The medieval torture instruments, especially those attributed to the Inquisition - without even specifying which Inquisition it is - have always aroused profound interest, sometimes morbid, by the general public.

Many of you have visited torture museums and have asked us what the historical veracity or verisimilitude of the torture instruments on display is.. The answer is quite simple: these are opprobriums without any historical value that plague various Italian cities and, an incredible statement, they manage to obtain regional patronage, of the FAI and even quite famous NGOs. A cutting statement, but fully justified in light of what you will read below.
The first fact that sparks sincere wonder is the absolute lack of archaeological or documentary evidence on the means of torture that we see displayed in the numerous "torture museums". Almost all have captions explaining their use by the Roman Inquisition or other inquisitorial tribunals.
One would expect, Therefore, to find at least one mention of the Virgin of Nuremberg or of Forcella dell'Eretico In the Philip of Limborch History of the Inquisition: to which is subjoined the book of sentences of the Tholosan inquisition from the year of Christ 337 to the year 2323, written by Philippus van Limborch in 1692, a Protestant theologian strongly critical of the Church. Or to discover, between the pages of A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, written by the American historian Henry Charles Lea and published starting from 1887, a brief discussion of Pear of Anguish. And yet nothing. In the twenty texts present in the bibliography at the bottom of the article, as well as in dozens of others we have viewed, there is no trace of these instruments. An analysis of the individual instruments is therefore necessary.
 
THE VAGINALE PEAR
Paragraphs in magazines have been dedicated to him, books and articles. It shows off beautifully (painful) “torture museums”. Thousands of sites and web pages cite it as one of the torture instruments of the Inquisition. Too bad it was never used. Actually, the vaginal pear ("poire d'angoisse" is "pear of anguish") it never existed until the first replicas were built in the 19th century.
There is no trace of it in the reports of the Inquisition from the sixteenth century onwards (and anyone who has had them at hand knows perfectly well how precise they are). The same goes for the other sources of the time, including the diaries of executioners of the civil power such as Franz Schmidt, medical encyclopedias, ecc.

We find it mentioned for the first time in The general inventory of the history of thieves (The General Inventory of the History of Thieves) di F. of Calvi, published in 1629. It's a quote, among other things, highly contested, because it is, in that case, of an oral pear used to keep victims from screaming during a robbery. Its invention is attributed to a thief named Palioli, originally from Toulouse. Actually, even many scholars of subsequent centuries doubted that “had the Pera ever existed outside de Calvi's head".
Between the eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century the "oral pear" is sporadically remembered as a tool to keep victims silent, used for some time in the seventeenth century by some European bandits (Dutch or French).
The oldest specimens of anxiety pear They are preserved in several European and American museums. The one in the Louvre, belonging to the musician's collection Alexander-Charles Sauvageot, probably dates back to 1800-1830, and was cataloged in 1856. The one in the Boston Museum is from the same period. All the others were made on commission between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the last century.
And it is precisely between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century that the Vaginal Pear began to find a place in that re-enactment of Cabinet of Curiosities which are the “torture museums” e, from there, in informative volumes on the Inquisition and medieval torture. Anti-clerical sentiment did, slowly, the rest. Many authors, probably driven by a morbid interest, they began to fantasize about using the instrument to tear apart the vaginas and anal orifices of witches and followers of the devil.
An absurdity that has almost become common knowledge. Not by chance,also in one of the latest publications relating to the topic (Bishop, C. 2014, The ‘pear of anguish’: Truth, torture and dark medievalism, International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 591-602) we read that the pear was imagined as "insertable" even in orifices other than the mouth only in the nineteenth century, and with the aim of sadistic sexual enjoyment.
Yet a Google search is enough to see it labeled as “medieval torture instrument used by the Inquisition on witches” (difficult to find more historical errors in a single sentence!).
 
THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG
The Virgin of Nuremberg has aroused the wildest fantasies of mass culture, even more so than the Pear of Anguish, and is present in any torture museum in Italy and abroad. Passed off as a medieval instrument, it was actually only created in the 19th century, made on commission by European gentlemen with a taste for the "fake Gothic Middle Ages", made up of hooded inquisitors, curvy witches and a huge amount of gratuitous violence and atrocities. The castle of Otranto, on Horace Walpole, published in 1764, it was perhaps the novel that more than any other gave a boost to this taste, which continued until the Victorian era.
Returning to Virgin, il franchise “Museum of Torture” describes it like this

The history of torture recalls many devices that operated on the principle of the anthropomorphic sarcophagus with two doors and with spines inside that penetrated, with the closing of the doors, in the victim's body. The most famous example is the so-called “Iron Maiden” [the iron maiden] of Nuremberg Castle, destroyed by the bombings of 1944.

Actually, that too was destroyed in 1944 it was a nineteenth-century counterfeit, probably of 1830-40. But let's go in order.

The first mention of the Virgin of Nuremberg is dated 1793, by the German scholar Johann Philipp Siebenkees (1759-1796), which mentions it as being used in Nuremberg in the sixteenth century, ma, although I researched his writings at length, I found no trace of the step. About half a century later, in about 1840, the Virgin is exhibited for the first time in Nuremberg. The anthropomorphic shell, entirely in metal, it is 210cm high and wide 90, big enough, Therefore, to hold an adult man. The metal spikes create the right "bite in the stomach" of visitors, who imagine them penetrating the limbs of a human being.
Many nineteenth-century visitors already underlined its falsity and the limited historical interest of the Virgin. In Notes and Queries (Oxford University Press, 1893. Pg. 354), J. Ichenhauser defines Iron Maiden as “… of no interest to historians and antiquarians“. This 52 years before the Allied bombing that deprived us of this piece of little value.
But then what was the true origin of the Iron Maiden? One of the most important German archivists, Klaus Graf, in a long article by 2001, Murder stories and witch memories - the malicious memory in the village, defines the Virgin of Nuremberg as “a 19th century fiction, because only in the first half of the 19th century did the schandmantel, to faces called "virgins", they were equipped with internal spines; afterwards, these objects were adapted to morbid mythical and literary fantasies.”
The mention of cloak of shame (o shame bin) translatable as “Cloak/Barrel of Shame”, helps us clarify. This was in fact a sort of barrel that the civil authorities had worn, in some cases, to prostitutes and other subjects, with the aim of imparting public humiliation to them. Morbid fantasies, as Graf says well, and much simpler fantasies relating to horror and the sacrilegious (not in themselves negative, otherwise we wouldn't have had authors like Lovecraft, Poe, ecc.), they took the shandmantel as a starting point to create something else.
Not only has an Iron Maiden built before the end of the 19th century not reached us, but also in all the city news, the inquisitorial manuals, the procedures of the trials managed by the secular power, there is not even a mention of the device. Even in the diary of the most famous executioner of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Franz Schmidt (you see "A Hangman’s Diary: The Journal of Master Franz Schmidt, Public Executioner” e “The Masters of Steel“) nothing can be found, although he detailed every punishment and execution carried out (without ever leaving out the most gruesome details) in his 40 years of career (1578-1617).
 
THE HERETIC'S FORK
Lesser known torture instrument – ​​mostly due to its small size (compared to Virgin of Nuremberg) and the lack of sexual purposes (Pear of Anguish) – but equally false is represented by the Forcella dell'Eretico. In the volume (without any historical value) “The history of the inquisition” by Carlo Havas there is a “heretic fork or fork” which is not confirmed in any source. With the Fork, among other things, the series of dated fakes also begins 1983 (therefore very recent fakes), of which there is a first mention in “Exhibition catalog of torture instruments, 1400-1800: in the Barracks of Forte Belvedere, Firenze, dal 14 May to mid-September, 1983″ -it's about, apparently, of the first exhibition organized by the company which now owns several torture museums in Italy and abroad- and in the next “Inquisition: A Bilingual Guide to the Exhibition of Torture Instruments from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Era, Presented in Various European Cities in 1983-1987, Firenze, 1985, both edited by Robert Held.
The Heretic's Fork looks like a double fork tied around the neck, with the tips pointing under the chin and towards the chest. The Torture Museum website, managed by Inquisizione s.r.l., he defines it that way:

With the four very sharp points stuck deeply into the flesh under the chin and above the sternum, any movement of the head was prevented: the victim could only whisper "I recant" (this word has the meaning of renunciation of another religion or doctrine other than Christianity).

