Narrator: Tonight, the truth the behind the origin stories
of some of the most brutal torture methods ever created by man.
You’re literally being ripped apart while someone is in your face
demanding that you confess.
Larissa Tracy: It would be opened up,
and then it would stretch the tendons,
it would stretch the muscles.
It might break teeth.
Narrator: Dark devices meant to deliver
unbearable pain and suffering.
From a mysterious metal maiden...
Daniel Dickrell: There would be 20 strategically placed spikes
that were meant to impale the body.
Narrator: ...to a terrifying bronze beast.
Daniel Dickrell: The people inside would be cooked alive.
Narrator: When and where did these cruel contraptions emerge,
and do they prove that there can be a fate worse than death?
"Stop ripping my body apart.
I will do whatever you want me to do."
Narrator: Not all inventions are made with good intentions.
Unlock the twisted history
behind the world’s darkest marvels.
The period of European history
between the 5th and 14th centuries
is known as the Dark Ages for a reason.
It’s an era rife with political rivalries,
religious intrigues, and cruel devices
used to extract information and cause pain.
Torture devices are interesting to people
because they’re the stuff of nightmares.
Aaron Irvin: The purpose of torture was not to kill the person
that was being tortured.
You wanted something from that person.
You wanted information, you wanted a confession,
you wanted to extort money from them.
You didn’t get that if they died.
Narrator: Among the most notorious devices
said to hail from the Dark Ages,
none captures the imagination more
than the infamous iron maiden.
A metal casket towering nearly seven feet tall,
its exterior features a woman’s face,
one allegedly inspired by the Virgin Mary.
And when it’s opened, there’s an unholy surprise.
Daniel Dickrell: There would be 20 strategically placed spikes
that were meant to impale the body,
but in such a way that it wouldn’t kill the human inside,
only prolong their agony.
It would go into places that were very painful
but not particularly deadly.
Jordan Wagner: These spikes, because they’re stabbed in,
you’re actually causing some sort of blockage of the blood coming out.
You’re going to bleed and get ooze around it,
but it’s actually going to take a lot longer to, say, bleed out.
Aaron Irvin: Stick them in a box,
make them really, really uncomfortable
so that they cannot sleep,
they cannot move, they cannot breathe,
until they give in and give you what you want.
Narrator: So, who first deploys this vicious device?
Curiously, the first mention of any medieval iron maiden
doesn’t appear in the Dark Ages.
It surfaces hundreds of years later
in the late 18th century.
Larissa Tracy: In 1793, German philosopher Siebenkees
tells of the execution of a coin forger in 1515
who was put inside this iron maiden form,
and spikes driven into it,
and it took him two days to die.
The spikes only went so far,
just enough to draw enough blood that he eventually bled out.
The story gains traction
because people want to believe that they are more evolved,
that they’re more progressive than the people who came before them.
Narrator: Ironically, the legend of the iron maiden
actually begins about 2,000 years earlier
during Rome’s vicious 3rd century B.C. war against Carthage
with a Roman politician named Regulus.
Aaron Irvin: Regulus was a Roman consul
during the First Punic War.
He attempted to capture they city of Carthage itself,
and he ended up being himself captured by the Carthaginians.
The Carthaginians had sent Regulus back to the city of Rome
in order to negotiate a peace treaty,
keeping his army as hostages.
Now being a true Roman, he tells the Romans
don’t do anything the Carthaginians want.
Just don’t give in.
Out of honor, he goes back to Carthage,
and they are so incensed that he has not delivered their terms
and that he’s counseled Rome not to follow them, not to give in in any way,
that he is put into a wooden casket.
Narrator: Theologian St. Augustine
details the account in his book "The City of God."
In this box, the Carthaginians installed some nails
and some spikes.
Regulus would have been in complete darkness.
Whatever direction he leans,
something is jabbing him, something is poking him.
Imagine being trapped in this box,
and you’re stuck in there for days.
Jordan Wagner: You’d be so surprised how resilient the human body is.
The amount of damage that an individual can take
and still be awake, alive, and suffering is immense.
You can have a ton of broken bones,
you can have lacerations, cuts,
all of these different things
and still suffer and feel the pain.
You would think at some point you’re going to stop feeling pain
because you’re in shock and don’t feel it anymore.
