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The stocks were employed by civil and military authorities from medieval to early modern times including Colonial America. Public punishment in the stocks was a common occurrence from around 1500 until at least 1748. [ 4 ]
The pillory is a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, used during the medieval and renaissance periods for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse. [1] The pillory is related to the stocks. [2]
Public humiliation or public shaming is a form of punishment whose main feature is dishonoring or disgracing a person, usually an offender or a prisoner, especially in a public place. It was regularly used as a form of judicially sanctioned punishment in previous centuries, and is still practiced by different means (e.g. schools) in the modern era.
The limbs collected from this and other punishments of the time were "emptied by the hundreds". Sometimes, this method was limited to dislocating a few bones, but the torturer often went too far and rendered the legs or arms (sometimes both) useless. In the late Middle Ages, some new variants of this instrument appeared.
The use of tar and pitch in punishments appearing in such medieval works as Anglo-Norman sermons, The Purgatory of Saint Patrick by Marie de France and Dante's Inferno have been seen as precursors for the idea of tarring and feathering. The latter also features the element of feathers when a "human thief is painfully transformed into a ...
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 26 February 2025. Medieval punishment for high treason The execution of Hugh Despenser the Younger, as depicted in the Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse To be hanged, drawn and quartered was a method of torturous capital punishment used principally to execute men convicted of high treason in medieval and ...
The most common punishment was a fine. Some historians write of scolding and bad speech coded as feminine offences by the late medieval period. Women of all marital statuses were prosecuted for scolding. The married were featured most often, whereas widows were only rarely labelled scolds. [3]
The Spanish Inquisition bound the prisoner face-upward to the rack with his bare feet secured in a stocks. The soles of the feet were basted with lard or oil and slowly barbecued over a brazier of burning coals. A screen could be interposed between the feet and the coals to modulate the exposure, while a bellows controlled the intensity of the ...