Theiron maiden is atorture device the use of which is considered to be a myth, since evidence of their actual use has never been found.[1] It consists of a solid ironcabinet with ahinged front and spike-covered interior, sufficiently tall to enclose a human being. While often popularly thought to have been used in themedieval period, there is no known mention of the iron maiden from before the 19th century. They have become a popular image in media involving the Middle Ages and involvingtorture chambers.
Despite its reputation as a medieval instrument of torture, there is no evidence of the existence of iron maidens before the 19th century.[1] There are, however, ancient reports of theSpartan tyrantNabis usinga similar device around 200 BCE for extortion and murder. TheAbbasidvizierIbn al-Zayyat is said to have created a "wooden oven-like chest that had iron spikes" for torture, which would ironically be used during his own imprisonment and execution in 847.[2]
Wolfgang Schild, a professor of criminal law, criminal law history, and philosophy of law at theBielefeld University, has argued that putative iron maidens were pieced together fromartifacts found in museums to create spectacular objects intended for (commercial) exhibition.[3] Several 19th-century iron maidens are on display in museums around the world, including theMuseum of Us,[4] theMeiji University Museum,[5] and severaltorture museums in Europe.[6][7][8]
The 19th-century iron maidens may have been constructed as a misinterpretation of a medievalSchandmantel, which was made of wood and metal but without spikes.[9] Inspiration for the iron maiden may also have come from the Carthaginian execution ofMarcus Atilius Regulus as recorded inTertullian's "To the Martyrs" (Chapter 4) andAugustine of Hippo'sThe City of God (I.15), in which theCarthaginians "shut him into a tight wooden box, where he was forced to stand, spiked with the sharpest nails on all sides so that he could not lean in any direction without being pierced,"[10] or fromPolybius' account ofNabis ofSparta's deadly statue of his wife, theIron Apega (earliest form of the device).[11][12]
The most famous iron maiden that popularized the design was that ofNuremberg, first displayed possibly as far back as 1802. The original was lost in the Alliedbombing of Nuremberg in 1945. A copy "from the Royal Castle of Nuremberg", crafted for public display, was sold through J. Ichenhauser of London to theEarl of Shrewsbury in 1890 along with other torture devices, and, after being displayed at theWorld's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois, 1893, was taken on an American tour.[13] This copy was auctioned in the early 1960s and is now on display at the Medieval Crime Museum,Rothenburg ob der Tauber.[14]
Some historians have argued thatJohann Philipp Siebenkees (1759–1796) made up a history for the (imaginary) device.[15] According to Siebenkees'colportage, it was first used on August 14, 1515, to execute a coinforger.[16]
Das Hinrichtungswerkzeug "Eiserne Jungfrau" ist eine Fiktion des 19. Jahrhunderts, denn erst in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts hat man frühneuzeitliche Schandmäntel, die als Straf- und Folterwerkzeuge dienten und gelegentlich als "Jungfrau" bezeichnet wurden, innen mit eisernen Spitzen versehen und somit die Objekte den schaurigen Phantasien in Literatur und Sage angepaßt." "The execution tool "Iron Maiden" is a fiction of the 19th century, because only since the first half of the 19th century the early-modern-times' "rishard cloaks", which sometimes were called "maidens", were provided with iron spikes; and thus the objects were adapted to the dreadful fantasies in literature and legend.".
Media related toIron maiden (torture) at Wikimedia Commons