Bizarre Rituals: Medieval Torture Devices

That’s gonna leave a mark!

So, you may be asking yourself, what is ‘the Rack?’ How does the ‘Judas Cradle’ work? Why does the ‘Choke Pear’ sound more like a tasty fruit or a fancy necklace than a torture device?

And, most importantly of all, how does she come up with this stuff?😥

Well, I’m here to answer your questions, my friends! (Except the last one—no one knows how these ideas form in the black abyss that is my mind!) I warn you, though, some of these (ok, all of them) are difficult to stomach. Man’s inhumanity to man is truly astonishing sometimes. Thankfully, these cruel devices are relegated to the ‘would you believe’ section in history museums or are the subject of spooky stories by the fire at Camp Wauconda.

Well, that’s the camp Ghostbuster Ray Stantz went to as a child, but you get the idea. 😉

Let’s explore these ‘inhuman bringers of pain’ now, though, and give you fodder for your next cookout! We start with perhaps the most well-known device of all—The Rack. The object of this device was…well, plain and simple, to torture someone into confessing to a particular crime. The unfortunate victim’s ankles would be secured at one end of this device, his wrists, to the opposite end. A wheel-type mechanism was then cranked, stretching the victim’s limbs inch-by-inch, eventually dislocating their bones and ligaments at the joints. This would continue until the poor sap either confessed or was literally torn ‘limb from limb.’

Like some kind of freakin’ elastic man. No, thank you.

The Rack not your speed? No worries. There was no dearth of devices to choose from back in the day. Ancient Persia had a particularly inventive way to torture a victim to death: Scaphism. I admit I’d never heard of this one. It is, literally, the act of being eaten alive. The condemned would be placed in a hollow tree or boat and force-fed milk and honey until their bowels reacted (read massive diarrhea here.) Afterward, they were made to sit in their own waste while covered with more milk and honey. Eventually, insects would be drawn to the victim and begin to feast.

Chomp. Chomp. And these individuals soon succumbed to sepsis or gangrene.

What’s next? How about Rat Torture? A person suffering from Rat torture was restrained while a rat was placed on their naked body and then covered by a container, preventing it from escape. Heat was applied to the area and the rodent, desperate to escape the heat, would begin to dig, burrowing into the victim with it’s sharp claws.

Burrowing into their body. Slowly. Until a major artery was hit and, mercifully, death came.

Talk about your horror movie themes!

Another inventive torture method, one that made me flinch when I read about it, is the Choke Pear. As the name suggests, this was a metal, pear-shaped contraption, with four sharp ‘leaves’ surrounding it. The tool, used on suspected adulterers and homosexuals, was inserted into an orifice (in females, the hoo-hah and in males, the anus) and expanded until mutilation.

And you thought your gyno’s speculum was medieval!

Of course, along the lines of capitalizing on the most sensitive areas of the body, you’d be hard-pressed to find another like the Judas Cradle. Its pointed, pyramid shape sat on top of a few poles (kind of like a tripod), and the condemned would be lowered onto it until it impaled them via one of the tender orifices at the ‘nether’ regions.

Seriously, who thought of this stuff?

But wait—as they say on TV—there’s more!

The grossest one, the one that gave me nightmares reading about it, was the Saw Torture. (I would like to add that these barbaric men, though imaginative in the various ways to torture a body, lacked the ability to develop a creative name for each act. Rat torture, Saw torture, the Rack? What a snore fest. Why not ‘The Saw of Doom, the Rack of Despair, the Burrowing Beast?

Anyhoo, where was I? Oh, right, the Saw.

Image credit: Explore the Archive; Saw Torture

Damn.

In this torture scenario, the victim was hung upside down because, even back then, executioners knew that blood to the head meant an oxygen supply, which meant the victim stayed alert and awake longer.

To, you know, get more bang for the buck.

The torturer would begin to saw between the victims legs and the unfortunate individual would remain awake and conscious, aware of what was being done to them. It wasn’t until the saw severed the public bone and reached their torso—and a major artery—that the person would pass out and eventually bleed to death.

I was legit surprised that there are so many to explore. As such, it’s not possible to hit them all in one blog. Perhaps we will have a Part 2, if our stomachs allow. But, I will leave you with one last one to digest.🤢

And prove to you that, somewhere and at some ancient time, there was someone having a much worse day that you might be having right now 😆

For the females among us, this one is for you…the Breast Ripper. Yeah, like I said, the simple name tells the tale. Much like the Choke Pear, this device was used on women suspected of adultery, lascivious behavior, or abortion. It was claw-like, made of metal, and would be heated before using it to shred and rip apart a woman’s breasts. (You’ll notice there doesn’t seem to be a device to shred a man’s bits, right? No justice, I tell ya!)

Thankfully, and as far as I know, none of these medieval torture devices are in use today. Although, in all honesty, I wouldn’t mind bringing some back to try on some of societies vilest predators. 😉

Until next time, friends.

—Q