Difference between revisions 13536675 and 13536901 on enwiki

:''For information about the [[heavy metal music|heavy metal]] band, see [[Iron Maiden (band)]]''

[[Image:Iron Maiden of Nuremberg.jpg|right|thumb|200px|The infamous Iron Maiden of [[Nuremberg]]]]
An '''iron maiden''' is a [[torture]] device, often mistakenly thought to date from [[medieval]] times. The following short quote from [http://www.bartleby.com/81/8956.html Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable] describes the 'Iron Maiden of [[Nuremberg]]', which was an example of such a device used in [[Germany]] in the 16th Century:

:An instrument of torture for [[heresy|heretics]], [[traitor]]s, [[parricide]]s, etc. It was a box big enough to admit a man, with folding doors and its interior studded with sharp iron spikes. When the doors were (slowly to increase pain) closed these spikes were forced into the body of the victim, who was left there to die in agony. (German, ''Eiserne Jungfrau'').

[[Legend]] has it that a [[Germany|German]] [[coin]] counterfeiter was sentenced to the iron maiden. For the last two days of his life, the forger cried in vain while the spikes went through his body.

In truth, the iron maiden was never used during medieval times and was a later invention of German propaganda.  The iron maiden has never been widely used as a torture device and was not invented until long after the Middle Ages    The year is 1515 in Nuremberg, Germany.  A forger of coins has been condemned to an unimaginable, torturous death.  On August 14, he was embraced for the last time by the deadly arms of the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg.  He only lived for two days, as he was trapped inside and pierced repeatedly with sharp spikes.  The poor man’s remains were then thrown into an underground channel leading to a nearby river.  Sadly, this man was only the first of many to experience this horrible death.

    The Iron Maiden of Nuremberg was anthropomorphic, meaning it resembled a human.  It was most likely styled after the Madonna, with a carved likeness of her on the face.  The Maiden was about 7 feet tall and 3 feet wide, had double doors, and was big enough to contain a full grown man.  The condemned prisoner had to pass through seven rooms with seven doors before his scheduled execution.  At the end of a long corridor he found himself looking into the face of an instrument of death.  Into the face of an iron wardrobe that vaguely resembled a female form.  On the outside, the Maiden appeared harmless and unthreatening.  Little did it’s victims know that inside were hidden spikes of iron that were not designed to kill quickly, only to torture slowly.  The point of this deadly object was to impale the victim and inflict major pain and punishment.

    Defined as both a torture and a death device, this Maiden of Iron had precisely four main features.  The first was the fact that inside the tomb-sized container, the Iron Maiden was fitted with dozens of sharp, rusty spikes. They were designed so that when the doors were shut, the spikes skewered the victim, missing vital organs and permitting the victim to remain alive and upright.  Secondly, the condemned man was kept in an extremely confined space to maximize his level of suffering.  The third aspect of the torture device was that the iron doors of the Maiden could be opened and closed one at a time, without letting the victim get away.  This was always helpful when checking on the injured party to be sure that he was sufficiently suffering.  The fourth characteristic concerned the thickness of the doors of the Maiden.  They were specially designed to insure that the screams of the victim could not be heard unless one or both of the doors were open.  This was also convenient as no one wants to be bothered by relentless screams of pain and agony.

    The doors of the Maiden were shut “slowly, so that the very sharp points penetrated a man’s arms, and his legs in several places, and his belly and chest, and his bladder, and his eyes, and his shoulders, and his buttocks, but not enough to kill him; and so he remained making great cry and lament for two days, after which he died”.  Although this has not been proven, historical experts have theorized that the spikes on the inside of the doors were probably moveable.  They were thought to have been able to be repositioned and/or relocated depending on the individual requirements of the person’s crime.  Also, the overall result would be more or less lethal and mutilating depending on where the spikes were currently located.  

    In the past there have been many misconceptions about the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg.  The most common one being the impression that there was more than one Maiden constructed.  This is false; there was only one Iron Maiden.  It was found in Nuremberg Castle and was a popular execution method during the 1600’s, becoming less used in the 18th century as torture methods slowly became less fashionable.  The exact history of this torture device is not 100% clear because, unfortunately, the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg was destroyed in the air raids of 1944 near Nuremberg, Germany.

{{hist-stub}}
[[Category:Torture]]

[[de:Eiserne Jungfrau]]
[[fr:Vierge de fer]]
[[ja:鉄の処女]]
[[pl:Żelazna dziewica]]
[[ru:Железная дева]]