20 MEDIEVAL TORTURE METHODS | The Brutal Devices They Don’t Teach in Schools
In 1568, a man named Francisco hung suspended in a Spanish Inquisition chamber for 14 consecutive days. His arms were tied behind his back, dislocated from their sockets. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t sit. He could only scream, but that’s not even the worst part. What if I told you the worst medieval torture wasn’t designed to kill, but to keep victims alive as long as possible? That the goal wasn’t death, it was maximum suffering.
I’m about to reveal 20 medieval torture methods that will make you understand why the Middle Ages were called the Dark Ages. And I’m going to tell you three things that will shock you. First, one of these devices was used inside churches and called God’s judgment. Second, one method took an average of 17 days to complete and the victim was conscious for every single moment.
And third, the most popular execution device was reportedly designed by a mother who wanted to make death musical. Now, before we begin, I need to tell you something. 90% of you watching aren’t subscribed. If you make it to number one on this list, you’ll understand why this might be the darkest video we’ve ever made.
So, hit that subscribe button now because you’re going to want to see where this goes. Let’s count down from 20 to one. Here’s what they don’t teach you in history class. The medieval period, roughly 500 to 1500 AD, wasn’t just dark, it was a thousand year nightmare where torture wasn’t hidden in shadows. It was state sanctioned entertainment.
Imagine this, you’re living in 1450. You wake up on Sunday morning, get dressed and head to the town square. Not for a market, not for a festival, to watch someone be tortured to death. And you’re bringing your children. This wasn’t rare. This wasn’t unusual. In medieval Europe, torture was legal, it was public, it was considered justice.
Courts ordered it, priests blessed it, crowds cheered for it. The devices I’m about to show you weren’t created by sadistic monsters operating in secret. They were designed by inventors, approved by kings, and used by officials who went home to their families afterward like they’d just finished a normal day at work.
We’re counting down from 20 to one and trust me, what you think is number one probably isn’t even in the top 10. I thought I knew the worst ones when I started researching this. I was wrong. Here’s how this works. We start with the methods that were considered merciful, then we escalate. By the time we reach the top five, we’re going to enter territory that combines physical agony with psychological warfare.
The kind of torture that attacks your mind and your body. One more thing, don’t click away when we hit number seven. That’s where it gets truly psychological. That’s where medieval torturers proved they understood human fear better than we’d like to admit. Let’s start with the devices that medieval judges considered light punishment. Yes, light.
Number 20, the stocks. You’ve seen these in movies. Wooden boards with holes for your ankles, sometimes your wrists and head. You sit there in the town square for hours, maybe days. People throw rotten food, human waste, rocks. Sounds humiliating, but not that bad, right? Wrong. The stocks were just the beginning.
In winter, people lost toes to frostbite. In summer, they died of heatstroke. And here’s what makes it worse. While you were locked in the stocks, completely helpless, anyone could do anything to you. Anything. And they did. Number 19, the branks, the scold’s bridle. This one was specifically designed for women.
If you were accused of gossiping, nagging, or just talking too much, they locked this metal cage around your head. But here’s the evil genius. There’s a metal piece that goes inside your mouth, pressing down on your tongue with spikes. Try to talk, you bleed. Try to swallow, you bleed. The longer you wear it, the more your mouth fills with blood.
Women wore these for days, paraded through town as a warning to others. Number 18, the pillory. Similar to the stocks, but you’re standing and your head and hands are locked through holes. You can’t defend yourself. You can’t wipe your face. You can’t even duck. In 1703, a pamphlet writer named Daniel Defoe, yes, the guy who wrote Robinson Crusoe, spent three days in the pillory. He was lucky.
The crowd liked him and threw flowers. Most people weren’t so lucky. Rocks were more common than flowers. Blinding someone in the pillory, that happened regularly. Number 17, the ducking stool. They strap you to a chair attached to a long wooden beam. Then they dunk you underwater, pull you up, dunk you again, over and over.
This was used primarily on women accused of being scolds or practicing witchcraft. The torture isn’t just the drowning sensation, it’s the anticipation. You don’t know if this time they’ll hold you under just a few seconds longer, just long enough that you won’t come back up. Number 16, the finger pillory. It looks like tiny stocks for your fingers.
Sounds almost cute, right? Put your hand on a table right now. Press down hard. Feel that pressure. Now, imagine that pressure being applied by a screw-tightened device crushing your fingers between wooden boards for hours. People lost the ability to use their hands permanently. Craftsmen lost their livelihoods. Musicians lost their art.
Now, here’s what nobody tells you about these mild methods. They were often just the first step. You started in the stocks. If you didn’t confess, you moved to something worse. They used these methods to soften you up. And at number 15, we enter the realm of permanent damage. The devices we just covered, medieval judges called those corrections, light punishments.
What comes next wasn’t meant to correct behavior. It was meant to destroy bodies, to maim, to ensure that even if you survived, you’d never be the same. Welcome to permanent damage. Number 15, the tongue tearer. It’s exactly what it sounds like. An iron clamp shaped like scissors, but instead of cutting, it grips.
