Leiden University Student Repository

Martinelli, Laura (2025)

Broken bones, bent words and bloody images: an archaeological perspective on torture in the Middle Ages in Europe.

Master thesis | Archaeology (MA/MSc)

This thesis discusses whether the Middle Ages were as violent as perceived by popular belief, or if the increase of later written literature gave them their ‘dark’ name, all from the perspective of torture. This is achieved through an interdisciplinary approach that observes iconographical, literary, osteological and material data and compares the prevalence and reliability of each of these data types. It also compared the prevalence of this data between the Middle Ages and the early Enlightenment /Renaissance period. My main focus period is 800 CE-1650 CE (which encompasses Middle Ages and early Renaissance), and my focus area is Europe. My work concludes that the Middle Ages did not have a strong presence of torture and were, therefore, not as ‘dark’ as previously believed: most of evidence of torture actually comes forth during the Later Middle Ages/Enlightenment period.

torture

middle ages

medieval

martyrdom

torture methods

Author

Martinelli, Laura

Faculty

Faculty of Archaeology

Specialisation

Global Archaeology

Supervisors

Dr. A.T. ten Harkel

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en