Breaking wheel

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For other uses of "Catherine wheel", see Catherine wheel (disambiguation).

The breaking wheel (also known as the Catherine wheel) was a torturous capital punishment device used in the Middle Ages and early modern times for public execution by cudgeling to death.

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[edit] Description

Depiction of the breaking wheel in use in Cologne in the early modern period. (The trial of Peter Stumpp)
Depiction of the breaking wheel in use in Cologne in the early modern period. (The trial of Peter Stumpp)
The college shield of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, prominently depicting a breaking wheel.
The college shield of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, prominently depicting a breaking wheel.

Breaking on the wheel was a form of torturous execution formerly in use, especially in ancient Greece (where it originated), France, Germany, Sweden, and Russia.

The wheel itself was typically a large wooden wagon wheel, with many radial spokes, but a wheel was not always used. In some cases the condemned was lashed to the wheel and beaten with a club or iron cudgel, with the gaps in the wheel allowing the cudgel to break through; in others, such as the execution of the parricide Franz Seuboldt in Nuremberg, 22 September 1589, a wheel was used as a cudgel: the executioner used wooden blocks to raise Seuboldt's limbs, then broke them by slamming a wagon wheel down onto the limb.[1]

In France the condemned were placed on a cart-wheel with their limbs stretched out along the spokes over two sturdy wooden beams. The wheel was made to slowly revolve, and a large hammer or an iron bar was then applied to the limb over the gap between the beams, breaking the bones. This process was repeated several times per limb. Sometimes it was 'mercifully' ordered that the executioner should strike the criminal on chest and stomach, blows known as coups de grâce (French: "blow of mercy"), which caused lethal injuries, leading to the end of the torture by death; without those, the broken man could take hours, even days, before shock and dehydration caused death. In France, a special grace, called the retentum, could be granted, by which the condemned was strangled after the second or third blow, or in special cases, even before the breaking began. Afterwards, the condemned's shattered limbs were woven ('braiden') through the spokes of the wheel which was then hoisted onto a tall pole, so that birds could eat the sometimes still-living individual.

In early modern Germany, the wheel was punishment reserved primarily for males convicted of aggravated murder (murder committed during another crime, or against a family member). Less severe offenders would be cudgelled 'top down', with the first blow to the neck, causing death; more heinous criminals were punished 'bottom up', starting with the legs, and sometimes being beaten for hours. The number and sequence of blows was specified in the court's sentence. Corpses were left for carrion-eaters, and the criminals' heads often placed on a spike.[2]

Legend has it that Saint Catherine of Alexandria was to be executed on one of these devices, which thereafter became known as the Catherine wheel, also used as an iconographic attribute.

[edit] Metaphorical uses

The breaking wheel was a cruel torment as well as a great dishonor, rather like crucifixion in Antiquity. It is referred to in the Dutch expression opgroeien voor galg en rad ("to grow up for the gallows and wheel", i.e. "to come to no good at all" or "ripe for a life of crime"). It's also known in the Spanish expression morir en la rueda ("to die by the wheel"), to keep silent about something. It is referred to in the Dutch expression ik ben geradbraakt (literally "I have been broken on the wheel"), "I am exhausted" and can be found in similar form in the German expression sich gerädert fühlen (literally "to feel wheeled") of the same meaning and Swedish where the verb rådbråka ("to break on the wheel") may also mean "to exert oneself (mentally)". In Danish however, the similar word "radbrækket" refers almost exclusively to physical exhaustion. The word roué "dissipated debauchee" is French, and its original meaning was "broken on the wheel". As execution by breaking on the wheel was reserved in France, and some other countries, for crimes of peculiar atrocity, roué came by a natural process to be understood to mean a man morally worse than a pendard or gallows-bird, who only deserved hanging for common crimes. He was also a leader in wickedness, since the chief of a gang of brigands (for instance) would be broken on the wheel, while his obscure followers were merely hanged. Philip, duke of Orleans, who was regent of France from 1715 to 1723, gave the term the sense of impious and callous debauchee, which it has borne since his time, by habitually applying it to the very bad male company who amused his privacy and his leisure. The locus classicus for the origin of this use of the epithet is in the Memoirs of Saint-Simon. In Finnish the word teilata ("to execute by the wheel") refers to forceful and violent critique or rejection of performance, ideas or innovations. Alexander Pope, in his 1735 "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot", famously asked, "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?."

[edit] See also

[edit] Coat of Arms with Catherine Wheel

[edit] Sources and references

  1. ^ Depicted in the contemporary woodcut An Aggravated Death Sentence, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.
  2. ^ Evans, R. J., Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany 1600-1987 (1996) , p 29.