That is a misnomer.
Narrator: The effects of constant pain
and blood loss are maddening,
and ultimately lead to the consul’s death.
Jordan Wagner: Not only are you going to be in agony,
you’re going to be tired, you’re having muscle cramps, muscle spasms,
you’re going to try to reposition yourself.
Then you’re getting pierced by either metal or maybe wood spikes,
and so there’s an increased risk of infection.
As time progresses, you’re actually potentially
gonna to start hallucinating, or if you get to a level
of decreased blood volume,
than you now become confused, lethargic,
and you’re basically in a coma,
and then that will actually lead to death.
Joyce Salisbury: However Marcus Regulus died,
these stories, that were widely read,
introduced the idea of a box with spikes
that would torture and kill
into the consciousness of Western Europe.
Narrator: 50 years after Regulus,
a notoriously cruel leader
adds a sinister visual twist to the idea.
Under the Roman occupation of Greece,
the city of Sparta was run by a local tyrant
by the name of Nabis.
Nabis was a horrible man, even on a good day.
And what he wanted to do was force the Spartans to pay him.
Nabis had a wife by the name of Apega,
who was known throughout Greece,
praised throughout Greece for her beauty
as well as her cruelty and nastiness.
Apega enjoyed inflicting pain onto people for punishments.
She enjoyed watching people being tortured.
She enjoyed causing people distress.
Narrator: Nabis creates a twisted tribute to his wife,
a spiked instrument of torture
known as the Iron Apega.
Rebecca Simon: So it makes sense that Apega was used
as a muse when designing this particular torture device
because she was the one who was representing this pain and cruelty.
Aaron Irvin: The story goes is that Nabis
would invite people over to the palace,
he would get them good and drunk,
and then ask them if they wanted to meet with the queen,
if they wanted to meet with Apega.
Larissa Tracy: And he would lure people in
and the arms of the Apega would be open.
And as they drew closer, he would put his hand on the back of the machine,
and the arms would close around the person,
and they’d be crushed in her embrace.
Narrator: Hidden under robes,
the Iron Apega’s arms, hands, and chest
are all covered with sharp spikes.
Aaron Irvin: It was at that point
that Nabis would begin to demand
whatever it is he wanted from the individual.
And as the individual resisted,
the arms would get tighter and tighter and tighter,
squeezing the victim as well as forcing them forward into the spikes.
Narrator: Spikes, a deadly cabinet, an alluring female form.
Could these elements inspire the eventual tale of the iron maiden?
Whether fact or dark fiction, the legend endures.
Narrator: Europe, the late 1400s.
As religious intolerance and dynastic wars escalate,
a powerful wing of the Catholic Church
is tasked with rooting out heretics and punishing enemies.
In Spain, this fervor becomes known
by a terrifying, singular name--
the Inquisition.
In the 15th century, we see the emergence
of what becomes known as the Inquisition.
This is one of the darkest periods of history
because it was a period of time of rounding up anyone
who did not practice the Christian or Catholic religion.
We see the church losing its grip on people a little bit.
The advent of the printing press has started spreading ideas
about questioning the church, and so this is a way to try to establish control.
Larissa Tracy: The Spanish Inquisition is founded
by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
And the Spanish Inquisition was designed to reconquer Spain
and bring it under totalitarian and authoritarian rule.
And so, the public displays of torture
are used as a means of forcing the Jews to convert,
and the Jews who convert to Christianity
are referred to as Converso.
The Muslims who are forced to convert
are referred to as Morisco.
And very often, they would be tortured to prove that
that conversion was real.
Narrator: In 1483,
an influential Dominican friar
named Tomas de Torquemada
is appointed to the role of Grand Inquisitor.
Even speaking the name conjures up the impression
of a very cruel and frightening figure,
and that’s what Torquemada was.
Narrator: To extract his confessions,
Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisitors
employ an arsenal of torture tools,
including one that takes a deceptively comforting form--
a large wooden statue of the Virgin Mary.
It’s with Torquemada that we really begin to see the idea
of the image of the Virgin Mary
with individuals brought before it, asked to pray,
and then it turns into this horrific torture device.
They’re kind of put into an embrace, similar to the Apega machine.
