Iron Maiden (torture Device) - History

History

The Iron Maiden is often associated with the Middle Ages, but in fact was not invented until the 19th century. No account of the iron maiden has been found earlier than 1793, although medieval torture devices were elaborately catalogued with horrified fascination and reproduced during the 19th century for collectors of the macabre.

Wolfgang Schild, a professor of criminal law, criminal law history and philosophy of law at the University of Bielefeld, has argued that any known iron maidens were in fact pieced together from several artifacts found in museums, in order to create spectacular objects intended for (commercial) exhibition.

The most famous device was the iron maiden of Nuremberg, first displayed possibly as far back as 1802. The original was lost in the Allied bombing of Nuremberg in 1944. A copy "from the Royal Castle of Nuremberg", crafted for public display, was sold through J. Ichenhauser of London to the Earl of Shrewsbury in 1890, along with other torture devices, and, after being displayed at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, was taken on an American tour. This copy was auctioned off in the early 1960s and is now on display at the Medieval Crime Museum, Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Historians have ascertained that Johann Philipp Siebenkees created the history of it as a hoax in 1793. According to Siebenkees' colportage, it was first used on August 14, 1515, to execute a coin forger.

The Nuremberg iron maiden was actually built in the 19th century as a probable misinterpretation of a medieval "Schandmantel" ("cloak of shame"), which was made of wood and tin but without spikes.

The iron maiden of Nuremberg was anthropomorphic. It was probably styled after primitive "Gothic" representations of Mary, the mother of Jesus, with a cast likeness of her on the face. The "maiden" was about 7 feet (2.1 m) tall and 3 feet (0.91 m) wide, had double doors, and was big enough to contain an adult man. Inside the tomb-sized container, the iron maiden was fitted with dozens of sharp spikes. Several nineteenth century iron maidens are on display in museums around the world, but it is unlikely that they were ever employed. The iron maiden probably was not used until the twentieth century, if at all. A crude copy of the Virgin of Nuremberg was found among the palace effects of Uday Hussein in Iraq.

Inspiration for the "Iron Maiden" may come from the Carthaginian execution of Marcus Atilius Regulus, as it was recorded in a passage in Tertullian's "To the Martyrs" (Chapter 4) and Augustine of Hippo's The City of God (I.15) in which the Carthaginians "packed him into a tight wooden box, spiked with sharp nails on all sides, so that he could not lean in any direction without being pierced", or by the account of Nabis of Sparta's deadly statue of his wife, the Apega.