Shocking P*nishment Methods Used During Spanish In*uisition

These things were inserted in the vaginas of women that had had sexual relations with the devil, anally on men that had performed homosexual acts, and in the mouth of people that blasphemed the Church.

What happens when you commit a crime during the Spanish Inquisition of 1487?

“No, stop! Please, what are you doing? Please stop! Please stop! No, no, no, I’ll tell you everything, no, no!”

You’re exposed to horror, pain, agony, and torment that you may never be able to speak of.

For a crime like blasphemy, your limbs will be cut off and fed to animals.

If you go against the king, you would be placed on a rod and covered in oil before being thrown over a fire.

“I want names of others!”

“I know of no others!”

“Again!”

What if you steal? Your entire family will watch you being dismembered.

“Damn you to hell!”

And if you think these punishments seem unimaginable, get ready, as we are about to show you even more chilling punishment methods that will shock you.

Rat Torture

Some people use their creative brains for art, writing, or sculpting; executioners, on the other hand, use it to cause pain in the most unorthodox ways possible.

One of these creative forms of torture during this era was rat torture.

If you have watched Game of Thrones or 2 Fast 2 Furious, you must have come across this technique and probably felt like it was just a figment of the writer’s imagination; however, it was a known technique during the Spanish Inquisition.

To carry it out, a diseased or starved rat would be trapped in a bucket that would either be placed on the victim’s chest, stomach, or soles of their feet.

We all know that whether a rat is hungry or not, they are constantly in survival mode; it seems like they are in a constant state of calorie deficit, so they eat anything they come across.

But now, when you mix that with a diseased or starved rat, you have a rabid rat on your hand.

As the rat is in the bucket, likely wondering what is going on, heat is added to the bottom of the bucket, causing the rat discomfort.

In a bid to escape, the rat starts to eat through the skin into the flesh of the prisoner.

When the rat had eaten into the flesh, there would be organs in the way, making it hard for it to escape; therefore, the rat has to keep eating until they have a breakthrough on the other end of the victim.

After this, all we are left with is a partially eaten human with a weird-shaped hole and lots of internal and external bleeding.

But sometimes the punishers don’t always want to kill their victims; they are just trying to get a confession out of them.

So in cases where they want to make the victim talk, they place the rat bucket at the sole of the victim’s feet and apply heat at the bottom of the bucket.

As the rat chews away at the sole of the victim’s feet trying to escape, the victim is then forced to confess to crimes they committed.

It is a terribly harrowing experience for the victim as their cries for help are ignored, and even after the torture, they live with the knowledge of what happened and become paranoid, living with severe anxiety.

And fear and anxiety seemed to be the major theme of many of the punishments used during the Spanish Inquisition, because the next technique would make your skin crawl.

Strappado

We’re talking about the strappado.

It is one of the most horrific, agonizing, and painful punishments in this series; the victims would wish for death as they slowly watched their lives flee before their eyes.

We are talking about horror, pain, torment, agony, and a wish to die while you contemplate how life got to that point.

A second name for this technique is “reverse hanging,” because while it was literally death by hanging, it wasn’t exactly in the way we know it.

There are three different variants of this technique.

In the first variant, the victim’s arms would be tied behind their backs before a large rope is tied to their wrists; this rope would then be attached to a pulley beam or hook on the ceiling.

The torturer would then drag the rope until the victim was hanging off the rope and their arm was dislocated.

With a dislocated arm, the socket in the shoulder would have to support the full weight of the body, and because that is not its original purpose, it’s only a matter of time before the shoulder is also permanently dislocated.

If the victim confesses after this time, they will be released, but will be permanently paralyzed in the arm.

However, if they don’t say what the executioner wants to hear, they will be left hanging until they develop acute kidney injury and die.

And all this takes place in less than an hour.

For the second variation of this punishment, it’s the same sequence of tying up the victim, only that a drop is added this time.

After the victim is tied to a rope, they are allowed to drop from a high place until the rope checks their fall.

Due to the amount of motion involved in this variation, the person is going to lose their limbs before they get a chance to confess to the crime they have been accused of.

This variation is also called squassation, and it is believed that it is what Niccolò Machiavelli suffered in 1513 after he was arrested by the Medici family.

This variation of torture is psychologically damaging because the victim can tell something bad would happen to them, but they won’t be able to tell exactly when they will lose their limbs.

When their limbs finally disconnect, they are devastated, and the pain is excruciating.

In the third variation of this punishment, the victim’s hands are tied before being suspended on a hook; a weight is then tied to their legs.

So not only are they hanging in midair, but their hands and legs are being pulled out of their control, which will cause damage to their hips, legs, and hands.