But what happens is that swords come out of her,
and thus injuring the victim through pain, torture, humiliation,
through a symbol of the ultimate forgiveness, of ultimate mercy.
Narrator: The sinister statue’s angelic face,
along with the spiked coffin from the story of Regulus
and the female form of the Iron Apega,
are all believed to be inspirations
for the legendary iron maiden’s design.
But as sadistic as this device is,
there’s another that’s even more feared,
one intended to inflict both terror and pain.
Known as the rack, the mere sight of it often elicits a confession.
Aaron Irvin: We have bones popping,
joints ripping, tendons coming undone,
individuals who even after they’re released from torture,
they never walk the same way again,
they’re never able to stand upright again for the rest of their lives.
This is a means of torture that is permanently damaging
to the people that it is inflicted on.
Narrator: The rack is an elevated wooden frame with spokes.
A victim’s ankles and wrists are attached with ropes.
Poles are inserted into sockets,
and when pulled, turn the axles,
slowly tearing the victim apart.
Larissa Tracy: When somebody’s attached to a rack,
what you hear is the popping sound of their joints
and the cartilage as they are slowly dislocated.
Jordan Wagner: You’re gonna start having some bleeding
into the muscle, and the muscles might rip.
And your muscles are attached by tendons,
so tendons can then start ripping.
Then as you continue, your ligaments are gonna start going,
and when ligaments like that pop,
what happens is then you can cause a dislocation of the joint.
If you pull hard enough, there is enough force probably
that you can actually rip limbs off.
Aaron Irvin: You’re literally being ripped apart
while someone is in your face asking you questions,
demanding that you confess,
telling you at any moment this can stop,
just do what we want you to do.
It’s not about guilt, it’s not about innocence.
It’s about, "Stop ripping my body apart.
I will do whatever you want me to do."
Narrator: The machine is so powerful,
the force it uses to break a spine
is equal to a 500-pound wrecking ball
crashing through a wall at 30 miles per hour.
Cord Whitaker: Very often, they would stop the racking
before they got to the point of death
in order to then apply other tortures.
Jordan Wagner: They might cut them. They might try to stab them.
Might try to light a small fire underneath their bodies.
All these different ways to cause harm and injury.
Narrator: But this terrible torture method is allegedly employed
much earlier than the Middle Ages.
It’s also used during the rule
of Ancient Rome’s infamous emperor-- Nero.
Larissa Tracy: Nero was very sadistic.
His public spectacles of punishment and torture
were meant to reinforce his own authority.
Aaron Irvin: In 65 A.D.,
a conspiracy was discovered among Nero’s closest,
most trusted advisors.
And in the aftermath of this discovery,
Nero decided to just start torturing everybody he could find.
We in fact have an 18th century etching of this.
Narrator: The etching is titled "The Man on the Rack."
This barbaric device goes on to become an essential
torture tool for centuries.
But it’s most famously used
inside the Tower of London’s notorious dungeons.
The history of the rack at the Tower of London is a really interesting one.
People often turn to John Holland, Duke of Exeter,
for introducing the rack in the early 15th century.
And in fact, it came to be called
the Duke of Exeter’s daughter.
Michael Young: John Holland came from a family
that had been disgraced in earlier generations.
And he seems to have been determined to regain that reputation.
And he did it at the Tower of London, where he was constable.
Cord Whitaker: John Holland turned his concerns
toward making sure that when people looked up
and saw the white tower of the Tower of London
that they would feel the weight of the state
and its ability, if they crossed it in any way, to make them pay.
Narrator: The dreaded rack tortures suspected traitors
for the next 200 years,
throughout the reigns of monarchs,
including Henry VIII, Edward VI,
Mary I, and Elizabeth I.
But its most prolific use happens under James I.
Narrator: During the 16th and 17th centuries,
England hits new heights
of political and religious unrest.
Rebecca Simon: What we need to understand
about England during this time
is that the country has been going back and forth
between Catholicism and Protestantism
in kind of a power struggle.
Cord Whitaker: The importance of the state is what matters above all,
so anyone who is seen
as an enemy of the state
is certainly cannon fodder for torture.
Narrator: One of the most notorious victims,
the Catholic rebel Guy Fawkes.
Michael Young: Guy Fawkes came from Northern England,
and he was a zealous,
determined Catholic from an early age.
