Medieval torture started in 1252 and should have ended in 1816 but it was still secretly used in papal states until they got captured by the french forces and it finally ended in the 1870’s. It was mainly invented to force or extract victims into confession to a crime. It is believed that Ibn al-Zayyat was the first to create a torture device that was a wooden elongated triangle with spikes all over it, also known as the “wooden horse or Spanish donkey(Pandy), ironically this was the same device that he was executed with. There were many of these gruesome punishment devices made. The Middle Ages had the worst torture methods that history has ever seen because it was inhumanly brutal, killed people whether they were innocent or guilty, and it was extremely unfair. …show more content…
It was created to get people to admit the truth to a crime. It was supposed to break people's resistance and maintain control by spreading fear through a community. This is also why executions were public so that they could shock people into fright to prevent more crimes. Also if you survived one of these horrible tortures you would normally never recover, and if you did recover it would take years. This was extremely inhuman and horrible.
Furthermore, Weather people were innocent or guilty the only way to get out of torture was to admit to guilt. “To escape the pain of torture, accused heretics and witches often admitted guilt”(Einolf). Many innocent people died to these torture methods because they refused to lie and admit guilt because it was a sin. It was pretty easy to frame someone and get them a punishment which was horrible because many innocent people died for no reason and they would not prevent it because they refused to lie. The court had a horrible way of deciding who was guilty or innocent and this killed