The breaking wheel (also known as the Catherine wheel) was a torturous capital punishment device used in the Middle Ages and early modern times for public execution by cudgeling to death. It was not used for coercion through torture.
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Description
Breaking on the wheel was a form of torturous execution formerly in use, especially in ancient Greece (where it was originated), France, Germany, Sweden, and Russia. The wheel itself was similar to a large wooden wagon wheel, with many radial spokes, but a wheel was not always used.
In France the condemned were placed on a cart-wheel with their limbs stretched out along the spokes over two sturdy wooden beams. The wheel was made to slowly revolve, and a large hammer or an iron bar was then applied to the limb over the gap between the beams, breaking the bones. This process was repeated several times per limb. Sometimes it was 'mercifully' ordered that the executioner should strike the criminal on chest and stomach, blows known as coups de grâce, which caused lethal injuries, leading to the end of the torture by death; without those, the broken man could take hours, even days, before shock and dehydration caused death. In France, a special grace, called the retentum, could be granted, by which the condemned was strangled after the second or third blow, or in special cases, even before the breaking began. Afterwards, the condemned's shattered limbs were woven ('braiden') through the spokes of the wheel which was then hoisted onto a tall pole, so that birds could eat the sometimes still-living individual. Legend has it that Saint Catherine of Alexandria was to be executed on one of these devices, which thereafter became known as the Catherine wheel, also used as an iconographic attribute.
Metaphorical uses
The breaking wheel was a cruel torment as well as a great dishonor, rather like crucifixion in Antiquity. It is referred to in the Dutch expression opgroeien voor galg en rad ("to grow up into gallows and wheel", i.e. "to come to no good at all" or "ripe for a life of crime"). It's also known in the Spanish expression morir en la rueda ("to die by the wheel"), to keep silent about something. It is referred to in the Dutch expression ik ben geradbraakt (literally "I have been broken on the wheel"), "I am exhausted" and can be found in similar form in the German expression sich gerädert fühlen (literally "to feel wheeled") of the same meaning and Swedish where the verb rådbråka ("to break on the wheel") may also mean "to exert oneself (mentally)". The word roué "dissipated debauchee" is French, and its original meaning was "broken on the wheel". As execution by breaking on the wheel was reserved in France, and some other countries, for crimes of peculiar atrocity, roué came by a natural process to be understood to mean a man morally worse than a pendard or gallows-bird, who only deserved hanging for common crimes. He was also a leader in wickedness, since the chief of a gang of brigands (for instance) would be broken on the wheel, while his obscure followers were merely hanged. Philip, duke of Orleans, who was regent of France from 1715 to 1723, gave the term the sense of impious and callous debauchee, which it has borne since his time, by habitually applying it to the very bad male company who amused his privacy and his leisure. The locus classicus for the origin of this use of the epithet is in the Memoirs of Saint-Simon. In Finnish the word teilata ("execution by the wheel") refers to forceful and violent critique or rejection of performance, ideas or innovations. Alexander Pope, in his 1735 "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot", famously asked, "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?."
See also
Sources and references
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913. notably Religious toleration
- Probertenencyclopaedia - illustrated
- Breaking on the Wheel (rotten.com, with illustration)
- Greenblatt, Miriam Rulers and Their Times: Peter the Great and Tsarist Russia, Benchmark Books, ISBN 0-7614-0914-9
