Revision 13230417 of "Iron maiden (disambig)" 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.

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

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