How Medieval Torture Devices Worked

Building on an earlier examination of the Spanish Inquisition, HowStuffWorks' history experts take a look at the disturbing world of medieval torture devices. Check out this podcast to learn more about torture and more Stuff You Missed in History Class.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candide Giftson, joined by staff writer Jane mccrest
and a pretty recent podcast we did about the Spanish Inquisition.

(00:21):
I got really excited talking about blood and gore, and
so we decided that, despite the fact I'm a pretty
girly girl, we would devote a podcast today to torture.
And not just any type of torture. It's a really, really,
really grizzly kind medieval torture. Yeah, and uh, may I
say you're a little bizarre for being so excited about this,

(00:41):
but um, it is really interesting and a gruesome kind
of way. Um speaking of the Inquisition when we were
when I was reading for that podcast, I remember reading
that people would see others getting tortured, and often that
was just enough to get them to confess. I mean,
reading about all these different kind of torture made me
want to confess whatever it is anyone wanted to. It's

(01:04):
just amazing. Sort of like watching American Idol tryouts, You're like,
oh my gosh, I feel so bad to stop right now. Um. So,
before we get into with some of the devices that
we're going to tell you guys about, and you'll be
squirming in just a few minutes. Soon enough, hold onto
your shorts. Let's just go over torture and a pretty
broad definition of tortures that it's bodily or mental pain

(01:26):
exactly for a specific reason. And three of these main
reasons are for punishment, for getting information or for obtaining
a confession. And torture is carried out by a figure
of authority, So those are the parameters. Yeah, that's right,
and it's interesting. Um. Another side effect to torture, um

(01:48):
a little plus for the authorities who are who are
enacting it, is that it could be like a public
display to deter others from committing such crimes. And that's
the case, uh, for many of these And throughout history
we've seen torture practiced and all different eras and through
all different ways, and from the very beginning, I think

(02:09):
it's had its opponents and defenders. And you may be
surprised to know that torture has had its defenders and
opponents throughout history. Aristotle was one of the earliest defenders
of torture. I was a little surprised to find that
because you know, you think of a philosopher, someone who's
being introspective and really thinking about what you're doing to
the human body and the separation of you know, like
the mind and then the body itself. But now he

(02:31):
was he was pretty much an advocate of it. And
another was Sir Francis Bacon. But when you move on
to the Enlightenment era and you have thinkers really being
thoughtful about things and in life and the nature of
being and crime and punishment, you see a lot more
opponents coming into play for human rights. Exactly in our

(02:52):
modern era, even around the nineteenth century, that was when
you see people really turning away from torture, and um,
it was a crime by then to hurt or to
be violent toward a criminal suspect. And now we are
very active in pursuing torture Regina calling out human rights violations.

(03:12):
The United Nations has counsels that go and investigate, they
follow tips, and with the war on terror today, so
it's a very hot button topic exactly. So um, we
we see that attitudes toward torture and political prisoners are
a whole other kind of warm. So we're going to
stick to the medieval era for right now. And what's

(03:33):
interesting about the medieval era, almost like the Salem witchcraft
trials that we say later on in early America, was
that torture itself was a trial, and you could reveal
your innocence or your guilt by how you responded to
the pain. That's right. It's a little ironic if you
go back to sort of the roots to a lot
of these torture devices is that some of them were
originally developed in Roman times and they were used often

(03:56):
against Christians. And it's just very ironic because by the
medieval era, in using inquisitions, uh and stuff like that,
it was Christians were using it against Christian heretics, right.
And the strange thing about these devices that with that
people were very seriously contemplating how they could do the
most bodily harmed people and not just kill them swiftly.

(04:19):
Almost that would be too easy. That would be like
the guillotine when we told you guys about the French
Revolution and how the guillotine was intended to be a
humanitarian death device. And you can see that by looking
at all these exactly these wanted to kill you slowly
and not softly. So without further ado, we shall take
it away. Um. The first one I wanted to talk

(04:40):
about was the Brazen Bowl, which is really interesting. I
don't know if like a Slice to Land movie, but
it's not. I had never heard of this before looking
into this. But um, it was a hollow brass statue basically,
and brass was important because it could heat up quickly. Um.
And the basically it was hollow and shaped like a bowl,
and so it had a trap door for someone to

(05:02):
climb inside. And often they would cut your tongue out
even before you climbed in. Um, a little extra kick
right there, and uh. And so you climb in and
they'd shut the door behind you, and so you'd be
trapped in this bowl and they would live a flight
of fire underneath so that it would heat up and
you basically you would you would slowly die in this
agony of heat. And UM, it's an interesting story behind

(05:26):
this too, because um, the inventor is a guy named
Perilous according to the writings of Lucian. At least we
don't know if this isn't just Leaden, but um, he
invented this, and he was so proud of it. He
actually stuck flutes in the nostrils of the brazen bull,
so that people screaming when it came out could sound
like a bowl's noise, and so people watching could get

(05:48):
entertainment out of this. So he's showing this off. He's like,
look at what I just invented. And he shows this
this guy named Pharallas, who who is a famous tyrant
at the time, and Pharrella says, oh, yeah, that's that's great, Um,
but I don't think the flutes will actually work. One
of you clumb inside and show me, and as you
might expect, Fera lists close the door behind him, and

(06:09):
the inventorants of being the first victim to this prisonable.
Is it a success? Yes, he died in that. You
call that a success, So so checked to that one. Okay,
my turn. I think one of my favorites. If I
can say that, that's sort of odds, so I retract
that immediately. Okay. One of the most interesting ones I
think is the rack. And it's a pretty simple concept.

