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The breaking wheel (also known as Catherine wheel; originally, the whele) was a torturous capital punishment device used in the Middle Ages and early modern times for public execution by cudgeling to death. It was not used for coercion through torture.
Description
Breaking on the wheel was a form of torturous execution formerly in use, especially in France —where it is said to have been first used— and Germany.
The wheel itself was similar to a large wooden wagon wheel, with many radial spokes, but a wheel was not always used. In France the victim was placed on a cart-wheel and his limbs stretched out along the spokes, one by one over two sturdy wooden beams. The wheel was made to slowly revolve, and a large hammer or an iron bar was then applied to the limb over the gap between the beams, breaking the bones. This process was repeated several times per limb. Sometimes it was 'mercifully' ordered that the executioner should strike the criminal on chest and stomach, blows known as coups de grâce, which caused lethal injuries, leading to the end of the torture by death : without those, the broken man could take hours, or even days before shock and dehydration caused the fatal issue; in France, a special grace, called the retentum could be granted, by which the condemned was strangled after the second or third blow, or in special cases even before the breaking began.
Afterwards, the victim's shattered limbs were woven ('braiden') through the spokes of the wheel which was then hoisted onto a tall pole, so that birds could eat the sometimes still-living victim (see illustration).
The methods of execution by crucifixion (as under the Roman law), or breaking on the wheel (as under the Roman Dutch law and the Holy Roman Empire), were never recognized by the common law, and would fall within the term cruel and unusual punishments in the English Bill of Rights, and in the United States would seem to be unconstitutional (In re. Kemmler, 1889, 136 U.S. 436, 446). Even in the early 20th century, the Roman-Dutch modes of executing the sentence by decapitation or breaking on the wheel had not been formally abolished, but in practice the sentence in the Cape Colony was executed by hanging, and in Transvaal hanging was the sole mode of executing capital punishment (Criminal Procedure Code, 1903, S. 244). The Roman-Dutch law as to crime and punishments has been superseded in Ceylon and British Guiana by ordinance.
Legend has it that Saint Catherine of Alexandria was to be executed on one of these devices, which thereafter became known as the Catherine wheel, also used as an iconographic attribute.
Another notable victim of the breaking wheel, Jean Calas, was executed for allegedly killing his son. This inspired some of Voltaire's work, which led to Calas' rehabilitation, and to a movement for the abolition of such tortures in judicial practice.
Metaphorical uses of the term
The breaking wheel was a cruel torment as well as a great dishonor, rather like crucifixion in Antiquity.
It is referred to in the Dutch expression opgroeien voor galg en rad ('to grow up into gallows and wheel', i.e. to come to no good at all, especially: ripe for a life of crime).
The word roué 'dissipated debauchee' is French, and its original meaning was broken on the wheel. As execution by breaking on the wheel was reserved in France, and some other countries, for crimes of peculiar atrocity, roué came by a natural process to be understood to mean a man morally worse than a pendard or gallows-bird, who only deserved hanging for common crimes. He was also a leader in wickedness, since the chief of a gang of brigands (for instance) would be broken on the wheel, while his obscure followers were merely hanged. Philip, duke of Orleans, who was regent of France from 1715 to 1723, gave the term the sense of impious and callous debauchee, which it has borne since his time, by habitually applying it to the very bad male company who amused his privacy and his leisure. The locus classicus for the origin of this use of the epithet is in the Memoirs of Saint-Simon.
The Finnish word for the breaking wheel is teiliratas and the verb for execution on the wheel is teilata; in Modern Finnish the word teilata refers to forceful and violent critique or rejection of performance, ideas or innovations.
See also
Sources and references
Corporal punishments | Execution methods
Rädern | Teilaus | Roue (supplice) | גלגל שבירה | Radbraken | Łamanie kołem | Колесование | Rådbråkning
"Breaking wheel"