Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/518

 Mediceval Punishments.

MEDIAEVAL PUNISHMENTS. By Charles S. Martin. ACCORDING to the literature of the Middle Ages, torture was either prepara tory or previous; the latter when it consisted of some mode of punishment imposed on the condemned previous to the final farewell, and the former when used for the purpose of eliciting desired information. Hippolyte de Marsillis, jurisconsult of Bologna, mentions fourteen diversions in the way of torture; among them being starvation, stretching the limbs, and applications of hot pitch. But if the executioner was gifted with imaginative power, or if the magistrate desired to vary the monotony of the performance, new means of torture were contrived, and new devices con structed speedily; for example : watering the feet with salt water, and inducing goats to lick them; inserting dice between the skin and flesh; placing hot eggs under the arm pits. In France, jwhere feudal ideas were most perfectly developed, and which pos sesses and displays a complete history of this period by means of books, prints, wood cuts, miniatures, tapestries, and the like, the tortures varied according to the will of the parliaments. It was a common method in Brittany to compel the prisoner, while tied in an iron chair, to approach gradually a fiery furnace; while Normandy was in favor of using the thumb-screw. Torture was also termed ordinary or extraordinary, varying with the severity or length of duration; and it was in Orleans that the estrapade, or extraor dinary punishment, frequently obtained. At Avignon heavy weights and ropes for stretch ing the body, or parts of the body, were con stantly used, while a physician was invariably at hand to test the pulse of the culprit and fix the mark between life and death. The ivafer torture prevailed in Paris, and con sisted in forcing the victim to drink nine pints of water for ordinary punishment, and twice

that amount for extraordinary. This method continued as supreme favorite until dethroned by the brodequins. These brodequins were a kind of parchment stockings, which fitted admirably when the feet were wet, but when warmth was applied they shrank consider ably, and so inflicted severe pain. If the condemned was fortunate (or unfor tunate) enough to have survived the previous torture, he was committed to the care of the executioner, — maistre dcs haultes amvres, — whose duty it was to end his earthly pilgrim age. The executioner has been a unique figure in literature and in life. In Spain, Italy, and France, his very name has been the companion of fear and hate; but in Germany a certain number of executioners gained titled honors. France allowed this personage such taxes as were levied on fish and water-cress, fines on stray pigs, together with the personal effects of the condemned. He was also given the rents which accrued from the stalls situated near the pillory, for it was in this vicinity that the retail fishtrade flourished. In an order of St. Louis we learn that the functions of executioner were performed by women when their own sex was condemned. This privilege was of brief duration, however, and man basked again in the sunshine of monopoly. Damhoudere enumerates thirteen different ways in which the executioner effects the judicial decree of torture; namely, fire, sword, me chanical force, quartering, the wheel, the fork, gibbet, drawing, spiking, cutting off the ears, dismembering, flogging, and the pillory. Executions were usually preceded by the amende honorable, either short or simple, which occurred in the Council Chamber, where the person condemned was obliged to confess his crime, and ask the forgiveness of God and man. Punishment by fire was