Breaking on the wheel

The breaking wheel, also known as the Catherine wheel or simply the wheel, was a torture device used for capital punishment from antiquity into early modern times for public execution by breaking the criminal's bones/bludgeoning him to death. As a form of execution, it was used from classical times into the 18th century; as a form of post mortem punishment of the criminal, the wheel was still in use in 19th-century Germany.

The wheel was typically a large wooden wagon wheel with many radial spokes. The condemned were lashed to the wheel and their limbs were beaten with a club or iron cudgel, with the gaps in the wheel allowing the limbs to give way and break.

Alternatively, the condemned were spreadeagled and broken on a saltire, a cross consisting of two wooden beams nailed in an "X" shape, after which the victim's mangled body might be displayed on the wheel.

A wheel was sometimes used for the actual bludgeoning. During the execution for parricide of Franz Seuboldt in Nuremberg on 22 September 1589, a wheel was used as a cudgel. The executioner used wooden blocks to raise Seuboldt's limbs, then broke them by slamming a wagon wheel down onto the limb.

The survival time after being "broken" could be extensive. Accounts exist of a 14th-century murderer who lived for three days after undergoing the punishment. In 1348, during the time of the Black Death, a Jew named Bona Dies underwent the punishment. The authorities stated he lived for four days and nights afterwards. In 1581, German serial killer Christman Genipperteinga lived for nine days on the breaking wheel before expiring, having been deliberately kept alive with "strong drink".

Pieter Spierenburg mentions a reference in sixth-century author Gregory of Tours as a possible origin for the punishment of breaking someone on the wheel. In Gregory's time, a criminal could be placed in a deep track, and then a heavily laden wagon was driven over him. Thus, the latter practice could be seen as a symbolic re-enactment of the previous penalty in which people were literally driven over by a wagon.

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