METHODS of TORTURE and PUNISHMENT

Once a witch was suspected, she was arrested and put through hideous torture sessions to get her to confess. Before torture, the torturer would take the victim aside and explain to her the instruments to be used, methods, and what agonies they would cause.
She would then be stripped naked and most likely raped numerous times by her captors and torturer.
Torture started out lightly and gradually increased. The clerk would stand by and watch and record all that was screamed as testimony.
Is was once commonly believed that a witch's power could be abolished by bleeding or burning her blood.
Convicted witches were "scored above the breath" (slashed over the nose and mouth) and allowed to bleed.Sometimes witches died this way.
Another common method used was called the boots or bootikens. This tool consisted of wedges that fitted the legs from the ankles to knees. The torturer used a large hammer to pound the wedges closer together. Wedges lacerated flesh and crushed the bone, sometimes so throughly that marrow gushed out and the legs were rendered useless.
The garotte, at first, was nothing more than an upright post with a hole bored through it. The victim would stand or sit in front of the post, and a rope was looped around her neck. The ends of the cords were threaded through the hole. The executioner would then pull on both ends of the cord, slowly strangling the victim. The new version drove a spike into the back of the victims neck, parting the vertebrae as it strangled. Sometimes a knife was used instead of the spike.
A sharp iron fork called the spider was used to mangle flesh, mainly women's breasts. Heated pinchers tore flesh from victims bodies and were inserted in vaginas and rectums.
One form of torture called knotting was designed for women. It involved tying a stick into a woman's hair and twisting it tighter and tighter. When the inquisitor could no longer continue the chore, he would hold the victims head or fasten it in a holding device until stronger men could take over. Not only would the hair be ripped out but the scalp would often be torn open, exposing the skull cap.
Another torture that was designed with women in mind was mastectomy. Although both men and women could have the skin torn off with red- or white-hot pinchers, mastectomy was distinctly made for the women. One torture manual recommended much attention be paid to the female breasts because they are "extremely sensitive on account of the refinement of the veins".
The most famous case is that of Anna Pappenheiner.
After already being tortured with the strappado, public demonstration was to come next. Pappenheiner was stripped, her flesh torn off with red-hot pinchers, and her breasts cut off. Next, the mangled breasts were forced into her mouth and then into the mouths of her two grown sons.
The oven at Neisse was a forerunner of the ovens used in the Nazi concentration camps. In the concentration camps, the victims were killed before they were "roasted". In this case they were thrown in the oven alive. In mid 17th century Silesia, more than two thousand girls and women were cooked during a nine year period. This tally includes two babies.
In France and Germany the wheel was a popular form of capital punishment. In concept, it was similar to a crucifixion. The victim was brought to the scaffold where his cloak was ripped off to reveal nothing but a pair of brief linen pants. The victim was then tied to the side of the wheel lying on the scaffold, stretched across its spokes and hub. The executioners goal was to shatter the victims limbs, one by one with an iron bar. Each arm and leg was to be broken in several places. A skilled executioner would smash the bones of his victim without piercing the skin.
The wheel was then propped upright so onlookers could appreciate the dying gasps of the victim. At first the injuries were thought to be sufficient enough to bring death. Later the executioner ended the torture by one or two blows to the chest.
The wheel could also be refined to include many other methods of torture. A suspended wheel might be turned over a fire or a bed of nails.
The impalement was possibly one of the most revolting methods ever devised by the human imagination.
This was done by inserting a sharply pointed stake into his or her posterior, which was then forced through the body, emerging through the head and sometimes through the throat. This stake is then inverted and planted in the ground so that the victims live on in agony for some days before dying. Even then it was scarcely used.
The church never treated children of accused parents with compassion, but as witches children. Many times young children were tortured to get edivence against their parents.
Some were burnt at the stake and others were forced to watch their parents being burned. Many times the witch was forced to watch her loved ones being tortured.
When a witch was burned she was usually knocked unconscious or killed before being burned. Another method was to tie a sackette of gun powder around their neck. The pouch would then explode before any excruciating pain set in.
When they were burnt alive, the executioners made sure that they were not able to talk to the crowd. They would put a wooden wedge in her mouth or cut out her tongue. When the victim was burnt alive, they were fully aware of the destruction of their bodies.
In England the burning had stopped at an early date, and it was never used in America. Hanging was preferred. On the other hand, in Scotland, the only good witch was a burnt witch.
The burning logic dates back to St. Augustine's belief that the heretics would burn in hell. The burning at the stake was treated as a foretaste of what a witches after life would be like.

The Prosecutors

Jean Bodin was the man responsible for spreading the panic in France and throughout Europe in the latter half of the 16th century. A former monk, Bodin wrote "De la Demonomanie de Sorsurs", which served as a guide for witch hunting and punishment.
He believed that legal authorties were too soft in their punishment of witches. He was known to preach that God would punish those who let witches go unpunished.
He also believed highly in use of savage torture. He later died of the bubonic plague in 1596.
The case of Marthe Brossier and her demonic possession is one of the greatest frauds known. She all but made a career out of being possessed by a demon.
She would cry out for exorcism against the evil of witchcraft. She went on a tour of priestly exorcisms, drawing large audiences and great wealth.
England's most notorious witch hunter was Matthew Hopkins. He brought on convictions and deaths of at least 200 witches. His total was more than that of all witch hunters—testament to his zeal and fervor.
Hopkins used torture, illegal in England, to uncover accused witches.
Pope Innocent VIII's bill of 1484 granted ecclesiastical authorities full authority to carry out their inquisitions against accused witches.
This bill also gave the churches the right to take money from local officials for the witch trials.
Pierre de Lancre, a French witch trial judge terrified the Basque region in the later and early 16th and 17th centuries.
He alone is said to have condemned over six hundred people to death at the stake.

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