Even if the victim survived the strappado, their lives are forever changed, as they either have to live with permanent paralysis or brain damage due to how much trauma they faced.

Rack

Imagine a device that looks like it’s built for comfort, but just when your brain is getting into it, it twists and turns, causing you immense pain; yes, that is the rack.

The rack is a torture device suspended in the air; it was one of those torture devices that people who got arrested always wished against.

The torture from this device was so immense that it always resulted in death; it was more of an execution device than a torture device because the victims almost never survived.

The device looks like a bed frame with axles at the head and feet.

The victim is placed on the frame with their hands tied to the axle at the head and their feet to the axle below.

While on the bed frame, the axles are rotated slowly, causing the victim’s hands and legs to dislocate.

The torture is slow and excruciating because the victim knows they will lose their limbs, but it’s taking time to get there.

You are better off getting thrown off a cliff than getting tortured on this device, which brings us to the next punishment method, because it’s quicker, but not any less harsh.

Falling

Falling is a punishment that has been low-cost in the Spanish Inquisition and was used to punish those who they thought would be unrepentant no matter how much torture they faced.

The victim’s hands would be tied, and a stone would be tied to their legs.

Most times their faces would be covered with a cloth, but other times they would be allowed to watch themselves drown.

The victim would be thrown off a cliff into a river and left to drown.

If their feet weren’t tied, they would be able to struggle their way to the top and get air; however, the stone tied to their feet would make them sink and prevent them from swimming to the top.

While this technique makes the death faster than the ones mentioned earlier, it is painful as the lungs can become filled with water and burst.

Waterboarding

The executioners during the Spanish Inquisition were so ruthless that they used something as refreshing as water to cause pain.

The sight of water made their victims wonder if they were about to live or die, because another torture technique they used was waterboarding.

This technique is very traumatizing, to the point that many organizations known for using extreme methods have even banned it.

With waterboarding, a cloth is placed over the victim’s face while they are strapped to a chair or bed so their head is facing upwards.

Water is then poured on their face at different intervals, making it hard for them to breathe.

It created the illusion of drowning as the victims fought for air and tried to deal with the pain of choking, but not being able to die.

A more modern variation of that technique is to fill a tub or bucket with ice-cold water, place the victim’s head inside, and hold it down under the water.

Many victims of waterboarding are never able to return to living a good quality of life, as they struggle to shower, wash their hair, or be around large bodies of water for an extended period.

Water Torture

There were other forms of torture involving water that were used during the Spanish Inquisition; it involves force-feeding the victim water until their stomach is distended, and it involved two methods.

Also called Spanish water torture, this technique involves stuffing the victim’s mouth and nose with a cloth.

Water is then poured on the cloth in the victim’s mouth, creating the sensation of drowning, and the fear would make the victim’s tied body struggle involuntarily until they pass out.

You would think they would be allowed to take a break, but no: they are revived, and the process is repeated again, and again, and again, until the victim is broken and disoriented.

The second method is force-feeding the victim water.

As humans, there is a required amount of water for the body to function, but when that amount is exceeded, the cells begin to expand, causing overhydration, which causes the cells to burst.

But with this torture technique, it was way more than taking a little over the required amount of water.

A funnel would be placed in the victim’s throat, and water would be continuously passed through the funnel directly into the victim’s stomach until it was painfully distended.

The distension would cause nausea, pain, and the feeling of drowning from the inside.

It is a gruesome technique, one that can cause a permanent fear of water, leading to a poor quality of life for the victims involved.

Garrote

When the Spanish Inquisition punishers were not using water, they were using other devices that a lot of thought had gone into.

The next device we are looking into is the garrote, a device used to strangle victims.

There are two forms of the garrote.

In one form, it is made of an iron collar attached to a post with a screw behind it; the victim’s head is then placed inside the collar, and the screw gets tightened slowly until asphyxiation occurs.

The cruel thing about this punishment is that the victim can feel the collar getting tightened, but they can’t free themselves because their movement is restricted.

They are subjected to mental games while waiting for death to fall upon them so they can be free of the pain.

The second form is with a rope attached to a wooden handle, which the executioner holds and twists to tighten the rope around the victim’s face.

It makes the victim miserable as they wish the executioner would change their mind; but since nothing like that would happen, all they have are wishes and hopes, which never get fulfilled.

But this wasn’t the most gruesome of the punishments that the Spanish inquisitors meted out.

Want to know what it feels like to have iron spikes in your skin without being able to bleed to death?

Then check out this next device called the Iron Maiden.

The Iron Maiden

The Iron Maiden was something like a metallic coffin that had spikes on the inside.

It is one of the torture devices that can still be found in Spain, and many people argue that it was just a form of decoration, but this info will change that view.