They clamp onto your tongue, lock the device, and rip it out by the root. This was the punishment for blasphemy, for lying in court, for speaking against the church. In some regions, they’d parade you through town after your mouth destroyed as a warning. Can’t speak, can’t eat properly, that was the point. Number 14, the knee splitter.
Two wooden boards lined with metal spikes. They place your knee between them and slowly tighten the screws. The spikes penetrate deeper, your kneecap cracks, the joint separates. Soldiers used this on prisoners of war to extract information. Here’s the psychological torture. They do one knee, then ask their questions.
If you didn’t talk, they moved to the other knee. Now, imagine knowing you’ll never walk again and they haven’t even asked their first question yet. Number 13, the breast ripper. I need you to understand something. This device was specifically engineered for women. Four metal claws heated red hot, designed to do exactly what the name suggests.
This was the punishment for women accused of adultery, abortion, or even heresy, which could mean anything from reading the Bible in the wrong language to refusing a man’s advances. And here’s the detail that still haunts me. In some towns, they displayed this device in the town square as a permanent reminder. Not hidden. Out in the open, every woman walked past it daily knowing exactly what it meant.
Number 12, the heretic’s fork. This is the one they still display in the Tower of London today. It’s a metal fork with points on both ends. One end goes under your chin, the other presses against your chest. Leather straps around your neck hold it in place. You can’t lower your head. You can’t sleep. You can’t eat.
The prongs pierce your skin. If your head drops from exhaustion, they penetrate deeper. People wore this for days during interrogations. The word heretic was often engraved on the device itself. Your torture was branded with your crime. Number 11, thumb screws. Small metal devices that look almost innocent. You place your thumb inside.
They tighten the screw. Simple, right? Wrong. Your thumb contains 27 bones and countless nerve endings. The pain is immediate and excruciating. They’d use these during interrogations because you could answer questions while being tortured. Every time you hesitated, they’d turn the screw one more rotation.
Many confessed to crimes they didn’t commit just to make it stop, which was often the point. Still with me? Because at number 10, we cross into devices that could take days to complete and every second was agony. Everything we’ve covered so far was measured in hours. Painful hours, yes, but hours. What comes next was measured in days.
These weren’t quick punishments. They were prolonged public spectacles where the entire point was to make death take as long as possible. Number 10, the rack. You’ve heard of this one. You’re strapped to a wooden frame by your wrists and ankles. Then they turn the crank, slowly stretching your body. But here’s what movies don’t show you.
Your joints don’t just dislocate, they make a sound. A pop so loud it echoes through the chamber. Your shoulders first, then your hips, then your knees and elbows. In 1628, a Jesuit priest named Edmund Arrowsmith was racked for three hours. His arms stretched 9 inches longer than normal. He survived, but never regained full use of his limbs.
Number nine, the strappado. Remember Francisco from the beginning? This was his torture. They tie your hands behind your back, attach the rope to a pulley, and hoist you into the air. Your entire body weight hangs from your shoulders, which are twisted backward in an impossible position. Sometimes they drop you suddenly, then catch you just before you hit the ground.
The jerk dislocates everything again. Spanish Inquisition records from 1568 document sessions lasting 14 days, not 14 hours, 14 days. Number eight, the wooden horse. It looks like a gymnastics vault, but the top isn’t padded. It’s a sharp wooden edge. They make you sit on it, legs dangling. Your entire body weight rests on that edge.
Then they add weights to your ankles. The pressure cuts into your groin. After hours, tissue damage becomes permanent. This was often used on soldiers accused of desertion. The message was clear. You ran from battle, so we’ll make sure you never walk or do anything else properly again. Number seven, the Judas cradle. Stop, here’s the part that makes this truly evil.
It’s a pyramid-shaped seat sharpened to a point. They suspend you above it with ropes, then slowly lower you onto the point. But here’s the genius of the design, they don’t just drop you on. They use your own body weight. Gravity becomes the torturer. The longer you’re there, the more you sink. You can’t escape it. You can’t shift positions.
Your weight is your enemy. And they’d keep you there for days, occasionally lifting you up just enough to prevent death, then lowering you again. Number six, crocodile shears. These look like massive pliers shaped like crocodile jaws, heated until they glow red. This was the punishment for attempting to assassinate royalty.
In 1757, these were used on Robert Francois Damiens for trying to kill King Louis. The heated shears tore flesh from his chest, [music] arms, and legs before he was finally executed by other means. The torture took hours. The crowd watching numbered in the thousands. If you think those are bad, the top five were designed by people who understood human psychology.
Who knew that the worst torture isn’t just physical pain, it’s combining that pain with mental horror. Physical pain has limits. Eventually, your nerves overload. You pass out. Your body shuts down. But what if the torture was designed to keep you conscious, to make your mind work against you, to turn psychological terror into a weapon? I know this is getting dark.
Trust me, researching this changed something in me. But if you’re still watching, you’re clearly as fascinated by history’s brutal truths as I am. Make sure you’re subscribed, because next week I’m revealing the execution methods that were considered too cruel even by medieval standards, methods that were actually banned.
