Torture Methods In History Of Punishments

SHUBH ARORA

D E C L A R AT I O N I, Shubh Arora from FYS - Section C hereby declare that all digital and written work appearing in this book as part of my Imaging course 15th week submission under the academic guidance of my course faculty is my own and all sources of knowledge used have been duly acknowledged.

I will be solely responsible for any irregularity found with respect to non-adherence of academic integrity as per ISDI School of Design and Innovation’s standards and requirements.

C O N T E N T S 1 Crucifixion 10 - 11 2 The

Breaking Wheel 12 - 13

3 The

Brazen Bull 14 - 15

4 The

Stake 16 - 17

5 The

Rack 18 - 19

6 Bibliography 20 - 21

INTRODUCTION These torture devices were devices used in the Middle Ages or early modern period to cause pain, injury, and sometimes death, usually to extract information or a confession from criminals or prisoners, also as punishment for crimes.

Fig. 1 The crucifixion of Jesus occurred in 1st-century Judea, most likely between AD 30 and 33.

Crucifixion Ancient Greek has two verbs for crucify i.e. anastauro, from which stauros (which in todays Greek only means “cross“) In earlier pre-roman greek texts anastauro usually meant “impalement”. The english term cross or cruciifix derives from the latin word crux or crucifixus. It originated with the assyrians and babylonians and used systematically by the persiansin the 6th century B.C. Alexander The Great brought it to East Mediterian countries in the 4th Century B.C. The notion of death on a cross was imported from the Phoenicians by the Greeks, Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians and the Romans.

At first, the crucifixion was carried out on a single stake. Then, crossed were introduced with either four arms, three or x-styled arms. At times, victim were attached upside down for hours and hours to die until they left their bodies. Crucifixion was most often performed to dissuade its witnesses from perpetrating similar (usually particularly heinous) crimes. Victims were sometimes left on display after death as a warning to any other potential criminals. Crucifixion was usually intended to provide a death that was particularly slow, painful (hence the term excruciating, literally “out of crucifying”), gruesome, humiliating, and public, using whatever means were most expedient for that goal.

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Fig. 2 Ancient Greek has two verbs for crucify: ana-stauro and apo-tumpanizo

Fig. 3: In the year 1348, during the Plague, a Jew by the name of Bona underwent this punishment and was tortured for four days and four nights.

The Breaking Wheel It was known by various terms, such terms like Executed by the wheel, to be wheeled, to be “broken by the wheel”.

In 1348, during the time of the black death, a jeweish man named Bona Die underwent the punishment. The authorities stated he remained conscious for four days and nights. It accounts exists of a 14th century murderer who remained conscious for three day. In France, the invicted were placed on a cart wheel with their limbs stretched out along the spokes over two study wooden beams. In the Holy Roman Empire, the wheel was punishment reserved primarly for men convicted of murder. Less severe offenders were cuffed “top down”.

Those convicted as murderers and/or robbers to be executed by the wheel, sometimes termed to be “wheeled” or “broken by the wheel”, would be taken to a public stage scaffold site and tied to the floor.

The execution wheel was typically a large wooden spoked wheel, the same as was used on wooden transport carts and carriages (often with iron rim), sometimes purposely modified with a rectangular iron thrust attached and extending blade-like from part of the rim. This type of punishment was derived from ancient Rome and is considered the most severe form of quartering. During the Middle Ages its use spread throughout Europe, invoking terror in criminals untilthe XIX century.

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Fig. 4 Johann Patkul was a Livonian gentleman who was condemned on charges of treason by Swedish king Charles XII in 1707.

Fig. 5 A depiction of the brazen bull in the Torture Museum in Bruges, Belgium.

The Brazen bullll

The brazen bull, bronze bull, or scillian bull, was a torture and execution device designed in ancient greek. The device was designed in Ancient Greece.

Perillos of Athens invented and proposed it to Phalaris, the tryant of Akragas, sicily as a new means of executing.