Rebecca Simon: He was actually raised as a protestant.
But then after his father passed away,
his mother remarried to a Catholic,
and so Guy Fawkes actually transitioned
from Protestantism into Catholicism.
And he became a very staunch Catholic,
and this is what motivated him
to try to bring Catholicism back into England.
Narrator: When Queen Elizabeth I dies in 1603,
the son of Scotland’s Queen Mary,
James I, inherits the English crown.
Larissa Tracy: When James I comes to the throne,
he’s protestant even though his mother
Mary Queen of Scots had been Catholic.
So, there was a lot of religious confusion,
and that affects Guy Fawkes’ ideology
when he decides that James is a tyrant.
Narrator: To help restore the Catholics to power,
Guy Fawkes orchestrates an attempted attack
on Parliament in 1605,
known as the Gunpowder Plot.
Michael Young: The plan was to blow up the House of Lords
on the opening day of parliament
when all the protestant elite would be present,
and, of course, the royal family and the king himself.
The basement of the House of Lords
came up for lease at this time,
and Fawkes and his co-conspirators
were able to lease that storage area
and smuggle 36 barrels of gunpowder
under the House of Lords.
Guy Fawkes was positioned there,
ready to light the match,
and then presumably run like hell.
Narrator: But just days before the planned attack,
authorities receive an anonymous letter revealing the plot.
Michael Young: The night before the opening of parliament,
the basement of the House of Lords was searched,
and Guy Fawkes was found and arrested.
Dan Dickrell: He was found with two tons of gunpowder.
Unleashing that amount of explosive energy
underneath the building would have definitely
blown out most of the structure.
And then what would have remained
likely would have collapsed,
so even if you had survived the explosion,
you would have been trapped under the rubble
and probably perished afterwards.
Narrator: Fawkes is interrogated,
and when he refuses to talk,
he’s dragged off to the dreaded torture dungeon
at the Tower of London.
Michael Young: King James gave specific orders that,
although he was authorizing the torture of Fawkes,
he wanted them to start with the mildest tortures,
and only proceed if necessary to the most extreme,
which was the rack.
Rebecca Simon: Guy Fawkes is a tough prisoner
because he’s refusing to give up any of the names
of the people involved.
But eventually, as his arms are becoming dislocated, that’s enough.
He can’t withstand it anymore. Nobody could.
Narrator: Fawkes confesses,
but he’s left a broken man.
Jordan Wagner: The consequences of all of the trauma
and injuries that occurred during this rack process
and event can totally be devastating to one’s life.
Are you able to get up, walk around?
Not really. Your fine motor skills
and your function of your arm is going to be off.
So you can significantly have a lifestyle change
after these events have occurred to you.
Rebecca Simon: The best way to understand the torture
and psychological trauma that Guy Fawkes went under
is by comparing his signatures
from before and after his experience on the rack.
Guy Fawkes’ signature was very clear,
very readable in general.
But after he was tortured on the rack,
his signature on the confession
has been reduced to a scrawl.
After Guy Fawkes is put to the rack,
he’s supposed to be hung, drawn, and quartered.
He basically gets the full suite
of punishments for treason.
However, before this could happen,
he either fell or jumped from the gallows
and died by breaking his neck.
Personally, I believe he jumped.
I think that would have been
the wise decision in that moment.
In either case, the fall or the jump
prevented the authorities the pleasure of hanging him,
although they still proceeded to quarter him--
cutting the four quarters of his body to be dispersed
and put on display throughout the kingdom
as a warning to any other would-be traitors.
Narrator: The rack eventually falls out of favor in Europe
in the 17th century, crossing over with another
excruciatingly painful torture device
that mutilates without mercy.
Narrator: Medieval Europeans devise some of the world’s
most punishing forms of torture.
Many of these devices are complex in their cruelty,
but one is wickedly simple.
Cord Whitaker: The thumbscrews are pretty aptly named.
The goal is to mangle the hand
by putting it in a vice
and using what are essentially screws
to apply pressure to the thumb joints,
both smashing them and pulling them away
from the rest of the hand at the same time.
Jordan Wagner: You’re causing a significant
amount of soft tissue pain.
The nail actually might crack under that pressure.
But if you continue to have the pressure,
you actually have the ability to break the bones.