Victims are placed inside the Iron Maiden, tied up, and the door is closed.

The spikes penetrate their skin, but are strategically placed so they avoid vital organs, making death impossible but pain inevitable.

As the victim stands inside the Iron Maiden, they scream in agony, waiting for the torment to be over as they deal with the loss of blood.

The Iron Maiden is used to get confessions out of people while making sure they stay alive with scars, so that they never think of going back on their words.

Some people believe that the design of the Iron Maiden was a mistake based on stories of the Carthaginian execution of Marcus Atilius Regulus.

The stories claim that he was made to stand inside an iron box with spikes on the side so he could not rest.

Many believe that is what inspired the Iron Maiden, while others claim that the device wasn’t built for torture, but as a piece of decoration.

The Scavenger’s Daughter

While we are still on the topic of general body torture, what do you think it would feel like to be squished like a ball?

Let’s look at the Scavenger’s Daughter.

This device turned humans into sandwiches, with all their organs pressed together, bones fractured, and skin dented.

The technique is scary to imagine, slowly suffocating the victims.

The Scavenger’s Daughter is made of an iron rod with a place for the victim’s head and another round hole for the other body parts; the two round spots are then dragged towards each other, squishing the victim.

When a person is squished with a lot of pressure, their organs may burst and their bones will break.

The compression from this device would cause bleeding from the nose, mouth, and eyes, and the torture doesn’t stop until the victim is dead.

It was a slow and painful way to die, because you would hear your bones breaking and your blood gushing out.

The Scavenger’s Daughter was not commonly used, but when it was, it was always a harrowing experience, even for the spectators.

When the whole body of the victims was not getting squished, they were losing their fingers to the thumbscrew.

The Thumbscrew

The essence of the thumbscrew wasn’t to kill, but rather to get a confession out of people; it was made out of an iron screw.

To use it, the victim’s hand would be placed on a table, and the screw would be placed on the finger.

The screw would then be turned slowly to break the victim’s fingers slowly until they confessed.

It was built to scare prisoners and inflict just enough pain to make them confess, but not to kill them.

Just like the other punishments in this video, this one was aimed at breaking the spirit of the prisoners, making them admit to crimes that they may or may not have committed.

And if cutting limbs was not enough for the inquisitors, they were demented enough to abuse their victims with a punishment called the Pear of Anguish.

The Spanish Donkey

This involved a triangular wooden structure with one end of the triangle facing upwards.

The victim is made to straddle the triangle while their legs are weighed down by heavy objects.

Staying in that position for long will cause pain to the victims and make it impossible for them to walk painlessly.

The purpose of this technique wasn’t always to get a confession, but to punish victims for going against instructions.

The Spanish Donkey wasn’t just used in Spain, as American soldiers used it during the American Civil War to punish their Confederate prisoners.

It didn’t really hold any significant purpose for them; it was just an avenue to show how far they were willing to go to punish people.

Many Confederate prisoners were made to ride this Spanish Donkey for hours, days, and weeks until they eventually collapsed or lost their ability to walk, despite how terrible this punishment is.

Boiling

Boiling is a technique that not just the Spanish Inquisition punishers used, but also other leaders in European countries.

It was a slow, inevitable death that even if you stopped halfway through, the victim might not survive, especially at a time when healthcare wasn’t advanced.

Just like the name suggests, a large pot of water would be placed on an open fire and allowed to get to its highest boiling point.

This method wasn’t meant to get a confession out of people, but to kill people.

The victim would be placed inside the boiling pot and left there until all their skin boiled off and they are left to die due to burns and heat exposure.

If the leader in charge of this punishment decided to call off the execution midway, it would be a waste of time, because the victim would not be able to survive the intensity of the pain.

It takes around two hours for a victim of boiling to die, slowly but surely sitting there as their skin and organs melt away.

Foot Roasting

The Spanish Inquisition punishers still had some more uses of heat in their punishment techniques, and one of them was foot roasting.

The victim’s feet would be tied up, and a hot surface would be placed at the sole of their feet, causing them immense pain as their skin tore and sizzled.

The essence of this punishment was to get confessions out of prisoners, and the aftereffect was an inability to walk, as the soles of their feet would be burned off.

The Branding Iron

The branding iron was still another way of using heat to torture people.

A hot iron would be placed on the chest, abdomen, back, or other exposed areas of the victim’s body to inflict scars and make them suffer humiliation.

This form of punishment wasn’t only used in Spain, but in other parts of the world, especially countries that were colonized.

Colonial masters would use branding irons to mark their slaves; the pain may go away, but the humiliation stays forever.

This form of torture is used in modern times, but not in the same way as the Spanish Inquisition.