I like reading about old and ancient civilizations methods of torture. Their religious rituals too…
Anyone know any interesting ones? The medieval ones are cool but they’re common in searches for historic torture. I need to be shocked by something new.
The first novel in the acclaimed ““History of Bestiality”” trilogy. Living high in the Alps in a German principality, our narrator tells us he’s dutifully fulfilling his obligations as a Servant of Justice and acting as a daily witness to injustice masquerading as a court of law. One day he notices that the judge is much too engrossed in looking at pornographic photographs showing various other pillars of the town engaged in a variety of sexual activities with minors. The incident propels him on a mental journey back through his life: black-humor fantasies and suicidal drinking binges; the Roman catacombs, warm summer nights in Brooklyn; brothels in Stockholm, his childhood in Norway, and wanderings in Germany. But aside from court records he has been keeping his own long and detailed account of man’s cruelty to man in a massive twelve-volume study he calls his History of Bestiality. Acknowledging his Germanic past, the narrator realizes that all his attempts to perceive order in life lead only to his acceptance of the chaos of life. We see him striving to live uncoerced by power, unpersuaded by friends, to take for himself the liberty of stating his critique in order to live in his own moment of truth, to stand ““far out at the edge of the abyss.”” ““Harshly comic and richly disturbing fiction.”” Kirkus Reviews
And the punishment of “sitting in the tub” saw the convicted person placed in a wooden tub with only their head sticking out. The executioner would then paint the victim’s face with milk and honey. Flies would begin to swarm around the victim’s nose and eyelids. The victim was also fed regularly and fairly soon, they would virtually be swimming in their own excrement.
At which stage maggots and worms would devour their body. One victim apparently survived for 17 days – he decayed alive
That was in that werewolf movie… Can’t for the life of me remember which one, but they had one of those things in it and that was my fist knowledge of it. Brutal.
That was in that werewolf movie… Can’t for the life of me remember which one, but they had one of those things in it and that was my fist knowledge of it. Brutal.
[/quote]
Brazen Bull was in the recent Little Red Riding Hood movie. Pretty good representation of it too!
Judas Cradle:
The Judas Cradle was perhaps a little less sadistic than impalement but still gruesome. The victim?s anus or vagina would be placed over the point of the pyramid-shaped cradle, then lowered on it by ropes. The intended effect was to stretch the orifice over a long period of time, or to slowly impale.
The victim was usually naked, adding to the overall humiliation of the torture and sometimes weights were added to the legs to increase the pain and hasten death. This torture could last anywhere from a few hours to complete days. The device was rarely washed, so the victim could also be plagued with a painful infection.
Also check out the Knee Splitter on that page. Wowsers!