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The Facts
The medieval period spanned several centuries, beginning around AD 400 and ending in the early 16th century. The 12th century brought the first of the inquisitions for which the medieval period is well known. The most famous is the Spanish Inquisition, which began in the latter Middle Ages and continued for many years into the Renaissance. Medieval executioners used torture implements long before the inquisitions began, however. Sadistic torture was a standard part of punishment throughout the Middle Ages.
Features
Medieval torture implements were easy to use and inflicted horrible pain and injury with, usually, minimal bloodshed. The most common types crushed bones and flesh or dislocated the victims' joints. Sometimes torturers also ripped victims' flesh with pincers or burned their flesh with molten metal or scalding water.
Type
Medieval torturers used Spanish boots, thumbscrews and other vises to crush flesh and bone. Vises were made of metal or wood, or a combination of both. Torturers also used metal pincers to rip pieces of flesh from victims. Metalsmiths designed some pincers for specific body parts, such as the breasts. Executioners also used metal chairs and boots, spiked to cause pain or heated to burn the victim.
The rack is the most well-known medieval torture implement. The torturer tied the victim onto the rack, which was a special board with ropes at both ends attached to pulleys. Using a lever, the executioner and his assistants tightened the ropes, increasing the tension bit by bit. Gradually, the victim's joints dislocated.
The strappado was one of the cruelest methods of torture. This simple machine involved only a rope, a pulley or a beam, and gravity. The torturer tied the victim's hands behind his back with a rope or chain. He then attached this rope to a longer rope, which he looped over a beam or a pulley. The executioner, or an assistant, pulled on the rope, lifting the victim up by the arms, which usually dislocated. Sometimes the torturer dropped the victim suddenly and yanked him back up. If hanging by the arms had not already dislocated them, this sudden jerking would. This technique caused such pain that many victims probably lost consciousness. Other times an assistant yanked on the victim's legs or attached weights to the ankles. This dislocated all the arm and leg bones.
Some executioners in the Middle Ages used a form of water torture, similar to waterboarding. The torturer strapped the accused to a wooden board and an assistant held the accused one's mouth open. Next, the torturer poured water, or other fluids, into the victim's mouth. This torture likely caused many deaths, if not immediately, then later, from aspiration pneumonia.
Effects
When torture did not end in death, it left lasting injury. Strappado victims probably never regained normal use of their arms. Rack victims may have taken months to recover, if they ever did. The rack would have crippled most victims permanently. Pincers and burns caused great injury to soft tissue. As sanitation was poor in the Middle Ages, wound infection was likely.
Significance
The executioner's torture methods were limited only by his imagination. All parts of the body were vulnerable. No part was exempt from the sadistic medieval torture implements, and most alleged criminals who entered the torture chamber did not leave alive.