Apart from the mention of "Christian doctrine" without specifying whether it was an instrument of the Roman Inquisition or a Protestant tribunal, it makes you smile that, starting from this story of the long-awaited word "abjuration", other "museums" have even had pieces created with the words "abjuration" engraved on the iron. The wikipedia sources for “heretic fork” are grotesque: a fake torture museum and an online store page selling replicas (clumsy to boot).

Again no book, of those commonly known as "Inquisition manuals", talk about this tool. Dal Hammer of Witches al Sacred Arsenal by Eliseo Masini, up to the anticlerical work of Henry Charles Lea A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, and to History of the Inquisition of Tamburini, no one mentions a device even remotely similar to the Heretic's Fork.
In practice, it is possible that they had it built from scratch using Havas' book as a framework, without even making up for it, Therefore, to the fake Victorians. The forgery exposed by the torture "museum" was then reproduced in a famous painting by Leon Golub in 1985.
 
THE INQUISITORIAL CHAIR
That anyone could believe such a thing is, from a historical point of view, mortifying to say the least. The Inquisitorial Chair combines Indian influences from the British Empire with the usual Victorian Middle Ages, e, Obviously, there is no mention of it in any volume dedicated to inquisitorial practice, nor to other sources from the 13th to the 18th century.
The very idea of ​​inquisitors willing to spend enormous sums to create such an object is grotesque; the quantity of metal used, Then, and the presence of mass-produced nails suggests a very modern initial manufacture. It is at least suspicious that the first reproductions of the Inquisitorial Chair are from the 20th century, On the contrary, more precisely, of the last quarter of the last century.

It's hard to say whether the Inquisitorial Chair was created with fakir nail beds in mind or some other Victorian fake, but it is really very suspicious to read that the first mention of the device dates back to… 1880 (History of witches and witch trials, another text without any historical claim) and the first construction of this device after 1983. After the publication of which text? “Exhibition catalog of torture instruments, 1400-1800: in the Barracks of Forte Belvedere, Firenze, dal 14 May to mid-September, 1983″. Well yes, the Inquisitorial Chair could also be (On the contrary, we are more in the realm of probabilities than in that of possibilities) the second original creation of the torture “museums”., and it is frankly incredible that it had this diffusion without arousing the necessary historical suspicions.
 
THE CRADLE OF JUDAH
At least in the case of the Cradle of Judah (Judaswiege o Judas Cradle), some wikipedia pages, like the one in Italian and German, they report that it is an imaginary instrument, drawing a pitiful veil over the origins of the myth. On the other hand, imagine such a contraption, which required the use of several people, 4 ropes and a wooden ferrule, it is historically (and physically, given the impossibility of keeping the accused in balance) demented.
Regardless, Anyway, from structural problems of the tool, it is necessary to do the usual work on the sources to demonstrate that it was never used or even conceived before the 19th century. The first mention? I guess you've figured it out on your own by now: “Exhibition catalog of torture instruments, 1400-1800: in the Barracks of Forte Belvedere, Firenze, dal 14 May to mid-September, 1983“.

As for the engraving often reported in the caption of this object, dated to the 17th or 18th century depending on the "museum", I haven't been able to find it in any manual, nor is the source ever cited, so it's another fake.
At this point, it would be interesting to know more about the authors of this “Exhibition catalog of torture instruments, 1400-1800: in the Barracks of Forte Belvedere, Firenze, dal 14 May to mid-September, 1983″: Robert Held, Tabatha Catte and Tobia Delmolino. Of the first, which boasts some curation in the field of hoplology, I was only able to find two statements: the first also reported on the L'Espresso page above, in which he says that the originals are “difficult to find because after the entry into force of the code of Francis III they were removed or destroyed“.
Rather than "difficult" he should have said "impossible", but the bizarre thing is tracing the destruction of every torture instrument of the last eight centuries throughout Europe, as well as the deletion of every trace of it from tens of thousands of volumes, to the legislation of a Grand Duke of Tuscany. The second is taken from the aforementioned “Inquisition: A Bilingual Guide to the Exhibition of Torture Instruments from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Era, Presented in Various European Cities in 1983-1987, Firenze, 1985“, and gives the measure of the subject's historical knowledge:

Between the 1450 and the 1700 between two and four million women they ended up burned at the stake in both Catholic and Protestant Europe.

