Part 32

The _wheel_ is the name applied to a torture of very ancient origin, but which was applied during the Middle Ages to quite a different torture from that used in olden times. The modern instrument might indeed have been called the cross, for it only served for the public exhibition of the body of the criminal whose limbs had been previously broken alive. This torture, which does not date earlier than the days of Francis I., is thus described:--The victim was first tied on his back to two joists forming a St. Andrew's cross, each of his limbs being stretched out on its arms. Two places were hollowed out under each limb, about a foot apart, in order that the joints alone might touch the wood. The executioner then dealt a heavy blow over each hollow with a square iron bar, about two inches broad and rounded at the handle, thus breaking each limb in two places. To the eight blows required for this, the executioner generally added two or three on the chest, which were called _coups de grâce_, and which ended this horrible execution. It was only after death that the broken body was placed on a wheel, which was turned round on a pivot. Sometimes, however, the sentence ordered that the condemned should be strangled before being broken, which was done in such cases by the instantaneous twist of a rope round the neck.

Strangling, thus carried out, was called _garotting_. This method is still in use in Spain, and is specially reserved for the nobility. The victim is seated on a scaffold, his head leaning against a beam and his neck grasped by an iron collar, which the executioner suddenly tightens from behind by means of a screw.

For several centuries, and down to the Revolution, hanging was the most common mode of execution in France; consequently, in every town, and almost in every village, there was a permanent gibbet, which, owing to the custom of leaving the bodies to hang till they crumbled into dust, was very rarely without having some corpses or skeletons attached to it. These gibbets, which were called _fourches patibulaires_ or _justices_, because they represented the authority of the law, were generally composed of pillars of stone, joined at their summit by wooden traverses, to which the bodies of criminals were tied by ropes or chains. The gallows, the pillars of which varied in number according to the will of the authorities, were always placed by the side of frequented roads, and on an eminence.

[Illustration: Fig. 349.--The Gibbet of Montfaucon.--From an Engraving of the Topography of Paris, in the Collection of Engravings of the National Library.]

According to prescribed rule, the gallows of Paris, which played such an important part in the political as well as the criminal history of that city, were erected on a height north of the town, near the high road leading into Germany. Montfaucon, originally the name of the hill, soon became that of the gallows itself. This celebrated place of execution consisted of a heavy mass of masonry, composed of ten or twelve layers of rough stones, and formed an enclosure of forty feet by twenty-five or thirty. At the upper part there was a platform, which was reached by a stone staircase, the entrance to which was closed by a massive door (Fig. 349). On three sides of this platform rested sixteen square pillars, about thirty feet high, made of blocks of stone a foot thick. These pillars were joined to one another by double bars of wood, which were fastened into them, and bore iron chains three feet and a half long, to which the criminals were suspended. Underneath, half-way between these and the platform, other bars were placed for the same purpose. Long and solid ladders riveted to the pillars enabled the executioner and his assistants to lead up criminals, or to carry up corpses destined to be hung there. Lastly, the centre of the structure was occupied by a deep pit, the hideous receptacle of the decaying remains of the criminals.

One can easily imagine the strange and melancholy aspect of this monumental gibbet if one thinks of the number of corpses continually attached to it, and which were feasted upon by thousands of crows. On one occasion only it was necessary to replace _fifty-two_ chains, which were useless; and the accounts of the city of Paris prove that the expense of executions was more heavy than that of the maintenance of the gibbet, a fact easy to be understood if one recalls to mind the frequency of capital sentences during the Middle Ages. Montfaucon was used not only for executions, but also for exposing corpses which were brought there from various places of execution in every part of the country. The mutilated remains of criminals who had been boiled, quartered, or beheaded, were also hung there, enclosed in sacks of leather or wickerwork. They often remained hanging for a considerable time, as in the case of Pierre des Essarts, who had been beheaded in 1413, and whose remains were handed over to his family for Christian burial after having hung on Montfaucon for three years.

The criminal condemned to be hanged was generally taken to the place of execution sitting or standing in a waggon, with his back to the horses, his confessor by his side, and the executioner behind him. He bore three ropes round his neck; two the size of the little finger, and called _tortouses_, each of which had a slip-knot; the third, called the _jet_, was only used to pull the victim off the ladder, and so to launch him into eternity (Fig. 350). When the cart arrived at the foot of the gallows, the executioner first ascended the ladder backwards, drawing the culprit after him by means of the ropes, and forcing him to keep pace with him; on arriving at the top, he quickly fastened the two _tortouses_ to the arm of the gibbet, and by a jerk of his knee he turned the culprit off the ladder, still holding the _jet_ in his own hand. He then placed his feet on the tied hands of the condemned, and suspending himself by his hands to the gibbet, he finished off his victim by repeated jerks, thus ensuring complete strangulation.

