The Surprising Story Of The Iron Maiden, Said To Be The Most Brutal Torture Device Of The Medieval Era

The Surprising Story Of The Iron Maiden, Said To Be The Most Brutal Torture Device Of The Medieval Era

The Iron Maiden remains one of the most notorious torture contraptions of all time, but contrary to popular belief, it was never actually used in the Middle Ages at all. The first known mention of the infamous Iron Maiden torture device comes from 18th-century writer Johann Philipp Siebenkees, who described it in a guidebook to the city of Nuremberg, Germany, claiming that it was used in the execution of a criminal in 1515. Siebenkees wrote that the man died "slowly, so that the very sharp points penetrated his arms, and his legs in several places, and his belly and chest, and his bladder and the root of his member, and his eyes, and his shoulder, and his buttocks, but not enough to kill him He remained making great cry and lament for two days, after which he died.".... Read story But today, many scholars believe that Siebenkees invented this story, perhaps playing off of Enlightenment-era assumptions that the Middle Ages were an uncivilized and barbaric time. And while torture most certainly existed during the Middle Ages, historians have argued that medieval torture was much simpler than later accounts would suggest — and that devices like the Iron Maiden never actually existed. This is the real history of the infamous Iron Maiden The Iron Maiden is perhaps one of the most recognizable medieval torture devices of all time, thanks in large part to its prominence in films, television shows, and cartoons like Scooby-Doo. As far as torture devices go, though, the Iron Maiden is really quite simple. It is a human-shaped box, decorated on the inside with incredibly sharp spikes that would, presumably, impale through the victim on either side when the box was shut. But the spikes were not long enough to kill a person outright — rather, they were short and placed in such a way that the victim would die a slow and agonizing death, bleeding out over time. At least, that was the idea. Except, the Iron Maiden wasn’t a medieval torture device at all. The first written reference to the Iron Maiden didn’t appear until the late 1700s, long after the Middle Ages had come to an end. And while torture most certainly existed during the Middle Ages, many historians have argued that medieval torture was much simpler than later accounts would imply. What Was Torture In The Middle Ages Really Like? Most of these myths about torture in the Middle Ages were spread by people living in the 18th and 19th centuries, Konieczny explained. “You get that idea that people were much more savage in the Middle Ages, because they want to see themselves as less savage,” Konieczny told Live Science. “It’s so much easier to pick on people who have been dead for 500 years.” In essence, Konieczny believes that people in the 1700s and 1800s exaggerated a bit when it came to their accounts of the Middle Ages. In the years since, that exaggeration has compounded, and now many of these 18th-century myths are viewed as fact. For example, the argument has been made in recent years that the flail, a ball-and-chain weapon commonly associated with the medieval era, wasn’t used during the Middle Ages at all, despite what most people think. In fact, the flail was only historically featured in epic artworks depicting fantastical battles, but it never showed up in any medieval armory’s catalog. The flail, much like the Iron Maiden, seems to have become linked to a specific time in history due to the influence of storytelling by later historians. That’s not to say torture didn’t exist during that time, however. “There was an idea in the Middle Ages that you were really honest when you were under a lot of punishment, under a lot of strain,” Konieczny said. “That the truth comes out when it starts to hurt.” There were much simpler ways of extracting this information, though — ones that didn’t involve a litany of elaborate devices. “The more common torture was to just kind of bind people up with rope,” Konieczny said. So, there you have it. There have certainly been execution methods used in the past that resembled the Iron Maiden — the idea of a box with spikes inside isn’t particularly revolutionary — but the Iron Maiden itself seems to be more fiction than fact.

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