(06:32):
The suspect or criminal or heretic, etcetera, etcetera is tied
down and a crank or a wheel tightens the ropes
that are attached to his limbs and slowly stretches the body,
and usually it stretches so tightly and so tautly to
the point where limbs are dislocated and some can even
be torn off. And um, if you were on the rack,

(06:55):
it was called being racked or broken on the rack.
And there were some very sans on the rack, one
of which was called the horse, and the suspect was
tied to a beam which looked almost like the horse's back,
facing up, and pulleys down below pulled the limbs down,
breaking them. And so you were lying, you know, supine
and completely broken on the horse. And at that point

(07:17):
you were meant to give your confession. And this one,
I guess it could have killed you, and I guess
some were designed to kill you. You probably would have
been killed eventually from blood laws or agony or some
sort of shock that you went into, but again dying
very very slowly. And one of the funniest things to
me about the rack is that, um, everything old is

(07:40):
new again because there is a doctor at the Beverly
Hills Physical Medicine Center who has reinvented the rack, not
the torture people, but actually to help them. And after
about six years worth of tasks and trial he has
He's created this controlled stretching device and you get a
forty five minute session and it's to help lower back

(08:00):
pain herniated disks or degenerated disks, And the concept is
you lie down and h The stretching creates a vacuum
between the vertebrae and your back, and whatever disk maybe
herniated or giving you grief, actually gets sucked back into place.
So again I think that that is kind of amazing.
And this news comes courtesy to us through the comes

(08:27):
courtesy to us through the Medical Devices and Surgical Technology
Week publication. I was so excited to read about it.
And this is published I think in two thousand three,
so I'm not sure if it is still in years.
But what a fanciful idea way. You sound like you
want to try it. I do. My My back pain
is mostly upper back pain. I just bring a marathon
over the weekend and still carrying it. But we'll say, wow. Well,

(08:49):
one one torture to device that I hope does not
come back um is the wheel, which is it's a
famous torture device that a body could be put on.
This It's just a giant wheel. Basically, you're stretched over
the wheel and UM, you could do a couple of
different things. They're very creative about this. UM. They could
just roll the wheel down a rocky hill, which is

(09:09):
my favorite. UM. Or they could mount it so that
it could swing or turn on an axle basically, and
they could put whatever they want to roll your body over,
whether it's hot coals or spikes or whatever. UM. And
often after they put you on the wheel, they would
put the wheel UM on a pole high up out

(09:31):
in daytime for the hot sun to basically bake you. UM.
And also you'd have to fight back the crows that
were and not my favorite. These people are wrath. Okay,
are you guys still let us? Can you handle this?
Hop out the steak. The steak a pretty straightforward concept.
And what's distinctive about the steak in the midst of

(09:52):
these others that we've been discussing is that it was
definitely fatal and um, you would die pretty much guaranteed
within about half an hour. That's when you would start
to lose consciousness. And if you've been I don't know
under a rock on the steak is basically it's an
upright pull, usually made of wood, and you're tied to it,
and underneath is a pile of very very dry wood

(10:14):
and a fire, so you become a human bonfire essentially.
So even though you lose consciousness within about half an hour,
it could take two hours before the victim completely burned
to death. That was something that I didn't know before.
I just thought, um, you're you know, someone burning at
the steak wouldn't be too long, you know, But to
hear that it could take up to two hours, that's
it's just wild. And during the inquisition, uh, the inquisitors,

(10:38):
I guess they thought they were doing the confessors of
favor when they would strangle them before they were burned
to spare them the agony. But the heretics they would
allow to be consumed by fire. And if you were
in the Netherlands and you were being burned at the steak,
you had a really awful fate awaiting you because they
had a little premptive measure that they took to muffle

(10:59):
the victim's screen aimes, and that was smashing the tongue
between two plates of hot iron. Yeah, and uh yeah,
I've read that this sort of these sort of things
added to the entertainment of people watching and that's the
most gruesome part of about this. I mean I've said
that over and over again this but I keep the
gruesome and I'm being just as much it for a
year as they are so right now. Um, but yeah,

(11:22):
the fact that people got entertainment out of this is
very horrifying. Another one, uh that's infamous uh for terrible
tortures Iron Maid, and you probably heard of it. Um.
It's basically this upgrade casing for a victim to step into.
And um, people actually didn't think it actually existed. It

(11:44):
was sort of a legend for a little while until
they finally found one in Germany in the twentieth century. Yeah,
people really did think it was fictional, and they found
it in Nuremberg, and so sometimes it's actually called the
Iron Maiden of Nuremberg. And like Jane was saying, it
it has these spikes inside of it, so once you're
lead inside the casing and the doors shut, the spikes

(12:04):
are designed to pierce your organs. But like we were saying,
killing me slowly, remember the mantra of all medieval torture devices.
The spikes weren't long enough to go completely through your organs,
so they would prick them and then you would very
very slowly bleed to death. In the worst part, I
think this is the two spikes that I meant for
your eyes as well. Oh my gosh, I can't even

(12:24):
handle it. So I'm going to tell you guys about
a special version of the Iron Maiden that was modeled
after a religious figure in Spain, and that was the
Virgin Mary. And it was designed so that it looked
like the Virgin Mary was hugging the victim, but when
the door was closed, she had spikes within her embrace
that would pierce into your body. No, definitely not, definitely

(12:47):
not in the introm If you want to learn more
about the devil torture devices, or if you need a
break from all of that and just want to read
about the Royalty of Deevil, England, we won't blame you,
but just be sure to visit our website at how
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(13:08):
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