"Masks"

Particularly in times of turmoil,
restriction of free speech was a normal police duty. The mouths of those who insulted the royal house or uttered blasphemous words were literally stopped with iron gags.

But in the closed municipal societies,
spreading gossip, too, was frequently looked upon as disorderly conduct. The culprit was transformed into a living caricature by these masks of disgrace, featuring oversize ears, spectacles, tongues and such unmistakable texts as "The maid that cannot be silent, will this muzzle be lent."

"The Skull Cracker"

The chief difficulty in heresy trials
consisted of providing proof that the crime had actually been committed. After all, the atrocity exclusively involved the nourishing of an inner conviction. This vise-like equipment enabled the 'demoniac mind' of the accused heretic to be excruciated in the most direct of manners.

In the eyes of the Church, heresy was high
treason against the Divine Ruler. With meticulous precision, theologians had listed a great variety of heretic thoughts. The list was so extensive that, strictly speaking, it was well nigh impossible not to qualify for such severe chastisement.

"The Heretic Fork"

"Abiuro", "I renounce", the inscription on
the side of this fork reads. With the sharp points pressed against the hollow of their chin, accused heretics could scarcely have done more than whisper this formula of penance. Thus, the Inquisitor would cause the heretic to be reminded with painful precision what the most evil quality of his attitude consisted of: the sin of obstinacy.

The most dangerous heresies had to be
renounced secretly, prior to one's execution. The culprit thereby forfeited his life, but at least his soul would be saved.

"The Guillotine"

'The Machine'. Under this name, the guillotine
represented the triumph of rationalist philosophy of law in the years of the French Revolution. At the suggestion of the enlightened physician Joseph Guillotin, the National Meeting abolished a whole range of different tortures and punishments of disgrace. Equality, all the way to the scaffold! The infallible precision of modern technolo­gy would guarantee every citizen the right to painless decapita­tion. Nonetheless, this 'humanitarian machine' inspired more horror than all previous instruments of torture together.

The guillotine has remained a symbol of anonymous
and mechanized state terror ever since.

"The Rack"

Strange though it may seem, the
rack marked the start of modern criminal proceedings. The Middle Ages featured the most
divergent ways of furnishing proof, often based on magic, such as the ritual trial by ordeal.

However, along with the rise of a
centrally organized, professional administration of justice, these magical methods were abandoned. The confession of the accused him/herself became the criterion of truth.

Jurists distinguished various
'degrees' of torture: from merely showing the rack to dislocation of the limbs. If the accused managed to endure this treatment, he generally had to be released for lack of proof.

"Hanging Cages"

"In everlasting remembrance
and as an eternal example": for certain criminals the judges did not consider the highest gallows high enough.

Infamous gang-leaders were
hanged from city towers or in 'highwaymen's coffins' at intersections, a combination of the gallows and cages of public disgrace. In Central Europe, the victims of this humiliating sentence were mostly Jews.

Often, Jewish citizens were
picked at random to be hanged by the arms and feet, besmirched with pitch or beset by wild dogs. Only conversion to Christianity could shorten their suffering.

"The Inquisition Chair"

Witchcraft was total sin: not just the head, but
the whole body was subjected to the devil. Accordingly, this interrogation chair should subject the body to total torment.

All the executioner had to do was tighten the
braces and the weight of the victim would do the rest. In the course of the interrogation, many victims would become convinced of their guilt, and confessed the most bizarre parti­culars of their intercourse with the devil.

For the learned inquisitor and the (generally)
unlettered woman in the chair would be living in the same world of anxiety, in which the Devil lurked as a visible and tangible tempter.