicians’, Mechelen, 1788).

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a hand or finger. The accounts of the Franc of Bruges for 1537 state: ‘To Master Clays van den Leene, sworn surgeon of the city of Bruges, for having, on the instruction of the council, gone to the scaffold at the court house to show the executioner how he should cut off a finger from the hand of Andries Willems, and also for administering sundry treatments to sundry prisoners who lay injured in Het Steen, by order, six pounds.’

Elsewhere, the same accounts mention: ‘Master Claeys van den Leene and Gregorius Roelpot, sworn surgeons of the city of Bruges, for having, at the request of the aldermen, gone on 27 November 1540 to the scaffold of the executioner to show him how to cut off the right hand of one Joos Qaille, in execution of the sentence imposed on him by the court.’

And also: ‘Master Claeys van den Leene and Gregorius Roelpot, sworn surgeons of Bruges, onderkennen by hemlieden on the instruction of the aldermen of this city an de scanbalke which was greviously wounded and daer naar gheinsticieert wiert metten zweerde, by order, eight pounds).’

A payment made to physicians is recorded in the Bruges municipal accounts of 1638, in which doctors named Caestecker and Uttenberghe received 12 carafes of wine for their presence during six hours of torture administe25 Gerard David, The Judgement of Cambyses, 1498, oil on wood , Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Could one or two of the figures in the background, wearing red cloaks, be a surgeon or physician attending the execution as medionaet?