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Torture in the Middle Ages
By Joy J. Fine
Torture devices in the Middle Ages were designed not only to inflict the most pain possible but to teach a particular lesson based on the crime the person was charged with. One of the most horrible of these devices was the Pear of Anguish. This device, whose name does not even remotely reflect the terror of its use, was used for very specific crimes. If a person was a suspected of being a heretic, homosexual or witch it was likely this device with which they met their death. It was shaped like a pear, but there was a handle that could make it expand. The device was put in one of the body’s orifices, depending on the crime, and as it opened it would rip apart the area it was in. It was placed in the mouth of the heretic, the anus of the homosexual or the vagina of the witch. This could mean the destruction of the intestines, broken teeth, or a ripped uterus. If the device itself didn’t kill the person, the resulting infection did.
Another device used in the Middle Ages was the dunking stool. This was used to get confessions from those suspected of being witches and so was most often used on women. Though it seems a simple device it was a horrible torture designed to wrestle a confession. Most women died resisting, nonetheless it was an easier death than the one that awaited them if they confessed. Sometimes older women died instantly as the shock of being ducked under the cold water was too much for them. The device consisted of a chair they would be secured to which was then attached to a contrivance that could lower the chair into the water and raise it back up again. At first it was only for short dunks, but if the witch resisted, then the length of time they were dunked increased until it was three minutes, four minutes or more and the woman drowned.
The Keep was both a torture designed to embarrass and destroy the prisoner placed in it. The criminal was put inside a cage where they would be fixed in place, unable to move, and then the door to the cage would be locked shut. But this cage had gaps, though small ones, which were big enough for birds to peck at the victim. As the person was unable to move at all they were not able to protect themselves. So, the birds would eat them alive, bit by bit. This torture was often saved for those of noble blood who had displeased those above them in some way. It would not only punish them physically, but it would remove any shred of honor that remained. This was a slow torture, taking days of the person to die while the village folk watched, often throwing stones at them. Sometimes they would be removed from the Keep and allowed to eat, rest and regain their strength and then be put back in the device to start the torture over again until they died.
There was no end to the imagination of tortures in this time. They used everything from torture devices to deprivation of life’s simple needs like sleep and comforts. In the Middle Ages it was common for witches to not be allowed to sleep until they confessed. Guards would take turns keeping the poor tired witch awake, roughly shoving them to prevent them from drifting off. Making them walk, sometimes for days, without rest, could also do this. Or another method of torture was to chain them by the neck to the wall at a height where they could not sit down to rest. This too was designed to prevent sleep. When they were looking for more extreme torture methods they would cut off fingers, toes or ears. Sometimes they would dip feathers into sulfur and pour them onto the person’s most sensitive spots. Immersion into boiling lime, the whole body or just the extremities, also was used to get confessions.
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