The head of the bull was designed with a system of tubes so that the prisoners screams were converted into sounds like the bellowing of an infuriated bull. According to the legend, when the bull was reopened after a belly was charred with victims scorthed bones then “shone like jewels and were made into bracelets.The metallic animal was hollow on the inside, and had a door on the side of its body through which the prisoner could be place in the beast. Once the victim was shut, a fire was placed under its belly. This would heat the device, turning it into an oven and roasting the victim within it.

It is unknown to what finally happened to its usage and why it was shut. The Romans were reputed to have used this torture device to kill some Christians, notably Saint Eustace, who, according to Christian tradition, was roasted in a brazen bull with his wife and children by Emperor Hadrian.

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Fig. 6 Perillos being forced into the brazen bull that he built for Phalaris.

Fig. 7 People believed that such an act would cleanse the soul of the condemned heretic. It was also a punishment since it meant that those condemned lost the body they would have taken into the afterlife.

The Stake Impalement was used throughout the ancient world. This punishment was widespread across the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Ancient Egypt. Its first mention dates back to the beginning ofthe 2nd millennium BC. Scenes of similar punishments can be seen on excavated Assyrian materials. There are those numbered as being sentenced for arbortion in addition to other grave crimes. Assyrian relics also depict two types of executions: piercing through the chest and through the anus.

In the Middle Ages, impalement was one of the major types of violence in the Middle East.One leader known as VladTepes(Vlad Dracula,Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Koloyub) had a reputation for his passion for this punishment, as well as other acts of cruelty and bloodlust. According to instructions of the executioners, the sacrifice was placed on a sharpened pole (sometimes rounded and oiled) which was A curious fact: Some prisoners, condemned to impale ment by stake, gnawed through their tongue and veins, or smashed their skulls on a sharp edge of a wall. They chose suicide, in order not to deliver themselves unto such a monstrous sentence. Don’t understand why they did this? Then take a look! An enemy spy, hands and legs bound and mouth gagged, is literally dragged through dirt and mud.

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Fig. 8 The accused at the Salem witch trials were not burned at the stake; they either died in prison or were hanged.

Fig. 9 A torture rack in Rothschildschloss castle, Austria

The rack The advent of the rack comes from British Constable John Exeter who invented the device in 1447 for the torture of prisoners oftheTower of London (initially it was called the “Duke of Exeter’s Daughter”. The operating principles of this sinister mechanism centers on the torque that stretches the joints and tears muscle ligaments.

The accuracy and ease of the rack’s design made it the most commonly-used instrument of torture of its day. It consisted of a wooden table with rollers at either end to which ropes were tied.

Later on, the French would slightly modify the rack’s appearance, adding an additional mechanism metal rollers with spikesthat sliced into the skin and muscles of the victim’s back. Any criminal or deviant could could be sentenced to torture via the rack. After such a verdict, they were laid on the table, wrists and ankles bound with ropes, and slowly stretched in opposing directions. The advantage to this torture method was its extremely precise control over the impact of pain. The tension could be increased, attenuated, and then enhanced by twisting the victim’sjoints, and eventually,tearing the muscles and the nerves apart.

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Fig. 10 Originally, ancient Russians called thisinstrument of punishment the“shoe”, to which the guilty were tied (“placed in the rack”).

Biblography 1. https://history.howstuffworks.com/10-medieval-torture-devices3.htm 2. http://torturemuseum.net/en/the-rack/ 3. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Theresiana-Leiter.jpg?1587084709415 4. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Torture_rack.jpg/1024px-Torture_ rack.jpg 5. https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/wheel-torture-0012585 6. https://allthatsinteresting.com/brazen-bull 7. http://torturemuseum.net/en/the-stake/ 8. https://entropymag.org/20-common-misconceptions-or-perhaps-maybe-some-things-you-didntknow/

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torture methththods in histORy of punishments a coffeee e table booo ok by Shubh Arora