It was one of those dark days during the medieval
Inquisitions. A group of Inquisitors were looking at a man
who was strapped to a chair. He’d not only been accused of heresy, but
his captors also believed this guy had been dabbling in the dark arts, what they referred
to as “maleficium.” The captive sat with his head in his hands,
sobbing, pleading to the Inquisitors. He was well aware that even though he’d
confessed to a crime he hadn’t committed, he was due for another round of torture. This time he was expected to give the names
of the witches he’d allegedly been working with. There were no witches, of course, but what’s
a man supposed to do when he is presented with one of most monstrous torture devices
ever created. Today we’re going to talk about three devices
in one show. The reason for that is because their application
was quite similar in that they were designed to crush or mutilate a part of the body in
order to extract a confession or information. The other reason is it’s thought they were
all used during the Inquisitions. When many of you hear the word “inquisition”
the thing that likely springs to mind is a bunch of barbaric Spanish Roman Catholics
in the Late Middle Ages investigating anyone accused of not practicing their religion,
whether they were pagans or folks belonging to another religion. It’s true that many Jewish people in Spain
were brutally tortured and killed, and even if they did convert, life was often still
very difficult for those people. Those “conversos” still met with suspicion
and experienced discrimination. Muslims were also persecuted, killed, or just
kicked out of Spain. Under Tomás de Torquemada, Spain’s Grand
Inquisitor, many hundreds of accused heretics were burned at the stake. During the late 15th century and early 16th
century it was a bad time not to be Roman Catholic, and as you’ll soon see, being
burned at the stake was sometimes just a blood-stained cherry on top of a very ugly cake. The Spanish Inquisition was a monster with
very long tentacles, so wherever Spain had interests abroad, there was bloodshed in the
name of the Catholic Church. We don’t want you to think it was only people
inside Spain that suffered. That’s far from the truth. Then there was the Portuguese Inquisition
and the Roman Inquisition and prior to that the Medieval Inquisitions, and those went
back to the 12th century and spanned much of Europe. The torture and executions and persecutions
only really stopped in the 19th century, so when we are talking about the Inquisition,
well, it’s complicated. Anyone deemed non-Catholic could have been
a target, and that included so-called witches and even scientists. You might recall the fact that the brilliant
scientist Galileo Galilei got on the wrong side of the Catholic Church. This “father of modern physics” was accused
of heresy by the Inquisitors, but he kept his head and his knees and accepted a life
sentence of house arrest. He was never tortured like some unlucky heretics,
but he was threatened with torture. We are telling you all this because when we’re
talking about brutality handed down by those inquisitive Catholics, it went on for centuries,
often behind closed doors, and the inquisitors used all kinds of ways to hurt people. How many people were tortured or executed
or both is a matter of mystery since historians can’t agree. Some say as many as 30,000 people were executed
during the Spanish Inquisitions alone, while others put the number much higher, others
lower. How many people died at the hands of inquisitors
from the 12th to the 19th century is a bigger mystery. Maybe it was hundreds of thousands, but some
historians would disagree. So, that brings us to today’s torture devices. As you know from some of our other punishment
shows, there is a chance that some torture devices sitting in museums today weren’t
even used, or not used often. Stories of how other unusual torture devices
were used could have been greatly exaggerated by people who talked about them a century
or two after they were supposedly employed for the last time. Ok, so in terms of crappy things that can
happen to you in this life, having your head slowly crushed has to be in the top five. You might have seen what the first stages
of such an act looks like if you’ve ever seen the movie, “Casino.” A scene in that film shows a man’s head
being crushed in a vise, something that was based on fact. Apparently, in real life the mobster named
Anthony Spilotro actually did that until the man’s eye popped out. The guy soon talked, so the torture wasn’t
taken to it messy conclusion. He did, however, have his throat cut after
being set on fire. That would have been quite a fitting way to
die at the hands of Catholic interrogators. During the Inquisition the instrument used
to crush a head was slightly different, in that the head would be placed under a kind
of dome-shaped lid. The chin would be supported on something below,
so the head was held firm. Through the top of the helmet a screwed iron
bar would then be twisted which would drive itself into the skull of the victim. You can only imagine how much pain this would
cause. Once the skull was pierced, another twist
or two and it would be game over. According to some sources we found, the torturer
would often only twist enough to cause unbearable pain, and that was about the time the person
wearing the helmet would give up his allies – if indeed he had any. It’s likely he’d tell you anything at
that point, so anyone tortured would later have to confess again when he was in better
shape. There were variations of the head crusher. One of them we found doesn’t have a part
that pierces the skull, so the top part is just like a regular helmet. The more turns of the screw in this case would
no doubt crush the jaw first and ruin a perfectly good set of teeth. Eyes would likely roll and if the screw was
turned more then the entire head would be crushed. The victim’s brain would ooze out of the
helmet like melting strawberry ice scream. Yep, that sounds about as grim as you can
get, even compared to a lot of other punishments we’ve mentioned in the series. If the torturer put on the breaks before everything
was crushed, it’s highly unlikely that person would make any kind of recovery. With their jaw in pieces and their eyes missing,
life wouldn’t have been much fun. We actually found one website that told us
one of these machines actually had a trough attached to it to collect the eyes when they
burst out. But did it happen like this? Were these stories the work of Protestant