Narrator: Traditionally, thumbscrews contain two metal bars.
A screw on the center post, when turned,
brings the bars together with great force,
crushing whatever is placed between them.
Of course, people refer to thumbscrews
as "I’m going to put you to thumbscrews" if I want information from you.
And at first, it doesn’t sound like it would be terribly, terribly painful.
But if you think about smashing your thumb with a hammer,
now imagine that sustained pressure
being put onto your thumb, crunching into the bone.
It is excruciatingly painful.
So the thumbscrew is actually
a rather horrific torture device,
even though it’s a localized one that only affects
one small part of your body.
The hands themselves have so many nerve endings and receptors--
over 3,000 different receptors in the hands,
relating to touch, heat,
two-point discrimination, pain.
It’s equivalent to the amount of nerve information
that you’re getting from, like, your whole torso,
that are just in your hands.
Cord Whitaker: So if your hands are mangled from the thumbscrews,
people know that you’ve been tortured.
And people know that that perhaps means you deserved it.
Also, the mangling of the hands
makes it very difficult for you to produce
in a largely agricultural society.
Most people worked with their hands.
So to make the hands unusable
is a theme that we see across the panoply of forms of torture
in the Middle Ages.
Thumbscrews actually was used to elicit a lot of information
because it hurt so much.
Narrator: But this devious device isn’t just used to punish.
Larissa Tracy: One of the most unjust applications of the thumbscrews
is that of Artemisia Gentileschi.
She’s the daughter of Orazio Gentileschi,
a Renaissance painter who had a very large studio
and lots of students.
Now, Artemisia was an artist herself,
and she studied under her father’s tutelage,
but she very famously liked to walk around the studio naked.
Her father encouraged this free behavior,
but one of his students took that as an invitation,
and when Artemisia Gentileschi was 17, she was raped.
When she made a public accusation,
the authorities subjected her to the thumbscrews
to establish the veracity of her story.
Now, 1612 in Italy,
you have local authorities who have no problem
using physical pain to extract confessions from criminals.
But in this instance, in order to prove her story,
as a woman, her word was not enough.
And so she’s subjected to the thumbscrews
in order to prove that she had in fact been sexually assaulted.
The man who assaulted her was found guilty,
but he only serves a year in prison.
Narrator: The impact on Artemisia however,
is far more severe.
The result of being tortured greatly alters her ability to paint.
Larissa Tracy: As an artist, when you hold your paintbrush,
you have to be able to grip that paintbrush,
and you need your thumbs.
So having been subjected to thumbscrews,
she would have been in excruciating pain.
Narrator: Excruciating and portable thumbscrews
are popular far and wide,
from witch trials to slave ship uprisings.
But in the long history of torture devices,
perhaps none is more diabolical
than one designed not to crush, tear,
or pierce, but to roast.
Rebecca Simon: One of the most sadistic torture devices
to come out of the ancient world
was from the 6th century B.C.E. in Sicily
known as the brazen bull.
Also known as the Bull of Phalaris,
named after the Tyrant of Sicily.
Phalaris the Tyrant
was known as being excessively evil.
There are even stories that he engaged in cannibalism.
The bull itself was actually invented by someone named Perilaus,
and Perilaus wanted to invent a device
that would be meant to torture and also kill people,
but in a very symbolic way,
placing them into a large hollow bronze bull,
where a fire would be lit under it.
The brazen bull is essentially just a pressure cooker, right?
So, inside there is an enclosed cavity of air
that as that air heats,
the people inside would be cooked alive.
Narrator: It’s estimated that a person
could survive inside the bull
for up to 20 excruciating minutes.
Jordan Wagner: You’re touching hot metal,
so you’re actually getting burns,
anywhere between first, second,
third, and even fourth-degree burns,
which ends up burning into the muscle and the bone.
But on top of all that, you’re being heated from the inside.
A normal body temperature of a human being
should be about 37 degrees Celsius
or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
When you get into severe hyperthermia,
you’re going to die once your temperature
gets over 42 degrees.
The brazen bull, think about it this way.
It’s like being cooked in an oven.
A modern example is our saunas that we have.
And actually every year, they do sauna competitions
where they put the sauna temperature
up to over 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
And so they find out how long somebody can last
inside there before they need to get out.
And typically, on average it’s about six minutes.