A ridiculous figure, equivalent to 45 women a day for 250 consecutive years (1340 per month!). Robert Held anyway (I don't know if he is the father of the good cartoonist Joshua Held) he must have been in contact with literary fiction, since he is thanked by Thomas Harris in the book “Hannibal” (Harris is the author of The Silence of the Lambs and followed). By Tabatha Catte, who should have taken care of the layout only, nothing is known, as well as Delmolino.
Obviously, for the sake of historical truth, we would be happy to receive reports on the presence of these tortures in original sources, in order to make any corrections.
You may be wondering, at this point, what were the real torture instruments of the Roman Inquisition. We will dedicate a specific article to these, for now we can anticipate a portion of the chapter dedicated to torture from Eliseo Masini In the Sacred Arsenal (1621). From this and other volumes it is clear that the most practiced torture was that of "corda” (or “torn”), while for those who were unable to support it due to physical problems, could be subjected to (very painful) flogging with wooden sticks on the palms of the hands or soles of the feet.
Among other things, few know that the confession under torture had to be confirmed twenty-four hours later, otherwise it remained unacceptable. And what, for example, rope was used to avoid bloodshed, since it was one of the most stringent prohibitions among those that weighed on the inquisitor. But for a more complete discussion you will have to wait a few more days.

• Eliseo Masini, Sacred arsenal, ouero, Practice of the office of the Holy Inquisition, 1621;
• Philippus van Limborch, Philip of Limborch History of the Inquisition: to which is subjoined the book of sentences of the Tholosan inquisition from the year of Christ 337 to the year 2323, 1692;
• Piazza, Girolamo Bartolomeo, A short and true account of the Inquisition and its proceedings, as it is practis’d in Italy, set forth in some particular cases : whereunto is added, an extract out of an authentick book of legends of the Roman Church, 1722;
• Samuel Chandler, The history of persecution : in four parts. Viz. I. Amongst the heathens. II. Under the Christian emperors. III. Under the papacy and Inquisition. IV. Amongst Protestants, 1736;
• Archibald Bower, Authentic Memoirs Concerning the Portuguese Inquisition, 1761;
• Modesto Rastrelli, Facts relating to the Inquisition and its general history, and particular of Tuscany, 1782;
• Antonio Puigblanch, The Inquisition Unmasked: Being an Historical and Philosophical Account of that Tremendous…, 1816
• Vari, Records of the Spanish Inquisition : translated from the original manuscripts, 1828;
• C. H. Davie, History of the Inquisition, from its establishment to the present time, 1850;
• Pietro Tamburini, General history of the Inquisition, 1862;
• Henry Charles Lea, A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 1887;
• George Lincoln Burr, Narratives of the witchcraft cases, 1648-1706, 1914;
• Turberville, Arthur Stanley, Medieval heresy & the inquisition, 1920;
• Alexander Herculano, History Of The Origin And Establishment Of The Inquisition In Portugal, 1926
• Edward Peters, Inquisition, 1989;
• Kamen Henry, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision, 1999;
• E. Brambilla, At the origins of the Holy Office. Penance, confession and spiritual justice from the Middle Ages to the 16th century, 2000;
• Franco Cardini, Marina Montesano, The long history of the inquisition. Lights and shadows of the "black legend", 2005;
• Andrea Del Col, L'inquisition in Italy. From the 12th to the 21st century, 2007;

SOURCE: http://zweilawyer.com/2018/02/06/strumenti-di-tortura-e-inquisizione/