[Illustration:  Fig. 339.—­Seal of the Free Count Heinrich Beckmann, of Medebach. (1520—­1533).]

Punishments.

Refinements of Penal Cruelty.—­Tortures for different Purposes.—­Water, Screw-boards, and the Rack.—­The Executioner.—­Female Executioners.—­Tortures.—­Amende Honorable.—­Torture of Fire, Real and Feigned.—­Auto-da-fe.—­Red-hot Brazier or Basin.—­Beheading.—­Quarterin
g.—­Wheel.—­Garotte.—­Hanging.—­The Whip.—­The Pillory.—­The Arquebuse.&mdas
h;­Tickling.—­Flaying.—­Drowning.—­Imprisonment.—­Regulations of Prisons.—­The Iron Cage.—­The Leads of Venice.

“It is very sad,” says the learned M. de Villegille, “to observe the infinite variety of tortures which have existed since the beginning of the world.  It is, in fact, difficult to realise the amount of ingenuity exercised by men in inventing new tortures, in order to give themselves the satisfaction of seeing their fellow-creatures agonizing in the most awful sufferings.”

In entering upon the subject of ancient modes of punishment, we must first speak of the torture, which, according to the received phrase, might be either previous or preparatory:  previous, when it consisted of a torture which the condemned had to endure previous to capital punishment; and preparatory, when it was applied in order to elicit from the culprit an avowal of his crime, or of that of his accomplices.  It was also called ordinary, or extraordinary, according to the duration or violence with which it was inflicted.  In some cases the torture lasted five or six consecutive hours; in others, it rarely exceeded an hour.  Hippolyte de Marsillis, the learned and venerable jurisconsult of Bologna, who lived at the beginning of the fifteenth century, mentions fourteen ways of inflicting torture.  The compression of the limbs by special instruments, or by ropes only; injection of water, vinegar, or oil, into the body of the accused; application of hot pitch, and starvation, were the processes most in use.  Other means, which were more or less applied according to the fancy of the magistrate and the tormentor or executioner, were remarkable for their singular atrocities.  For instance, placing hot eggs under the arm-pits; introducing dice between the skin and flesh; tying lighted candles to the fingers, so that they might be consumed simultaneously with the wax; letting water trickle drop by drop from a great height on the stomach; and also the custom, which was, according to writers on criminal matters, an indescribable torture, of watering the feet with salt water and allowing goats to lick them.  However, every country had special customs as to the manner of applying torture.

In France, too, the torture varied according to the provinces, or rather according to the parliaments.  For instance, in Brittany the culprit, tied in an iron chair, was gradually brought near a blazing furnace.  In Normandy, one thumb was squeezed in a screw in the ordinary, and both thumbs in the extraordinary torture.  At Autun, after high boots made of spongy leather had been placed on the culprit’s feet, he was tied on to a table near a large fire, and a quantity of boiling water was poured on the boots, which penetrated the leather, ate away the flesh, and even dissolved the bones of the victim.