His Place in History

Now that the Aristotle of Crawford, Texas, is once again in the spotlight, arguing with his usual moral clarity on decisions made during his tenure as Philosopher-King, let us remind ourselves just how he escorted us back to the fourteenth century. From the opus minor currently crimping my blogging style:

"This torture section, given Bernard’s persuasive proclivities, must have been riveting. Doubtless, his enumeration of medieval inquisitorial techniques was colorful and exhaustive. The “queen of torments” was the strappado, in which the victims’ hands would be tied behind his back, and then, the loose end of the rope coil having been played across a ceiling beam, he would be raised into the air, his outstretched, distended arms bearing his full weight. Heavy objects might be tied to his feet, to make the contortion even more unbearable. This torment might initially last only a few minutes – the time, it was suggested canonically, for the holy inquisitor to intone a prayer – before being renewed if the results proved unsatisfactory. Further inducements to contrition included the leg-screw, whereby the calves of the person being questioned would be placed in a vise-like contraption, the two concave metal plates on either side of the leg slowly tightened to induce excruciating pain.

"The inquisitor had other refinements, which Bernard would have taken care to relate in detail. For women and children, binding of the wrists tightly by coarse wet cord, then unbinding them and starting up the process once again, with even more force, was considered humane. Other extremities could be useful as well. Savagely beating the soles of the feet was fairly common. This sent pain rioting up through the body. For obdurate people, an inflammable liquid could be splashed on the feet and then set alight. This attention to the body’s extremities arose from the duty of the pious Christian, then as now, to avoid causing major organ failure. Another common technique entailed sleep deprivation. Forty hours of enforced sleeplessness came to be considered the happy mean. Further treatments common in Carcassonne included the rack, and other means of stretching and dislocating (which sometimes came accompanied by the judicious application of hot brands), and the shock of freezing cold water. Simulated drowning, known today as waterboarding, would not have been beyond the ken of the Dominican technicians seeking the truth."