Medieval skeleton puts a face on accounts of torture and violence (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Medieval skeleton puts a face on accounts of torture and violence (2019)

arstechnica.com

49 pointsTomte86 comments

It happened but wasn't all that common as can be read in the actual diary of a Public Executioner, see "A Hangman's Diary: The Journal of Master Franz Schmidt, Public Executioner of Nuremberg, 1573-1617". "A Hangman’s Diary is not only a collection of detailed writings by Schmidt about his work, but also an account of criminal procedure in Germany during the Middle Ages. With analysis and explanation, editor Albrecht Keller and translators C. Calvert and A. W. Gruner have put together a masterful tome that sets the scene of execution day and puts you in Master Franz Schmidt’s shoes as he does his duty for his country.".

Which is why the guillotine was invented. The local executioner often had little experience and would often botch the job.

True. The executioner that wrote the diary was literally a logger. He was ordered to "do the choppin" when they couldn't find an executioner. He was ALSO immediately thrown out of all his social connections. No one wanted to befriend someone who's job it is to punish / kill. It was devastating for his and his family's standing.

It's a bit of a contrast to the Game of Thrones style of fantasy, where macho leaders do public executions as if it wasn't a big deal.

Even pagans were reluctant to do such things. They were terrified of curses, magic, the hidden strengths in apparent weakness: not powers suited to rule with, but very well suited for destructive revenge.

One of the oldest of the old Norse stories we know, the story of Wayland, is basically a revenge flick. There's also:

"The twelfth I know

When in the tree

I see a dead man dangling:

Then I the runes

Carve and draw

So he who there hangs

Walks and talks with me."

That is from Hávamal, the final part, where Odin lists the spells he knows. It sounds like a warning to me: are you sure you want your enemy to become Odin's companion?

What’s a little strange, however, is how little archaeological evidence of torture in the past has been found so far. Archaeologists have found evidence of violence between humans dating back to the Paleolithic, but the Milanese wheel victim is one of very few clear cases of actual torture, despite how often torture is mentioned in historical records beginning in ancient times.

Perhaps extreme torture wasn't all that common after all, and was applied only in exceptional circumstances. Literature mentioning torture often could be attributed to people's morbid fascination with subject, just like society is right now.

Nah, it was totally common, at least in Europe - and way past medieval ages. Come to Czechia and visit literally any random castle - there's archeological evidence of brutal torture at practically every single one (and there are dozens/hundreds). There are rooms and rooms full of original torture instruments as well as marks of usage on them. Every castle has at least the "hladomorna" - a deep pit where they threw a person and then forgot about them until they died of starvation. Very extensive torture dungeons with elaborate machinery are usual too. And the books that mention it are less literature and more administrative records.

> Nah, it was totally common, at least in Europe - and way past medieval ages.

Reading about Ukraine and what’s being found in liberated towns, it’s not hard to agree.

Well, the 20th century communist torture chambers are a sight in its own class. The Nazi ones too, of course - but the communists had 40 years to do their shit.

That is what found. It seems it is only a part as FSB widely practices electric shock torture for example, so not many traces left on otherwise reasonably looking bodies (also mobile crematoriums are in use there, so not much is going to be found in many cases at all, especially after Bucha as they know that Ukraine may take the territories back - the option the Russians in Bucha and everywhere else seem to have been dismissing back then in March).

Even during the late 1700s the enlightened Habsburgs were still using breaking on the wheel for some of their public executions. Case in point the Romanian revolt of Horea, Cloșca and Crișan [1], in 1784-85.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_Horea,_Clo%C8%99ca_a...

Indeed - even the late 18th century national revival romanticists thought it's important to create a special word in the language for each of the hundreds of different kinds of torture instruments and ways of torture.

The executed people, especially when brutally for supposedly very serious crimes, would frequently not get a proper burial. Their bodies or various pieces of them were put on pikes and into cages for display (and consumption by birds, etc.), burnt (all the "witches" after extreme torture they were subjected to), sent to different places as a message, etc.

An example of the numbers https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-killer-king-how-many-p...

" It is estimated that during his 36 years of rule over England he executed up to 57,000 people, many of whom were either members of the clergy or ordinary citizens and nobles who had taken part in uprisings and protests up and down the country."

And those crimes above sound like high treason (many of those uprisings/protests were about that English church split and Henry treated wrong position on it as a treason against him) which back then was "hang, drawn and quarter" punishable crime.