Now, let’s talk about the top five. Number five, rat torture. They strap you to a table face up. Then they place a metal cage on your stomach with rats inside. Here’s where it gets psychological. They put hot coals on top of the cage. The rats panic. They’re burning. They need to escape. And the only way out is down. They burrow through the cage, through your clothing, through your skin.
You’re conscious the entire time, feeling them chewing their way into your abdomen, desperate to escape the heat. Dutch revolutionaries used this during the 80 Years’ War. Victims typically died within hours from internal injuries or infection, but those hours felt like lifetimes. Number four, chin zoo bamboo torch. Wait until you see what this was called in Germany, Bambusfolterung.
The translation, the growing death. They bind you over bamboo shoot that’s just starting to grow. Here’s the nightmare, bamboo can grow up to 3 ft in a single day, and it doesn’t grow around objects, it grows through them. The shoot penetrates your body millimeter by millimeter. You watch it happening. You feel every centimeter of growth.
The process takes days, and you’re aware the entire time. Number three, scaphism, the boats. This is the one that took 17 days on average. They strip you naked and trap you between two boats or narrow canoes with only your head, hands, and feet exposed. Then they force-feed you milk and honey until you develop severe diarrhea.
They pour more honey on your exposed body parts. The honey attracts insects. Flies lay eggs in your waste. Maggots begin feeding on your body. You’re eaten alive from the outside while your own waste breeds more insects. You develop gangrene, sepsis, but they keep force-feeding you, keeping you alive. Ancient Persian records describe victims surviving 17 days, 17 days of being slowly consumed by insects while trapped in your own filth.
Imagine knowing that every single day you’re going to wake up to another day of this. That’s the psychological torture, [music] the absence of hope. But number two and number one. One was called breaking on the wheel, and the other was considered entertainment for children. Let me say that again.
Parents brought their children to watch number one. We’ve reached the end. The two methods that represent the absolute pinnacle of medieval cruelty. Don’t click away now. You’ve made it this far. You need to see this. Number two, breaking on the wheels. They tie you to a large wooden wheel spread-eagle. Then the executioner uses an iron hammer or wagon wheel to break your bones methodically.
But here’s the system, they don’t kill you quickly. They follow a specific pattern. First, they break your legs, both shinbones, both femurs, eight strikes. >> [music] >> Then your arms, radius, ulna, humerus, six more strikes. Then they braid your broken limbs through the spokes of the wheel and hoist it onto a pole.
You hang there, every bone shattered, still alive. In 1757, Robert Francois Damiens, the same man from earlier, was broken on the wheel in Paris. Historical accounts say he survived for two to three days on the wheel before finally dying. The last official breaking wheel execution in Europe was in Prussia in 1841. That’s not medieval times.
That’s barely 180 years ago. But as horrific as that is, it’s not number one. Number one, the brazen bull. The year is roughly 560 BC. A Greek inventor named Perillos of Athens presents a gift to Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas. It’s a hollow brass bull, life-sized and beautiful, but it’s not art.
You open a door in the side and place the victim inside. Then you light a fire underneath. The brass heats up slowly. The victim inside is roasted alive. But here’s the genius, and I use that word with disgust, the bull has a complex system of tubes and stops inside. As the victim screams, the sound is converted into something that resembles a bull’s bellowing.
The smoke from the fire exits through the bull’s nostrils like it’s breathing. From the outside, it looks like a musical mechanical marvel. From the inside, it’s hell. And here’s the darkest fact I discovered, this was public entertainment. Parents brought children to watch, to listen. They treated it like a concert. Listen, they’d say, the bull is singing.
Now here’s the twist that makes this complete. When Perillos demonstrated his invention to Phalaris, the tyrant was so disturbed by the cruelty that he had Perillos climb inside for the first test. The inventor became the first victim of his own creation. Even tyrants have standards, apparently. Most of these devices were destroyed during the Enlightenment, burned, melted down, dismantled, but some survived.
You can see them in museums across Europe today. The Tower of London, the Medieval Crime Museum in Germany. Silent testimonies to humanity’s capacity for cruelty. The brazen bull itself, several replicas exist, but historians debate whether original survived. Some claim one was buried in Sicily.
Others say they were all destroyed by horrified later generations. Over 200,000 documented torture deaths exist in medieval records. That’s documented. The real number is likely in the millions. Millions of people who died in ways we can barely comprehend. These devices are illegal worldwide today under the Geneva Convention. Torture of any kind is considered a crime against humanity.
But here’s the question that haunts me, what took us so long? These methods were used for over a thousand years. They were legal. They were public. They were normal. And it took us until the 1900s, barely a century ago, to universally agree that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t okay. Here’s the final twist I promised you. When Perillos of Athens was placed inside the brazen bull, Phalaris pulled him out before he died.
Then he threw Perillos off a cliff instead. Even the inventor of the worst torture device in history thought his own creation was too cruel to use completely. Think about that. So which method shocked you most? Was it the psychological horror of scaphism, the prolonged agony of the breaking wheel, the musical nightmare of the brazen bull? Comment below.
I want to know what hit you hardest. And if you made it this far, you’re in the 8% who watched to the end. That means something. Hit that subscribe button, because next week’s video makes this one look tame. Some historical truths are too dark to ignore.
