I personally find the technology of torture to be absolutely fascinating. I also appreciate the twisted genius: the people who invented these devices obviously deeply enjoyed what they were doing. Thing is, had this depth of ingenuity been applied to useful problems, we would probably have flown to the moon by Prayers to everyone. Your email address will not be published. Recognizing the value of the do-it-yourself movement of the last several years, thecoolist. Home Offbeat.
For those of the macabre mindset, here are 26 fascinating medieval torture devices. Pear of Anguish View in gallery via turbosquid. Judas Cradle View in gallery via pinterest. Iron Maiden View in gallery via hypnogoria. Spanish Donkey View in gallery via uberpunch. Really makes you wonder what the medieval fascination with vagina torture was… The Rack View in gallery via torturemuseum.
Spanish Tickler View in gallery via lolwot. Iron Chair View in gallery via sevenhairs. The Collar View in gallery via notesfromcamelidcountry. The Tub View in gallery via imup2. Coffin View in gallery via pinterest. Pillory View in gallery via ladydespensersscribery. Along with the coffin, the pillory revealed humanity itself as one of the worst torture devices. Brazen Bull View in gallery via thrillist. Strappado View in gallery via fredvanlente. Crocodile Shears View in gallery via pinterest.
Lead Sprinkler View in gallery via darrenendymion. The Crucifix View in gallery via wikimedia. Brodequin View in gallery via vdquynh. Tongue Tearer View in gallery via blumhouse.
The Spider View in gallery via korupciya. Malay Boot View in gallery via wikimedia. Pilliwinks View in gallery via blumhouse. The Heretics Fork View in gallery via haikudeck. Ducking Stool View in gallery via yoliverpool. Breaking Wheel View in gallery via flickr.
It was about gender because this shit was designed for women. I actually feel bad for the victims but the devices are fascinating. Leave a Reply. You might also like. Architectural Brazil: 10 Breathtaking Modern Monuments. TheCoolist is supported by our readers. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn a commission. Due to its shape, neither bones nor muscles were spared.
The victim was naked and tied making him or her completely defenseless. Then the torturers began the sometimes public act of mutilating the victim. They often began with the limbs and slowly moved into the chest, back, neck and finally the face. In short, the Spanish Tickler or Cat's Paw, is nothing but an extension to the torturer's hand. The spikes were sharp enough to tear anything in their path. Typically, the hands of the person to be interrogated were tied behind his back.
Then, by means of a rope threaded through a pulley or thrown over a rafter, his body would be hoisted off the ground by the hands, and then be allowed to drop with a jerk. The strain on the shoulders was immense. The weight of the body hanging from the arms contorted the pleural cavity, making breathing difficult asphyxiation was the typical cause of death in crucifixion, for the same reason. Under various names, the garrucha appears frequently in more-recent history. It has been employed in the interrogation of prisoners in U.
One well-known case is that of Manadel al-Jamadi, who died during interrogation at Abu Ghraib in His hands had been tied behind his back, and he had then been suspended by the wrists from the bars of a window five feet off the ground. The second technique employed by the Inquisition was the rack. Typically the victim was placed on his back, with legs and arms fastened tautly to winches at each end.
Every turn of the winches would stretch him by some additional increment. Ligaments might snap. Bones could be pulled from their sockets. The sounds alone were sometimes enough to encourage cooperation in those brought within hearing distance. Here is an account of a suspected heretic who had been placed on the potro and was being questioned by inquisitors in the Canary Islands in The winches had just been given three turns. The suspect would confess after six more.
The recording secretary preserved the moment:. The third technique involved water. The effect was to induce the sensation of asphyxiation by drowning. Waterboarding is the English term commonly used today. The modern term in Spanish is submarino. One historian writes:. A s it happens, the Inquisition invented that defense. In theory, torture by the Church was strictly controlled.
It was not supposed to put life in jeopardy or cause irreparable harm. And torture could be applied only once. But inquisitors pushed the boundaries. For instance, what did once mean? Maybe it could be interpreted to mean once for each charge. Torture would prove difficult to contain. The potential fruits always seemed so tantalizing, the rules so easy to bend. The public profile of torture is higher than it has been for many decades.
Arguments have been mounted in its defense with more energy than at any other time since the Middle Ages. The documentary record pried from intelligence agencies could easily be mistaken for Inquisition transcripts. The lawyer Philippe Sands, investigating the interrogation which used a variety of techniques by the United States of a detainee named Mohammed al-Qahtani, pulled together key moments from the official classified account:. The Inquisition, with its stipulation that torture and interrogation not jeopardize life or cause irreparable harm, actually set a more rigorous standard than some proponents of torture insist on now.
The regulation of torture never really works—it just points the practitioners in new directions. We see it today when interrogators, queasy about extracting information by means of torture, send prisoners to be interrogated in countries without such scruples. During the past decade, the United States has handled an estimated suspected terrorists this way. In medieval times, torture was at first limited to crimina excepta —crimes of the utmost gravity—but that category was eventually broadened, and the threshold of permissibility lowered.
Torture becomes legitimized in the hands of a different sort of person—one who is determined to use the powers of reason, and believes in the rightness of his cause. Citing Thomas Aquinas, they argued that purity of motive forgave the crossing of any line. W hich, in the end, is the most dangerous inquisitorial impulse of all—that sense of moral certainty. In America today, religion asserts itself repeatedly and increasingly. Oklahoma and a dozen other states have introduced legislation to ban the use of Islamic sharia law in any way within their jurisdictions, despite the fact that it has become a problem exactly nowhere.
Schoolbooks in Texas have been revised by government fiat to downplay the idea of separation of church and state. During the past decade, public libraries have faced challenges on moral grounds to more than 4, books in their collections. But religion is not the only culprit. The Enlightenment, which was supposed to be the antidote to this sort of thinking, gave rise to uncompromising outlooks of its own.
For some, the higher power is not God but the forces of history, or democracy, or reason, or technology, or genetics. Fundamentally, the inquisitorial impulse arises from some vision of the ultimate good, some conviction about ultimate truth, some confidence in the quest for perfectibility, and some certainty about the path to the desired place—and about whom to blame for obstacles in the way.
These are powerful inducements.
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