Versus in the brazen bull, it’s been thought
that they leave people in there for 20 minutes.
So you can just think about what happens to the body.
Very sadistic.
Narrator: The bull is also almost entirely soundproof,
except for two holes drilled into the nose.
This is where the device becomes even more diabolical.
Rebecca Simon: The brazen bull was specifically designed
so that the screams of the person
would actually almost sound musical to people’s ears.
So rather than hearing the tortured, horrific,
pained screams of a victim,
they’re listening to kind of the musical sounds
coming from a large animal.
Narrator: Making this musical conversion possible
is a system of pipes and reeds
that transforms the anguished screams
into sounds made by brass or wind instruments.
And in a sick twist of fate,
its first victim is the man who invented it.
Aaron Irvin: Something inside the Tyrant Phalaris snapped.
Perhaps it was being confronted by another sociopath.
Perhaps he was angry that Perilaus was more creative than he had thought.
But he invited Perilaus to climb inside the bull himself
and show the Tyrant Phalaris
how exactly did these pipes work?
He’s happy to test out his device.
He’s very proud of what he’s created.
What he does not know is that Phalaris
is going to slam the door shut,
trapping Perilaus in the brazen bull,
and then having a fire lit underneath.
Perilaus cannot escape,
and he is forced to stay inside the bull,
literally becoming the actual test subject of this torture device.
Aaron Irvin: The death of Perilaus is kind of a standard trope
in Greek tragedy, in Greek storytelling.
You have the sociopath, the sicko,
who creates the horrible, awful thing,
and then of course becomes destroyed
by the horrible, awful thing that he created.
Narrator: Although the brazen bull is most closely associated
with the Ancient Greeks...
...the Romans later borrow the invention
to torture Christians in the second century,
including a legendary Roman general
who becomes known as St. Eustace.
Eileen Joy: He’s hunting one day.
He sees a stag that appears to have a kind of burning cross
in between its antlers,
and it’s a miracle.
So he converts to Christianity,
which doesn’t sit well with his neighbors,
his boss, et cetera,
so he has to go into hiding.
Narrator: Exiled to Egypt, destitute and alone,
Eustace clings to his faith.
But 15 years later,
he’s called back into battle for Rome.
Eustace comes home because his country has asked for his help,
and it’s the right thing to do.
And he probably assumes it’s okay, you know, to be who he is.
Then the new emperor, Hadrian,
who basically hates him, says, you know,
"I’m just going to insist on you converting
back to Paganism or I’m going to kill you."
Eustace refuses.
And the first thing that happens
is he and his family are fed to the lions.
Narrator: According to the legend,
the lions don’t harm the family.
They instead bow at Eustace’s feet.
Enraged, Emperor Hadrian sends them all
to the Colosseum to be tortured
inside the brazen bull.
Aaron Irvin: The story goes, though, that after some time
of complete and utter silence from the bull,
it was opened up again and the body of Eustace
was found completely intact.
Eustace himself had died,
but not even the hairs on his body had burned away.
He was completely untouched by the incredible heat
and flames that were designed to strip flesh from bones.
This was seen as a miracle,
and Eustace is even still honored today
within the Catholic Church as a saint.
Narrator: The brazen bull is a larger-than-life
instrument of torture.
But there’s one seemingly innocuous device
that hides an excruciating
and disturbing form of punishment.
There’s an old French proverb that states
to eat an anguished pear is to cause pain and misery.
And this will be made true with the invention
of a device called the pear of anguish.
Now, this is quite an unassuming device.
If you take a look at it, it’s almost quite beautiful.
Larissa Tracy: The surviving examples of the pear of anguish
are intricately worked.
They are carved. They’re etched.
The metal is filigreed.
And so it’s almost impossible to imagine
something that beautiful being used in any way for torture.
Narrator: But looks can be deceiving.
The pear-shaped machine is placed inside a part of the body.
Then with the turn of a key, the metal petals expand.
The pear of anguish was interpreted to be a device
that would be inserted into the orifice of an offender
based on the crime that they might have committed.
Whether it was prostitution or blasphemy or adultery,
it was a device that would specifically punish
the part of the body that had been used
in order to commit the crime.
If it was used as a form of punishment for sodomy,
then it was inserted into the rectum.
