I have to remind myself, from time to time, that I really know very little about torture, how it is perpetrated, and its effects on mortal humans. In the occasional moment of mid-vacation self-pity, I think that a 5-year old is a master of torture, and that traveling with a young child for more than a month away from home is akin to self-flagellation. Her whining feels like torture, and being forced to endure her incessant, calculated and manipulative requests for ice cream is simple cosmic retribution for misdeeds I have perpetrated in this, or perhaps a previous, life.
Unexpectedly, an overriding theme of this European vacation we are enjoying has been punishment and torture. It all started months ago, in the early planning stages, when I was reading a travel guide at the dinner table and came across mention of a Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, an intact medieval village in Germany. Little did I think that Vivian would be strangely interested in the prospect of visiting such a place, and even less did I think that she would remember it two months later, when in Rothenburg. She is developing an appreciation for a little well-regulated dose of fear: she is starting to like ghost stories and even begged us, to the point of tears, to take her on the tour of Prague's haunted underground tunnels (which we vetoed as potentially too frightening). The above-ground Ghost Tour, which we did do, wasn't scary enough for her, apparently. Nor was a walk through the catacombs under St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, complete with genuine skeletons, or a visit to the Charnel House in Hallstat, with human skulls in abundance (I will blog this one later).
To be honest, the Medieval Crime and Punsihment Museum in Rothenburg o.b.T. is not the first one we visited. This kind of tourist attraction abounds in the old cities in Europe, and it seems like every city from Prague to Vienna has a torture museum. Most, however, are not as professional, extensive, or academic as the one in Rothenburg. For example, the first one we visited, in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic, featured animatronic executioners performing to warbly soundtracks; it was little more, really, than a glorified haunted house. Vivi loved it.
With my tongue firmly in cheek, I am going to confess that what I loved about the exhibits in the Crime and Punishment Museum is how brilliant some medival methods of punishment were, based, as they were, on the deterrent effect of humiliation. Minor criminals were forced to wear "shame masks" in public, and the features depicted on the mask reflected the nature of the crime. A mask with horns was for a man who had been cuckolded by his wife, a mask with a waggling tongue was for a gossip, etc. Little physical pain or discomfort, just public scrutiny, and presumably, ridicule. Never mind that the crime punished by the shame masks may not even be considered crimes anymore...but I can still see the appliability of the method in certain settings encountered in parenthood.
Moving on to another simply brilliant favorite, we have the single and double "neck violin" pictured above and below. The neck violin consisted of a vaguely violin-shaped frame with three holes: one each for the head and hands. The double featured two sets of three holes in one device, to be used simultaneously by pairs of offenders. The criminal wore the single neck violin for a variety of minor offenses, again being subjected to public shame and ridicule while semi-immobilized. "The Double" was truly brilliant, however, as a punishment for quarrelsome women, pairs of which were forced to endure each other's company, in addition to public ridicule, until such time as the women could learn to get along. I mentioned to Vivian that I thought this might be a suitable punishment for her and some of her little friends when they just cannot be convinced to play nicely together.
Next, an old favorite: the chastity belt, used after the fact to punish adulterous wive, or pre-emptively to ensure the purity of young girls.
Other common punishments included the "baker's baptism," in which bakers were confined in a cage and dunked in the river in the event that their loaves were too big or too small, the "drinker's barrel" in which the village drunk was forced to wear a barrel around town, the "shame flute" for bad musicians (a version of the neck violin), and the giant iron rosary for truant-churchgoers.
In all seriousness, most punishments of the time were simply horrendous: the "judicial system" devised dozens of methods of torture used to extract confessions or as punishment. From the stretching rack, to the "Catherine wheel" used to break the bones of the body in a pulpy mush, to the pillory, the iron maiden, and the executioner's swords, many devices were simply too disturbing to contemplate for long.
Thankfully, Vivian was more interested in the place of punishment than the method, the place of punishment typically being the village square. Instead of fixating on any one item or method of punishment, she learned to recognize village squares as the site of public humiliation, and in every subsequent town square we have visited, she has asked if this is the place where people used to be punished, "in the old days."
Conversely, what has stayed with me from the visit to this museum is a new framework for considering the stories of torture that seemed to be disturbingly commonplace a few years back, in places like Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. Additionally, reading the news this morning, I came across a story about the practice in some countries of containing criminal defendants in cages during trial. Apparently, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, currently under trial, is enduring his trial while confined in a defendant's cage, a practice that has its origins in, yes, medieval Europe.
