Torture Methods In History Of Punishments

Crucifixion

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

Ancient Greek has two verbs for crucify i.e. anastauro, from which stauros (which in today's 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.

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.

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