OVER the decades, many have assumed that the iron maiden – a human-shaped coffin with spikes on the inner surface of its door apparently to pierce the bodies of those condemned to be locked inside – was a gruesome torture device used during the Middle Ages.
However, is this assumption true?
VERDICT:
FALSE
Despite their ghastly reputation, these nasty devices have been written off by historians as a myth from the 18th century due to a lack of credible evidence or historical records of such devices ever being used.
Physical examples of iron maidens only date back to the late 1800s, and even though many articles about torture describe such devices, it is difficult to determine their authenticity.
Wolfgang Schilds, a professor of criminal law, criminal law history, and philosophy of law at Bielefeld University, has argued that putative iron maidens were pieced together from artefacts to create objects intended for commercial exhibition.
Similarly, Medieval Warfare magazine editor Peter Konieczny said in an interview that this exaggeration tends to build on itself over time, leading to 18th-century myths that are taken as fact today.
He added that most of the medieval myths about torture devices arose in the 1700s and 1800s when people were motivated to see the people of the past as more brutal than themselves.
"You get the idea that people were much more savage in the Middle Ages because they want to see themselves as less savage. It's so much easier to pick on people who have been dead for 500 years," said Konieczny.
Sources:
https://www.historicalindex.org/what-is-an-iron-maiden.htm
https://www.livescience.com/55985-are-iron-maidens-torture-devices.html
