The first known mention of the infamous Iron Maiden torture device

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, and so he remained making great cry and lament for two days, after which he died."

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.

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