When the words "shall be hung until death doth ensue" are to be found in a sentence, it must not be supposed that they were used merely as a form, for in certain cases the judge ordered that the sentence should be only carried out as far as would prove to the culprit the awful sensation of hanging. In such cases, the victim was simply suspended by ropes passing under the arm-pits, a kind of exhibition which was not free from danger when it was too prolonged, for the weight of the body so tightened the rope round the chest that the circulation might be stopped. Many culprits, after hanging thus an hour, when brought down, were dead, or only survived this painful process a short time.

[Illustration: Fig. 350.--Hanging to Music. (A Minstrel condemned to the Gallows obtained permission that one of his companions should accompany him to his execution, and play his favourite instrument on the ladder of the Gallows.)--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in Michault's "Doctrinal du Temps Présent:" small folio, goth., Bruges, about 1490.]

We have seen elsewhere (chapter on _Privileges and Rights, Feudal and Municipal_) that, when the criminal passed before the convent of the _Filles-Dieu_, the nuns of that establishment were bound to bring him out a glass of wine and three pieces of bread, and this was called _le dernier morceau des patients._ It was hardly ever refused, and an immense crowd assisted at this sad meal. After this the procession went forward, and on arriving near the gallows, another halt was made at the foot of a stone cross, in order that the culprit might receive the religions exhortations of his confessor. The moment the execution was over, the confessor and the officers of justice returned to the Châtelet, where a repast provided by the town awaited them.

[Illustration: Fig. 351.--View of the Pillory in the Market-place of Paris in the Sixteenth Century, after a Drawing by an unknown Artist of 1670.]

Sometimes the criminals, in consequence of a peculiar wording of the sentence, were taken to Montfaucon, whether dead or alive, on a ladder fastened behind a cart. This was an aggravation of the penalty, which was called _traîner sur la claie_.

The penalty of the lash was inflicted in two ways: first, under the _custode_, that is to say within the prison, and by the hand of the gaoler himself, in which case it was simply a correction; and secondly, in public, when its administration became ignominious as well as painful. In the latter case the criminal was paraded about the town, stripped to the waist, and at each crossway he received a certain number of blows on the shoulders, given by the public executioner with a cane or a knotted rope.

When it was only required to stamp a culprit with infamy he was put into the _pillory_, which was generally a kind of scaffold furnished with chains and iron collars, and bearing on its front the arms of the feudal lord. In Paris, this name was given to a round isolated tower built in the centre of the market. The tower was sixty feet high, and had large openings in its thick walls, and a horizontal wheel was provided, which was capable of turning on a pivot. This wheel was pierced with several holes, made so as to hold the hands and head of the culprit, who, on passing and repassing before the eyes of the crowd, came in full view, and was subjected to their hootings (Fig. 351). The pillories were always situated in the most frequented places, such as markets, crossways, &c.

Notwithstanding the long and dreadful enumeration we have just made of mediæval punishments, we are far from having exhausted the subject; for we have not spoken of several more or less atrocious punishments, which were in use at various times and in various countries; such as the _Pain of the Cross_, specially employed against the Jews; the _Arquebusade_, which was well adapted for carrying out prompt justice on soldiers; the _Chatouillement_, which resulted in death after the most intense tortures; the _Pal_ (Fig. 352), _flaying alive_, and, lastly, _drowning_, a kind of death frequently employed in France. Hence the common expression, _gens de sac et de corde_, which was derived from the sack into which persons were tied who were condemned to die by immersion.... But we will now turn away from these horrible scenes, and consider the several methods of penal sequestration and prison arrangements.

It is unnecessary to state that in barbarous times the cruel and pitiless feeling which induced legislators to increase the horrors of tortures, also contributed to the aggravation of the fate of prisoners. Each administrator of the law had his private gaol, which was entirely under his will and control (Fig. 353). Law or custom did not prescribe any fixed rules for the internal government of prisons. There can be little doubt, however, that these prisons were as small as they were unhealthy, if we may judge from that in the Rue de la Tannerie, which was the property of the provost, the merchants, and the aldermen of Paris in 1383. Although this dungeon was only eleven feet long by seven feet wide, from ten to twenty prisoners were often immured in it at the same time.

[Illustration: Fig. 352.--Empalement.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.]

Paris alone contained twenty-five or thirty special prisons, without counting the _vade in pace_ of the various religious communities. The most important were the Grand Châtelet, the Petit Châtelet, the Bastille, the Conciergerie, and the For-l'Evêque, the ancient seat of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. Nearly all these places of confinement contained subterranean cells, which were almost entirely deprived of air and light. As examples of these may be mentioned the _Chartres basses_ of the Petit Châtelet, where, under the reign of Charles VI., it was proved that no man could pass an entire day without being suffocated; and the fearful cells excavated thirty feet below the surface of the earth, in the gaol of the Abbey of Saint Germain des Prés, the roof of which was so low that a man of middle height could not stand up in them, and where the straw of the prisoners' beds floated upon the stagnant water which had oozed through the walls.

