The Methods Of Medieval Torture During The Medieval Period

With the development of prisons, this changed how punishment and torture was viewed, at least in the public eye. The act of torturing, however unfortunate, comes naturally in regards to punishment. A big reason to why torture is no longer heard about in the prisons is because torture is now done the private spectrum instead of in

A major change through medieval times were types of punishment. Usually, types of punishment relied on social hierarchy and the crime you had committed. Some of the punishments included being placed in stocks, have to drink poison, be pulled apart by horses, banishment and burnt on the stake. (Medieval punishment wikispace.com) (blogspot.com) (australia.gov.au). Most punishments purpose, were to torture people or humiliate.

Punishments in the Middle Ages were harsh and horrific, with change occurring as heads of state and laws changed. In the Middle Ages, punishments were used as a deterrent to gain peasants obedience. Types of punishments included torture, mutilation, and public humiliation. When the Normans invaded England in the 11th century, (Norman Conquest of England, 2017) many changes were made to punishments. William the Conqueror used the death penalty

Some other punishments were leather strap used on to hit anywhere on the body, beating with fists, and until unconscious, burning and scalding the hands, starvation, public

One of the many things that has been highly controversial and still is to this very day is how to properly punish and treat criminals. Here in America we now have the Eighth Amendment to protect us from cruel and unusual punishment. This was based off of a Parliament Act of 1689 that created England’s Bill of Rights. Before England had come up with the idea that humans should have guaranteed basic rights, it wasn’t a matter of whether or not a criminal would die, as much as it was a matter of how they would die. Torture devices such as the guillotine, the stake, the brazen bull, and the rack were used to spread the idea of fear and punishment that was ineffectually used by leaders to try and control their people throughout the history of Europe.

According to Clear, Cole, and Reisig, (2013, p. 28 & 29) during the middle ages various forms of punishments were imposed on the body of the offender. Authority of government grew, and the criminal law system became more fully developed. Other forms of sanctions were applied due to the rise of trade, the breakdown of feudal order, the emergence of a middle class. In Europe before the 1800s fines and five punishments were common: galley slavery, imprisonment, transportation, corporal punishment and death. Each

The immense sickness wasn’t the only thing dark about Europe’s Middle Ages. The monarchs were cruel and unruly to their subjects while enforcing brutality upon their land and citizens. The laws enforced by these kings and queens were nothing short of diabolical, for there was no set list of limitations and rules meaning that the monarchs could punish anyone for anything, even if that meant simply disturbing the king. The executions of the ‘accused’ were public to the citizens, and were “a pitiless affair” (McGlynn). The kings ruled with an iron fist as their methods of justice were murderous as executions “sent out a message of warning and deterrence” and “offered the ultimate guarantee against repeat offenders”. The message monarchs tried to send while carelessly shedding blood was that they desired to make a statement, and scare citizens into not committing crimes, for they would know the gruesome consequences. If not death, the “standard, mandatory sentence” of all accused peoples was mutilation of “eyes, noses, ears, hands, feet and testicles”. To sum it all up, punishment in the Middle Ages was much more unforgiving than in this modern day of age; being burned at the stake or beheaded by the guillotine are still some of the most spine-tingling punishments to this day. In all of the depressing fog of the Middle Ages, could there truly have been a beneficial factor?

Long time ago, the Roman emperor Nero realized that a conspiracy of some nobles to kill him. Nero arrested the suspects and made a threat with torture. In Europe, torture was implemented to extort confessions or to punish

The idea of trial by ordeal and its methods are that if an accused can endure the decided ordeal without any injury or with surviving it with minimal injury, it will be concluded that it was a will of God and that the accused is innocent. However, trial by ordeal is said to be the end point of a relatively formal judicial procedure. This formal judicial procedure has several local variations but historical research suggests that it is commonly comprised of four main

In the late 1500s and early 1600s, torture was a large part of everyday life and although torture was not the only method, it was the most effective. Citizens of Europe in the Elizabethan Era, you would most likely come across some very terrifying forms of torture. Prisons did exist, but the main form of punishment used was torture (Science Museum). There was a prison in the Elizabethan Era, but they were mostly used for holding people with small debts or holding people until their

Medieval Times was a very dark and evil place. They tortured people for saying a little white lie. Depending on how bad what they did, the more and worse the punishment is. During this time period, many people faced gruesome and violent punishments used with crazy, out of the mind torture weapons.

The history of torture in Europe may seem at first to be a steady progression of barbarous tactics, leading from one social purge to the next, but this is not completely the case. Torture has been used in a progression from primitive methods to the present more modern styles. It has also developed extensively, both in severity and variety of methods used. But in the end, torture has gone full circle; modern forms of torture are more like those methods used by savages than anything in between. Overall, the severity of torture has fluctuated, growing and receding with the passing of each new time period, but eventually reverting to its original state.

They tortured people to gain confessions. The church handled all confessions, however could not witness the bloodshed that they caused to get the accused to confess. All punishments were vary physical two of the most infamous were the strappado and aselli. The strappado, meaning pulley, was a device containing ropes to strap a person down from their arms and legs and weights were attached on the ropes. The person would be raised and their body would stretch causing mass amounts of pain and sometimes-immediate death. The aselli was a water torment. A person would lie down and be drowned rapidity until it looked like their veins would explode.

Some tortures included strapping the accused's feet in a pair of metal boots and then filling the boots with boiling hot oil. The accused were often whipped for their purification, sometimes they were left out in the open for hours after having been whipped while the torturers went out to lunch. They had to hang there and wait until they returned and often they received additional torture after their wait just to be certain they had been purified. Tortures were so extreme that many people took their practices underground to avoid the Inquisition.

"It [torture] assured the articulation of the written on the oral, the secret on the public, the procedure of investigation on the operation of the confession; it made it possible to reproduce the crime on the visible body of the criminal; in the same horror, the crime had to be manifested and annulled. It also made the body of the condemned man the place where the vengeance of the sovereign was applied, the anchoring point for a manifestation of power, an opportunity of affirming the dissymmetry of forces."[4]