Read The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment through History for Free Online

greater the need for demonstrative emotional release. Amid the terror of war and plagues, the flagellants, who purportedly sought to mitigate mankind’s sin, had embraced a new sin – sado-masochism (though that was a term which would not come in to existence for centuries). The same condition existed where corporal floggings were administered in the sexually repressed atmosphere of monasteries and convents; the whippings – either administering them or accepting them – became a substitute for sexual gratification.
    This particular aspect of punishment and torture – the concept of inflicting, or accepting, pain because it provided emotional or sexual gratification is too intimately involved with the overall concept of this book not to bear at least a brief investigation. In the instances described above – that of corporal punishment in the form of religious scourging – it is self-evident that the pleasure/pain syndrome could, and undoubtedly often did, become confused. In a more general context, the infliction of pain on a helpless victim may not have been intended to be a sexually or emotionally exciting experience, but torture master is precisely the type of job that would appeal to someone of a depraved disposition. Likewise, those who oversaw the administration of such torture, be they judges, clerics or other authority figures, were in a perfect position to experience vicarious thrills by watching someone have the flesh flayed from their back or their arms and legs ripped from their sockets. Examples of men who quite obviously enjoyed their work will not be difficult to find in the next section of this book. As is true with most addictions, those who become addicted to inflicting – or in the case of the flagellants, receiving – pain, eventually develop a tolerance to their accustomed jolt and require ever stronger doses of the medicine. This may well account for the increasing levels of terror imposed by particular kings, dictators, jurists, or clerics, particularly those like Thomas de Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition.
    Evidence that the Spanish Inquisition attracted far more sadists than religious fanatics is evident when we look at the latitude which the Inquisition allowed the guards in administering whippings to prisoners, even when they were not immediately being subjected to torture. If a prisoner was heard to speak (unless they were at prayer) they were whipped; if they sang they were whipped; if they spoke to their guards they were whipped, and so on and so on. Considering such draconian rules, and the associated opportunities for sadists to indulge their whims, it would stretch credulity to breaking point not to suggest that many of the daily practices of the Spanish Inquisition were more about the emotional high seemingly brought on by crushing the spirit and body of powerless human beings than about routing out heretics and suspected enemies of the state. There has never been anything in the history of mankind more terrifying than self-righteous fanatics, convinced of their own infallibility, and with the power and authority to exercise their will.
    This same principal of sadism in ever-increasing doses applies equally to the mob as it does to torture masters and Inquisitors General. From civilization’s earliest hangings through the mass executions of the Spanish Inquisition to the chop, chop, chop of the guillotine during the French Revolution and the cheering, jeering, heaving crowds who brought picnic lunches to see the hangings at London’s Tyburn Tree, crowds love a good display of power and ‘justice’. Satisfying the desire of the masses to see social misfits strung-up or dismembered was the motivating factor in making executions public in the first place – if ‘the people’ didn’t want to witness these things they would have been carried out in private. But the fact is, the multitudes are at least as barbaric as the torture masters, the judges,