[Illustration: Fig. 353.--The Provost's Prison.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in J. Damhoudère's "Praxis Rerum Civilium."]

The Grand Châtelet was one of the most ancient prisons of Paris, and probably the one which held the greatest number of prisoners. By a curious and arbitrary custom, prisoners were compelled to pay a gaol fee on entering and going out of this prison, which varied according to their rank, and which was established by a law of the year 1425. We learn from this enactment the names by which the various places of confinement composing this spacious municipal prison were known. A prisoner who was confined in the _Beauvoir, La Mate_ or _La Salle_, had the right of "having a bed brought from his own house," and only had to pay the _droit de place_ to the gaoler; any one who was placed in the _Boucherie_, in the _Beaumont_, or in the _Griseche_, "which are closed prisons," had to pay four deniers "_pour place_;" any one who was confined in the _Beauvais_, "lies on mats or on layers of rushes or straw" (_gist sur nates ou sur couche de feurre ou de paille_); if he preferred, he might be placed _au Puis_, in the _Gourdaine_, in the _Bercueil_, or in the _Oubliette_, where he did not pay more than in the _Fosse_. For this, no doubt, the smallest charge was made. Sometimes, however, the prisoner was left between two doors ("_entre deux huis_"), and he then paid much less than he would in the _Barbarie_ or in the _Gloriette_. The exact meaning of these curious names is no longer intelligible to us, notwithstanding the terror which they formerly created, but their very strangeness gives us reason to suppose that the prison system was at that time subjected to the most odious refinement of the basest cruelty.

From various reliable sources we learn that there was a place in the Grand Châtelet, called the _Chausse d'Hypocras_, in which the prisoners had their feet continually in water, and where they could neither stand up nor lie down; and a cell, called _Fin d'aise_, which was a horrible receptacle of filth, vermin, and reptiles; as to the _Fosse_, no staircase being attached to it, the prisoners were lowered down into it by means of a rope and pulley.

By the law of 1425, the gaoler was not permitted to put more than _two or three_ persons in the same bed. He was bound to give "bread and water" to the poor prisoners who had no means of subsistence; and, lastly, he was enjoined "to keep the large stone basin, which was on the pavement, full of water, so that prisoners might get it whenever they wished." In order to defray his expenses, he levied on the prisoners various charges for attendance and for bedding, and he was authorised to detain in prison any person who failed to pay him. The power of compelling payment of these charges continued even after a judge's order for the release of a prisoner had been issued.

[Illustration: Fig. 354.--The Bastille.--From an ancient Engraving of the Topography of Paris, in the Collection of Engravings of the National Library.]

The subterranean cells of the Bastille (Fig. 354) did not differ much from those of the Châtelet. There were several, the bottoms of which were formed like a sugar-loaf upside down, thus neither allowing the prisoner to stand up, nor even to adopt a tolerable position sitting or lying down. It was in these that King Louis XI., who seemed to have a partiality for filthy dungeons, placed the two young sons of the Duke de Nemours (beheaded in 1477), ordering, besides, that they should be taken out twice a week and beaten with birch rods, and, as a supreme measure of atrocity, he had one of their teeth extracted every three months. It was Louis XI., too, who, in 1476, ordered the famous _iron cage_, to be erected in one of the towers of the Bastille, in which Guillaume, Bishop of Verdun, was incarcerated for fourteen years.

The Château de Loches also possessed one of these cages, which received the name of _Cage de Balue_, because the Cardinal Jean de la Balue was imprisoned in it. Philippe de Commines, in his "Mémoires," declares that he himself had a taste of it for eight months. Before the invention of cages, Louis XI. ordered very heavy chains to be made, which were fastened to the feet of the prisoners, and attached to large iron balls, called, according to Commines, the King's little daughters (_les fillettes du roy_).

[Illustration: Fig. 355.--Movable Iron Cage.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster, in folio, Basle, 1552.]

The prison known by the name of The Leads of Venice is of so notorious a character that its mere mention is sufficient, without its being necessary for us to describe it. To the subject of voluntary seclusions, to which certain pious persons submitted themselves as acts of extreme religious devotion, it will only be necessary to allude here, and to remark that there are examples of this confinement having been ordered by legal authority. In 1485, Renée de Vermandois, the widow of a squire, had been condemned to be burnt for adultery and for murdering her husband; but, on letters of remission from the King, Parliament commuted the sentence pronounced by the Provost of Paris, and ordered that Renée de Vermandois should be "shut up within the walls of the cemetery of the Saints-Innocents, in a small house, built at her expense, that she might therein do penance and end her days." In conformity with this sentence, the culprit having been conducted with much pomp to the cell which had been prepared for her, the door was locked by means of two keys, one of which remained in the hands of the churchwarden (_marguillier_) of the Church of the Innocents, and the other was deposited at the office of the Parliament. The prisoner received her food from public charity, and it is said that she became an object of veneration and respect by the whole town.

