Mankind knows many examples of the atrocities that occurred in the Middle Ages. The Iron Maiden (a tool of torture) is a device allegedly used in the Middle Ages to execute or to unleash languages to intractable heretics. Was it really so? Let's figure it out.
Design
Rare sources describe that the Iron Maiden (a tool of torture) looked like a vertical hollow coffin with one or two doors. The inner walls are dotted with rows of sharp spikes or rods from the top to the bottom.
The craftsmen who made this death cabinet often gave it the shape of a woman. Perhaps, alluding to death itself, which wraps a person in its arms, or perhaps there are erotic notes. Therefore, the device is more like a sarcophagus with spikes. When was the device used?
Application
Whether the “Iron Maiden” (a tool of torture) was used by medieval executioners and inquisitors is not known for certain. There is a high probability that its existence is due to the mystifiers of the XVIII-XIX centuries. This is confirmed by the fact that not one such device dating from the 6th-15th centuries has been found. The most famous instance from Nuremberg was made around the 16th century. Unfortunately, he was lost during the bombing in 1944.
The doors closed slowly. One of them could open so that the executioner had the opportunity to check the condition of the victim. So that the torturer did not feel severe discomfort from the screams and groans of the executed, the walls of the Iron Maiden were rather thick. Spikes entered the soft tissue of the victim’s body, piercing their arms, legs, buttocks, shoulders, stomach. Death came very soon. The judges could continue interrogations for some time. In addition, the enclosure of space added to the torment of the executed.
Ancient analogue
Ancient writers left notes about a similar device used by the tyrant Nabis who ruled Sparta. The mechanical device, according to the descriptions, was made in the form of a luxuriously dressed woman with a face - a complete copy of the face of his wife Apega.
When the ruler of one or another citizen needed to lure money, he called him to him. The tyrant’s “wife” always sat in the room. If, after verbal arguments about the need to share money, the tyrant was refused, he took the woman’s device by the hand and led him to an intractable citizen. Apega grabbed the citizen in her arms and hugged him. The hands and chest of the killer machine were strewn with needles. The apparatus, if it really existed, was invented by Nabis himself. He considered this a sure means of taking out debts.
Nuremberg construction
Let us return to the most famous example of the torture device - the Nuremberg Maiden. It was also called the Iron Maiden, translated from English by Iron Mayden. By the way, the name of the famous rock band came from here. And it is called the “Nuremberg Maiden” because the first instance was built in the city with the corresponding name. What was the instrument of torture?
Description of the Iron Maiden:
- construction height - 7 feet;
- a wardrobe in the form of a woman’s figure depicting the face of the Virgin Mary;
- the location of the rods and long nails inside the creepy cabinet was calculated so as not to catch the vital organs of the convict.
Thus, the torment lasted for many hours, and even days. The reprisal ended with the fact that the bottom of the structure was pushed back, and the corpse was thrown into the river.
Exposing a myth
Maria Eliferova, a Russian researcher of the Middle Ages, a teacher at the Russian State Humanitarian University, questions the very fact of the existence of the Iron Maiden (instruments of torture) during the Inquisition, the period called by the historians the Middle Ages. No written documents were found describing the use of a sarcophagus studded inside with long nails. Believe me, the other methods of executions and interrogations were very thoroughly documented by the Inquisition.
There are no references even in fiction books, right up to the end of the 18th century. The main argument against this myth is the price of the issue. Then manual labor was used, and stamping large, complex, expensive products to manufacture would hit the treasury of the Inquisition.
More than tens of thousands of heretics, witches, sorcerers, etc., have gone through terrible courts. Why should there be such a waste if there are many proven and simple ways to unleash the tongues of the “wicked”? For example, a rack. This is a very common form of torture during the time of the rampant inquisition. But the creators of the myth did not come up with such a question. After all, metals were already mined industrially, and there was plenty of iron.
All famous museum exhibits are just copies of one Nuremberg specimen, which was already mentioned above. The original Iron Maiden (torture instrument) was lost. Yes, and it was created at the beginning of the XIX century, just in the midst of fashion for all kinds of “medieval horror”. "Quite by chance" at this time Europe was seized by a boom of sadomasochistic sex. No wonder the instrument of torture was made in the form of a virgin as a symbol of innocence. The thorns inside her are a symbol of sadism.