And the idea is it would be opened up,
and then it would stretch the muscles.
If it was used as a form of punishment for blasphemers,
then it was inserted in the mouth
and it might break teeth.
Now the idea of a torture device
that was inserted in the mouth and left there
has its origins in the Middle Ages
with scold’s bridles,
And these were almost helmet-like implements
that had a tongue depressor.
And they’d be fitted over the head of gossips,
blasphemers.
The metal piece is inserted into the mouth,
and so they cannot speak.
And that’s their punishment
for having spoken too much.
Jordan Wager: The fact that your jaw is opened so far,
you’re going to cause a dislocated jaw,
and the jaw is just stuck open.
It is very painful.
Narrator: As the only known victim
is about to discover.
Narrator: It’s been described as the device
that elevated torture into an art form.
But the provocatively named pear of anguish
is shrouded in mystery.
We don’t know a whole lot
about the origins of the pear of anguish.
Some do say it was created in the later Middle Ages.
Some believe it has something
to do with the period of Inquisition in Europe,
and in Spain especially.
Among the catalog of instruments of torture
associated with the Spanish Inquisition
was the Pope’s Pear.
There was rumored to be a pear that would fit
the description of a pear of anguish
that was used to extract confessions of heresy.
And so, like many of the stories of the Spanish Inquisition,
which compounds instrument of torture upon instrument of torture,
the story of the pear of anguish may have its roots there.
Narrator: There is, however,
one written example of this depraved torture tool
from a 17th century book.
There is an account in "The History of Thieves"
that describes a French thief, Palioly,
who has a pear constructed, a metal implement,
that was inserted into the mouth of his victims.
And it would open, but it would lock in place.
And it could only be released with a key.
He inserts this pear into the mouth of one of his victims,
Eridas, and he locks the pear in place.
And Eridas nearly starves to death
because he cannot get out of it.
He does not have the key.
Eileen Joy: The pear of anguish
apparently was used by thieves to,
in a sense, clam up people’s mouths
so that they wouldn’t scream while being robbed.
You see this today in every crime show
where victims are either taped
or something is stuffed in their mouths like a cloth,
which I have always thought has gotta be
one of the worst things that could happen to you.
Narrator: But with little else to go on,
some historians question the pear’s true origin.
That’s why so many of these stories appear later than the actual events,
because there’s a desire to separate their society
from the darker aspects of the Middle Ages.
So these stories gain in grotesqueness.
They evolve into these unbelievable horrors
of mechanized torture and punishment.
And they are developed as a means of saying,
"That’s not us. We don’t do that."
Aaron Irvin: We can certainly call into question
some of the devices that we see from the Middle Ages.
Are these accurate representations
of what torture devices were like?
Was there really something like the iron maiden,
like the pear of anguish?
Michael Young: It’s possible that the pear of anguish
is more a product of the Romantic literary imagination
than a real device
that existed in previous centuries.
Larissa Tracy: The pear of anguish doesn’t appear
in any medieval literary sources.
There are no legal references to it.
In all of the work I have done on torture
and brutality in literary sources
and in historical sources,
I’ve never come upon a reference to the pear of anguish.
And yet, it becomes a showpiece
of so many museums of torture
because it’s a fascinating object,
very similar to the iron maiden.
Narrator: While the authenticity of some devices
remains up for debate,
there are plenty of real ones to point to,
some of which combine a few gruesome methods.
Rebecca Simon: Over the centuries, we’ve seen a hybrid development
of various torture devices, such as the iron chair for example.
The iron chair is similar to the iron maiden
in that it is a chair that is made of spikes
that the victim is forced to sit on,
and then a fire is often lit underneath this chair,
so it gets very hot.
So not only are you basically
getting stabbed to death, you can’t move
because you are also getting burned to death.
And this type of torture also harks back to the brazen bull.
Narrator: Seeing these tools of torture feeds our morbid curiosity
about the brutality of the distant past.
Regardless though as to the specifics of the artifacts we have today,
we have plenty of attestation
that torture has been a constant
throughout human history.
Narrator: From antiquity to the modern day,
cruel inventors have devised machines
that unleash boundless capacity to inflict pain
and suffering on those deemed deserving of such a fate,
proving mankind’s creativity knows no bounds
when it comes to torture.