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Eventually, in medieval Europe, they arrived at a solution. Initially, the favored method was sawing through people horizontally, but victims died of blood loss quickly, causing executioners to reimagine their approach. This is one of those times to stop reading if you’re particularly squeamish. While sawing was sometimes done to limbs or hands so the victim would survive, the worst form of sawing in the Middle Ages was unimaginably horrible. Handsaws have been used for torture and execution as far back as 50 B.C. Torturers could tighten the vice as quickly or as slowly as they wanted, so victims could be stuck having their heads crushed from the bottom up for days on end.
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Finally, the skull itself would crack, and the brain would hemorrhage, killing the victim. If the torturers kept going, the pressure on the skull caused the victim’s eyes to pop out. First, the teeth would crack, followed by the lower jaw. From there, the device was cranked gradually, lowering the dome and exerting force on the skull. The lower jaw was supported on a flat surface to secure the head on both sides. This device featured a dome-like crown, which fit over the top of the victim’s head like a helmet. While the head crusher was generally used to extract confessions rather than to execute prisoners, it was sometimes used for that purpose. The head crusher operated on the same mechanism as a vice, and it was a favorite of the Spanish inquisitors. In Spain, especially, investigations into witches and those accused of practicing “dark arts” were undertaken with the utmost seriousness. Before we go on, here is your warning: This might be disturbing to read.Īfter the bubonic plague crushed much of Europe, many reasoned that humanity had done something to anger God. Therefore, the following is a list of the most awful torture methods used in medieval Europe. Regardless, this just goes to show that people are largely products of their environments and that the Dark Ages produced a different type of person. Whether crowds gathered to watch these incredibly dark exhibitions of human suffering for entertainment or because they were simply an accepted part of society then, it is nevertheless hard to imagine people reacting to the things I’m about to describe with anything other than horror, given our modern sensibilities. While medieval records are notoriously sparse, some accounts even say that crowds were inspired by the bravery of the condemned and that they viewed public torture and executions as a spiritual experience.