[Illustration: Fig. 356.--Cat-o'-nine-tails.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster.]

Jews.

Dispersion of the Jews.--Jewish Quarters in the Mediæval Towns.--The _Ghetto_ of Rome.--Ancient Prague.--The _Giudecca_ of Venice.--Condition of the Jews.--Animosity of the People against them--Severity and vexatious Treatment of the Sovereigns.--The Jews of Lincoln.--The Jews of Blois.--Mission of the _Pastoureaux_.--Extermination of the Jews.--The Price at which the Jews purchased Indulgences.--Marks set upon them.--Wealth, Knowledge, Industry, and Financial Aptitude of the Jews.--Regulations respecting Usury as practised by the Jews.--Attachment of the Jews to their Religion.

A painful and gloomy history commences for the Jewish race from the day when the Romans seized upon Jerusalem and expelled its unfortunate inhabitants, a race so essentially homogeneous, strong, patient, and religious, and dating its origin from the remotest period of the patriarchal ages. The Jews, proud of the title of "the People of God," were scattered, proscribed, and received universal reprobation (Fig. 357), notwithstanding that their annals, collected under divine inspiration by Moses and the sacred writers, had furnished a glorious prologue to the annals of all modern nations, and had given to the world the holy and divine history of Christ, who, by establishing the Gospel, was to become the regenerator of the whole human family.

Their Temple is destroyed, and the crowd which had once pressed beneath its portico as the flock of the living God has become a miserable tribe, restless and unquiet in the present, but full of hope as regards the future. The Jewish _nation_ exists nowhere, nevertheless, the Jewish _people_ are to be found everywhere. They are wanderers upon the face of the earth, continually pursued, threatened, and persecuted. It would seem as if the existence of the offspring of Israel is perpetuated simply to present to Christian eyes a clear and awful warning of the Divine vengeance, a special, and at the same time an overwhelming example of the vicissitudes which God alone can determine in the life of a people.

[Illustration: Fig. 357.--Expulsion of the Jews in the Reign of the Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 135): "How Heraclius turned the Jews out of Jerusalem."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Histoire des Empereurs," Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of the Arsenal, Paris.]

M. Depping, an historian of this race so long accursed, after having been for centuries blessed and favoured by God, says, "A Jewish community in an European town during the Middle Ages resembled a colony on an island or on a distant coast. Isolated from the rest of the population, it generally occupied a district or street which was separated from the town or borough. The Jews, like a troop of lepers, were thrust away and huddled together into the most uncomfortable and most unhealthy quarter of the city, as miserable as it vas disgusting. There, in ill-constructed houses, this poor and numerous population was amassed; in some cases high walls enclosed the small and dark narrow streets of the quarter occupied by this branded race, which prevented its extension, though, at the same time, it often protected the inhabitants from the fury of the populace."

In order to form a just appreciation of what the Jewish quarters were like in the mediæval towns, one must visit the _Ghetto_ of Rome or ancient Prague. The latter place especially has, in all respects, preserved its antique appearance. We must picture to ourselves a large enclosure of wretched houses, irregularly built, divided by small streets with no attempt at uniformity. The principal thoroughfare is lined with stalls, in which are sold not only old clothes, furniture, and utensils, but also new and glittering articles. The inhabitants of this enclosure can, without crossing its limits, procure everything necessary to material life. This quarter contains the old synagogue, a square building begrimed with the dirt of ages, and so covered with dirt and moss that the stone of which it is built is scarcely visible. The building, which is as mournful as a prison, has only narrow loopholes by way of windows, and a door so low that one must stoop to enter it. A dark passage leads to the interior, into which air and light can scarcely penetrate. A few lamps contend with the darkness, and lighted fires serve to modify a little the icy temperature of this cellar. Here and there pillars seem to support a roof which is too high and too darkened for the eye of the visitor to distinguish. On the sides are dark and damp recesses, where women assist at the celebration of worship, which is always carried on, according to ancient custom, with much wailing and strange gestures of the body. The book of the law which is in use is no less venerable than the edifice in which it is contained. It appears that this synagogue has never undergone the slightest repairs or changes for many centuries. The successive generations who have prayed in this ancient temple rest under thousands of sepulchral stones, in a cemetery which is of the same date as the synagogue, and is about a league in circumference.