THE STORY OF THE JUDAS CRADLE, PERHAPS THE MOST AGONIZING TORTURE DEVICE IN HISTORY

 While it may not look like much, the Judas cradle is believed to have spelled a sickening end for the heretics who ended up on the wrong side of its razor-sharp tip during the Spanish Inquisition.

Judas Cradle

The Judas Cradle, a medieval form of torture employed during the Spanish Inquisition.

If there’s one thing that we can expect from the Spanish Inquisition, it’s unique and brutal methods of torture.

In fact, some of history’s most infamous torture methods were implemented by the inquisitors to punish those believed to have sinned, including the rack, the wheel, and water torture. One lesser known torture method favored by the Spanish, though, was the Judas Cradle — and oddly, they considered it to be one of the most humane.

There’s not much to the device itself. It’s a carved wooden pyramid at the top of three wooden legs, sort of like a stool though admittedly not one you’d want to sit on. It was placed in the corner of a torture chamber, and above it a person would be suspended, nude, with their hands and feet bound by ropes attached to gears.

They would then be slowly lowered onto the tip of the Judas Cradle, sometimes with additional weights, until it ripped through their pelvis.

Hippolytus De Marsiliis, The Architect Of The Judas Cradle

Someone, of course, had to conceive of the Judas Cradle, and though much credit is paid to the Spanish Inquisition for incorporating it, it was originally the idea of an Italian lawyer named Hippolytus De Marsiliis, or Ippolito Marsili. Marsili also, notably, was the man responsible for introducing water torture to the world.

Marsili studied law in Bologna with other notable figures such as Andrea Barbazza, Vincenzo Paleotti, and Alberto Cattani, later becoming the favorite pupil of Felino Sandeo, who held the chair of canon law in Ferrara and Pisa for a time.

Medieval Water Torture

Medieval water torture, usually done to women who the church felt were weaker than men and would give up with a “lesser” form of torture.

Marsili himself received a doctorate in utroque iure (a doctor of both civil and church law) in 1480, and two years later obtained a chair of civil law, and later becoming a mentor to Antonio Burgos and Paolo d’Oria. Throughout his career, Marsili had numerous students and gave countless lectures, many of which he chronicled in print as well.

But Marsili is perhaps best known for the various torture methods he devised. Many judges of his era had, as it turned out, a propensity for torture, and though Marsili viewed it only as a necessary evil, rather than entertainment, his mind produced some of the most abhorrent techniques for torture.

Alongside water torture — devised by simply witnessing water erode parts of stone — Marsili also came up with the discipline of forced vigil. This technique saw the prisoner being seated in a chair and observed by torturers who forced them to remain awake. Sometimes, this meant forcing a prisoner to stay up for 40 hours straight.

Marsili, of course, also came up with the Judas Cradle. As for why or how, well, records don’t exactly make it known. Presumably, Marsili and others versed in church law spent a lot of time thinking of torture techniques, and the Judas Cradle was just one result of that.

The Question Extraordinaire

The “question extraordinaire,” an extreme form of torture similar to the Judas Cradle and the Spanish Donkey.

Marsili also considered many of his torture techniques to be humane, simply for the fact that they didn’t involve burning someone’s flesh or breaking their bones. Even the Judas Cradle was only intended to keep a person awake and sleep deprived — but torturers found a way to tear through a person anyway.

It didn’t help, either, that they rarely cleaned the wooden pyramids, leading many prisoners to die of infection on account of the dried blood and feces.

Torture Techniques Employed By The Spanish Inquisition

Around the time Marsili was thinking up his “humane” torture techniques, other members of the church in Spain were busy employing the many, many torture methods they had picked up over the years. Supposedly, torture was done to root out heretics, with the end goal being the spread and domination of Catholicism across the country.

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