Judicial torture and execution methods
In one of the numerous trials held in the small Lorraine town of Saint-Dié, in the Vosges, twenty-two witnesses appeared in 1592 to denounce Mengette Estienne of Le Paire d'Avould, alleging that her malevolence had caused deaths and sicknesses among men and animals. Mengette was made of sterner stuff than most; despite this concerted hostility from her neighbours, and the denial of legal assistance, she defended herself with spirit and intelligence. The judges nevertheless saw fit not only to have her tortured on the rack, but to precede this with a series of threats whose impropriety never apparently struck them, since they were preserved in the official records.
She was exhorted: "de nous dire et declairer verité, autrement que luy ferions sentir la rigueur de justice affin de l'y induyre. Et que cela luy pourroit causer une perclusion de membre pour estre miserable toute sa vie Oultre que surcellans la verité elle seroit damnée avec les malheureux." [to tell and declare the truth to us, otherwise we would make her feel the torture in order to induce her to do so. And that this could cause her to be crippled in a limb so that she would be miserable for the rest of her life, while if she concealed the truth she would be damned with the wretched.] During the torture--which seems only to have ended when she lost consciousness--she quite justifiably cried out: "Vray Jhesus on luy faisoit grand tort Crians alarme alarme y at il plus de pitié au monde et qui nourriroit ses enfans" ["True Jesus they did her great wrong, crying help, help, was there no more mercy in the world, and who would feed her children"]. Mengette's exceptional courage allowed her to endure three sessions of torture without confessing, so that her judges, who had obviously considered her guilty from the start, were finally compelled to release her.
She was luckier than Jacquotte Tixerand of Le Bourget d'Amance, tried in 1616, who persisted in her denials through applications of the thumbscrews, the rack, and the tortillons (a kind of tourniquet). Here local practice included a fourth technique, the strappado, in which the victim was raised in the air by a rope attached to her hands, themselves tied behind her back, and passed over a pulley. When the executioner added the final touch, tying a fifty pound weight to her feet, Jacquotte's resistance gave out. She now told her judges what they wanted to hear; how she had been seduced by the devil, had attended the sabbat, and had committed various maléfices.
Such appalling abuses of judicial torture were much rarer in the areas ruled by the king of France than in the lands of the duke of Lorraine, but here too one suspects that the local courts of first instance were far more anxious to convict the accused than to give them a fair hearing. Soman's startling findings about the inefficacy of torture as applied by the parlement seem to show that precisely one of the 185 suspects who entered the torture chamber confessed, and the woman in question was merely shown the instruments. Perhaps the Paris judges thought of torture as a useful threat, and perhaps a mild punishment for people who had annoyed their neighbours, but were determined to exclude it from their system of proofs.
On the status of executioners
Several recent studies have perpetuated old myths concerning the "dishonourable" profession of executioner and the existence of a unique field of medicine practiced by executioners based on the utilization of human body parts. Gisela Wilbertz's analysis of sources stemming primarily from northern Germany shows that there has been a misreading and misinterpretation of the discourse surrounding executioners in the early modern era. Executioners were indeed frequently medical practitioners as well, but were analogous to barber-surgeons, not "unholy" or superstitious necrophiliacs. Their propensity for medical practice had no "rational" basis in their profession (e.g. access to body parts), other than that similar personality traits were required for both professions, such as steady nerves. Rather, executioners were broadly associated with healing because their profession was at the time regarded as healing the soul (via death or torture), and healing the body was a short step from this. The lack of honour associated with executioners was primarily a consequence of the Enlightenment and secularization, in the aftermath of which executions were no longer regarded as spiritual cleansing and judicial punishments were increasingly carried out in seclusion.
The breast-ripper, hot or cold, was used as a tool of
interrogation and as a method of punishment in some European countries.
It was especially employed for characteristically female crimes such as
abortion and erotic magic, but also for blasphemy and heresy. The
pear would be inserted into a body cavity, before being opened. Damage
to the internal membranes of the confessing felon would be invisible to
casual viewers, encouraging the belief that the confession was unforced.
Breaking with the wheel was a common method of execution
in the German-speaking lands. The limbs of the convicted felon would
be smashed by the executioner, before being threaded through the wheel.
According to a chronicler, the victim was turned ?into a sort of huge screaming
puppet writhing in rivulets of blood, a puppet with our tentacles,
like a sea monster, of raw, slimy and shapeless flesh (rohw, schleymig
und formlos Fleisch wie di Schleuch eines Tündenfischs) mixed up with
splinters of smashed bones?. The wheel would then be hoisted into
the air for crows and other carrion birds to peck at. A slow, excruciating
death, very gruesome after a peasant revolt.
The Judas cradle (culla di Giuda in Italian, Judaswiege
in German) remains widely used in Latin America, with some modern refinements.
The accused was repeatedly dropped onto the point, or made to rest on it
more heavily, the pressure being applied to the anus, in the vagina, under
the scrotum or under the coccyx.
The headcrusher was used as a method of torture or execution.
There was sometimes a spike at the tip of the screw, to anchor it to the
skull. Examples can be seen at the Tower of London and at the Tijuana
Cultural Centre in Mexico. There are many surviving examples of the
interrogation chair, of various designs. Some were designed to put
increasing weight on the body, to increase the penetration of the spikes.
Not usually fatal, though infection was a danger.
The heretic's fork was strapped to the throat of an accused
heretic, the points sticking into the flesh under the chin and above the
sternum. This immobilized the head, preventing the accused from doing
much more than croaking out an abjuration of heresy, to escape execution.
The cat's paw was attached to a handle and used by the torturer or executioner
to rip the flesh from the still-living victim's bones.
Lisa Silverman, Tortured Subjects : Pain, Truth, and the Body in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001)
Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, The Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)
Richard van Dülmen, Theatre of Horror : Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany, transl. Elisabeth Neu (Cambridge, Mass.: Polity Press, 1991)
John H.Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof : Europe and England in the Ancien Régime (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977)
James Given, "The Inquisitors of Languedoc and the Medieval Technology of Power", American Historical Review, 94 (1989) 336-359
Elizabeth Hanson, "Torture and Truth in Renaissance England", Representations, No. 34. (Spring, 1991) 53-84
Katharine Eisaman Maus, "Proof and Consequences: Inwardness and its Exposure in the English Renaissance", Representations, No. 34. (Spring, 1991) 29-52
Lacey Baldwin Smith, "English Treason Trials and Confessions in the Sixteenth Century", Journal of the History of Ideas, 15 (1954) 471-498
Sample discussions of witchcraft that mention torture:
E. William Monter, "Witchcraft in Geneva, 1537-1662", Journal of Modern History, 43 (1971) 179-204
Alfred Soman, "The Parlement of Paris and the Great Witch Hunt (1565-1640)", Sixteenth Century Journal, 9 (1978) 30-44
Russell Zguta, "Witchcraft Trials in Seventeenth-Century Russia", American Historical Review, 82 (1977) 1187-1207
On the executioner, see Gisela Wilbertz, "Scharfrichter, Medizin und Strafvollzug in der frühen Neuzeit", Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 24 (1999) 515-555
For the origins of the modern attitude towards torture, see Karen Halttunen, "Humanitarianism and the Pornography of Pain in Anglo-American Culture", American Historical Review, 100 (1995) 303-334
A German torture museum catalogue [PDF file, rather large]. Illustrations are of interest, but the text is not always entirely accurate.
Torture narrative from the Vietnam War, by a Notre Dame alumnus
The use of torture by the police, in present-day Chicago
Torture
in Europe Through the Ages: a useful website