"What’s a little strange, however, is how little archaeological evidence of torture in the past has been found so far. Archaeologists have found evidence of violence between humans dating back to the Paleolithic, but the Milanese wheel victim is one of very few clear cases of actual torture, despite how often torture is mentioned in historical records beginning in ancient times."

My first hypothesis would be that mentioning torture far more often than using it proved effective? Make loud examples.

For me, my first hypothesis would be that they never gave torture victims nice burials where their skeleton would be preserved for future archaeologists. Maybe they were left in a field for vultures and wild animals to get at, or thrown in a midden.

That was something I considered too. I have to ponder, why might they have given this particular body a recognizable burial?

In the article they theorize that he might have been considered a plague spreader. A burial would be a much better way to contain further spread compared to many of the other alternatives (though one might wonder why they didn't just burn the body).

Getting into wild speculation, one interpretation of the "Miasma Theory" could go like this: "Diseases comes from bad vapours. Very nasty disease is in this body. Therefore if we burn this body, miasmic smoke could come out of it."

my first thought when seeing the pictures in the article is someone took care of reassembling and burying the body correctly, so it must be an important person

Okay, that's an interesting idea. Do you figure maybe the skeleton's abnormalities could be related to inbreeding common in aristocratic families?

exactly what I thought. I imagined a story about inheritance, a man with an Iron mask and a lot of family politics

Could have sworn there was a thread on this a while back on how most of these torture devices were not used a lot and many are exaggerations for the sake of being dramatic.

"See that nice device? you're going in there next if you don't spill the beans" could be quite convincing, especially if told to someone already being tortured in milder ways.

I think in those times torture was more common as a punishment or a way to force a desired confession before execution, rather than an extraction of valuable information.

I mean it seems like in the vast majority of cases torture wouldn’t leave a lot of marks at the bone level, which means skeletons of tortured people don’t really look all that different.

You're right to call out an assumption that torture methods always leave behind clear skeletal forensics. I think some of us might have read that into the article. In this case if the article is correct, the wheel did leave clear evidence, which I interpret to suggest that the wheel was less popular than more commonplace methods of torture, or that the wheel was popular and remains are undiscoverable to us today due to "disgraceful burial".

The "third degree" of interrogation is actual torture. The less well known first degree was being shown the implements of torture, and the second degree was being made to watch somebody else get tortured.

I visited a museum exhibit once in Amsterdam called, "Torture Instruments Throughout the Ages". It's unbelievable what human beings can do to each other. The "Wheel" was one. Most were fairly simple: being locked in a cage, or pushed down a hole, until you died of starvation and thirst.

They had a similar museum in Bangkok which has since shut down. One method of death was being put in a wicker ball and being kicked around by an elephant.

The problem with many of these museums and even the medieval sources they're based on is that there's a strong incentive to make things as gruesome as possible, including just making shit up. For example, everybody's heard of the Iron Maiden, but all existing devices appear to be "replicas" and there's no properly documented case of such a device actually being used for execution.

"Execution by Iron Maiden" seems like a good name for an album.

You should be aware that many of the instruments were invented for these museums and are not historical.

Here's an article that includes a picture of the breaking wheel [1].

[1]: https://www.medievalists.net/2019/09/archaeologists-discover...

Dan Carlin did an history podcast on punishment and the spectacle of punishment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oRv4NZzBKw He described a medieval central Europe scene where being broken on the wheel was punishment for some crime. The watchers were singing hymns and crying the condemned would sing along in a quiet broken voice and occasionally request a certain hymn, even after limbs had been shattered and broken. Somehow it was seen as necessary to save the persons soul.

I love the fact that they've shoved a completely unrelated auto-playing video about a "solar car" into the middle of the article. Do these people even visit their own sites?

I don't see that. I think you need an ad blocker.

Does not look like an ad, as it's called "trendig video".

If it quacks like an ad...

> In medieval Northern Italy, the wheel was mostly a tool for public executions, especially for men accused of spreading the plague. Based on the details of the wheel victim’s skeleton, his appearance might have caused his medieval neighbors to view him with suspicion, especially if they were already fearful of a plague outbreak.

Oof.

Well if anyone had doubts, it’s better to be a different looking person now than during medieval times. That is even scarier than the torture itself to me.

It is better now, but that part of the article is pure speculation. They have no idea why he was tortured.

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