Being Broken on the Wheel would break your bones and rupture your vital organs

Being Broken on the Wheel would break your bones and rupture your vital organs

The wheel was one of the key inventions in human history, but it proved equally effective for torturing people as for locomotion. Its use in torture is credited to the Roman Emperor, Commodus (161-192AD), who would bind a wheel (horizontally or vertically) to a victim’s body, then have someone hammer it with a heavy mallet, breaking their bones. The other chief method of tying someone to the rim of a heavy wheel and rolling it along to break the bones and rupture the internal organs was most famously used to torture Saint Catherine, after whom the spinning firework was named.

Though the Europeans eventually stopped killing Christians, they were unwilling to give up such a fun pastime, and started to execute or torture others on the wheel. The chief modification of the torture in the medieval period was to increase the public spectacle of the event. Then, criminals were tied to the spokes of a wheel, which was raised on a scaffold to allow spectators the best possible view as an executioner methodically broke every limb with an iron bar, the coup de grâce coming with a blow to the head or heart, leaving a vile, pulpy mess.