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where he lay.
Charles VIII pardoned the inhabitants who were accused of killing the executioner. As for the coiner of false money, he was taken to the church of the Jacobins, where he hid himself so completely that he never dared to show his face again.’
    Some countries varied the medium used, oil or tallow replacing water or wine. Nor were the victims simply lowered into the boiling liquid. The agony could be considerably prolonged by immersing the criminal, tied hand and foot, up to his or her neck in the contents, and then gradually bringing the liquid to boiling-point by slowly stoking the fires beneath.
    Many of the early Christian saints who suffered for their faith died in this horrific manner. The cauldrons were made of brass, with handles at each side to facilitate ease of conveyance and, once the vessels had been securely fixed in position, the execution would begin.
    Sometimes the victims would be plunged in head first, others doubled up, their knees tied to their chests, before being lowered into the cauldron. The liquid contents also varied, as Saints Saba and Zeno, Veneranda the Virgin, Eulampius and his sister Eulampia discovered, on finding themselves sinking helplessly below the bubbling surface of boiling pitch, molten lead or wax.
     

BRAZEN BULL
    ‘As a further refinement Perillus incorporated small flutes in the “beast’s” nostrils so that the screams of agony issuing from within would be transformed into the lowing of a bull.’
    To ‘bear the brunt’, meaning to cope with whatever is inflicted upon one, is an everyday phrase, derived from the fact that the ‘brunt’ is the name of the armoured breastplate worn by warhorses in the Middle Ages, the chest being the area which took the blows from pikes and similar weapons. And scrutiny of the armour which adorned Henry VIII’s horse, now exhibited in the Royal Armouries, reveals engraved on it the picture of our patron saint, St George. That George did indeed bear the brunt is evidenced by his being portrayed within a brazen bull, a life-size replica of the animal, while beneath it his tormentors stoke roaring fires.
    This fiendish device was invented in Sicily by an Athenian artist, Perillus. Made of brass, a material which would heat up quickly, it was hollow and sufficiently large to accommodate a victim forced inside via a trapdoor in its back. As a further refinement Perillus incorporated small flutes in the “beast’s” nostrils so that the screams of agony issuing from within would be transformed into the lowing of a bull.
    Anticipating rich rewards for his ingenuity, he demonstrated his brainchild to Phalaris, the tyrant of Agrigentum, but even he, infamous as he was for the harsh treatment of his subjects, recoiled at the diabolical machine, saying, according to the historian Lucian:

‘“Well now, Perillus, if you are so sure of your contrivance, give us a proof of it on the spot; mount up and imitate the cries of a man tortured in it, that we may hear whether such charming music will proceed from it, as you would make us believe.” Perillus obeyed, and no sooner was he inside the Bull, than I shut the aperture, and put fire beneath it. “Take that,” said I, “as the only recompense such a piece of art is worth, and chant us the first specimen of the charming notes of which you are the inventor!” And so the barbarous wretch suffered what he had well merited by such a fiendish application of his mechanical talent. However, that the noble work should not be contaminated by his dying there, I ordered him to be drawn out while still alive, and thrown down from the summit of the rock, where his body was left unburied.’
    The bull was later used to torture and execute Christian martyrs, among them St Antipas, St Pelagia the Virgin, St Eustachius, his wife Theopistes and his sons Agapius and Theopistus.
    To conclude with another everyday phrase, those who feel that ‘what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’ will