propagandists that came later or are they creations of imaginative people that have
only ever seen photos of the devices online? That’s the million dollar question. We can find plenty of sources stating the
torture happened this way, but they don’t supply any evidence such as written accounts
or even sketches. One thing we do know is that the devices exist
today, most of which are in museums. Still, the iron maiden can be found in museums
and not many serious historians think that diabolical contraption was ever used on anyone. Then again, people back then were pulled apart
on racks. They were sawn in half from the groin up and
they were flayed alive, so it’s not unthinkable that the head crusher was used. You can find other devices in museums that
kind of did the same thing. One of those is what’s called the “skull
splitter.” The skull splitter looks kind of like a metal
halo filled with spikes. This would be put on the person’s head and
then a key would tighten the halo. The spikes would start crushing the skull
and if the key was turned more the top of the head would be crushed. Again, we can find plenty of sources that
state such a contraption was used during the Middle Ages to extract information or execute
a person, but we can’t find the original source of the information. Still, during that period there was such a
thing as an Inquisitor advice manual which told inquisitors the best ways to torture
someone. Rather than talk about crushing heads, though,
it focuses on advice about how to interrogate really tricky prisoners. There’s even stuff in there about the cost
of rope that was used to tie up a person about to be burned at the stake. Here’s a snippet from the manual, something
that sounds similar to what authorities do these days:
“Be sitting there. Have a huge stack of documents in front of
you. And as the person is answering questions,
flip through the documents as if you have more information than this person could dream
of. And every so often, shake your head as if
you can't believe what they're saying.” That’s quite enlightening information, but
after an exhaustive search, we couldn’t find anything about head crushing. After a bit of a deeper dive into this it
seems that such grizzly torture instruments were not used very often, but for sure the
person being interrogated would know what was going to happen to them if they didn’t
spill the beans. Can you imagine how’d feel walking into
an interrogation room and seeing a head crusher sitting on a desk? It’s very likely these instruments were
mostly used to scare people rather than crush heads. When people were sitting in front of the instrument
of torture this part of the interrogation was called, “in conspectus tormentorum.” A loose translation of that could be, “tormented
by what’s in front of you.” The inquisitors kept notes of their deeds,
and it seems for the most part the torture employed was hanging people up from ropes
or stretching them on the rack. There are records of what people said when
they were stretched, such as this, “Oh God, Oh God, there’s no mercy. Oh God, help me, help me.” Yep, they actually took the minutes of the
torture. In conclusion, it doesn’t take a great leap
of faith to believe the head crusher might have been pulled out now and again for certain
people. This brings us to the device known as the
knee splitter, something that looks like the gaping mouth of a monster. Again, it’s highly likely the inquisitors
would have done something like waterboarding a person – yep, they did that – before
they started splitting knees. Unlike the head crusher, the knee splitter
wouldn’t have caused a quick death. The victim might have died later from blood
loss, but the crushing of some bones would not lead directly to the grave. What would happen is a person’s knees were
placed inside the jaws of the device and then a handle would be turned so the jaws closed
on the knees. If the inquisitors were happy with the confession
someone gave them, perhaps they would relieve the victim of his or her agony and the knees
would stay in one piece. If those jaws closed all the way, well, the
knees would be completely crushed, and the person would never walk again. This device was said to have manifold applications,
so arms or feet or hands could have been the body part of choice. Some sources explain that this device may
have come into existence in Germany in the year 1530, but yet again after upturning a
lot of stones, we struggled to find historical records of when the knee splitter was used. If it was used, then we guess it was only
on special occasions. Most of the time a heretic or a relapsed heretic
would have not met with such creative torture, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have
ended up being burned at the stake. Lastly, we come to the breast ripper, a similar
device that caused disfigurement, but this time used only on women. Those women might have been accused of aborting
a baby or cheating on their husband. Sometimes called “The Spider”, it’s
thought the instrument was used in Germany in the 15th century. Inquisitors may also have used the breast
ripper on women accused of witchcraft, or heresy, or perhaps even blasphemy. Sometimes the claws on the device would be
heated up until they were glowing red, which would inflict much more pain and damage. The result would be total mutilation of the
accused’s breasts. Yet again, finding evidence of when such an
apparatus was used isn’t easy at all. The instruments certainly existed, and they
were likely used, especially during the witch hunts. There’s plenty of evidence of so-called
witches being tortured on areas of their bodies they don’t usually show to anyone but their
lovers. You might know the name King James from the
bible he sponsored, but the man also wrote an absolutely crazy book called, “Daemonologie,
in Forme of a Dialogue.” This was basically an absurd treatise on demons
and witchcraft. James was obsessed with witches and he seemed
to take great pleasure in ruthlessly torturing those accused of dancing with the devil. When he was King of Scotland and not yet King
of both Scotland, England and Ireland, James was there for the North Berwick witch trials. Many times, he oversaw the torture of accused
female witches and sometimes the dreaded breast rippers were used, among other nasty things. Now you need to watch this, “"Bloody Mary"
Mary I of England.” Or, have a look at this, “Why Did The King
Of England Execute His Wives?”
