The use of torture in the middle ages?

[Genesis315]

Torture and corporal punishment is a pretty complicated subject. Here is a pretty in-depth article on this from Fr. Brian Harrison:

Part I (looking at this issue in Scripture)
rtforum.org/lt/lt118.html

Part 2 (looking at Tradition and the Magisterium)
rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html

 

[Rob_Arnzen]

Torture and corporal punishment is a pretty complicated subject. Here is a pretty in-depth article on this from Fr. Brian Harrison:

…

Part 2 (looking at Tradition and the Magisterium)
rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html

If you read the articles and the citations, the first thing you note is that “torture” is not clearly defined.

We wind up in a situation analogous to the issue of “slavery”, where some forms of “slavery” are more akin to indenture or class than the chattel slavery we all know from Anglo-American history and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. Thus some forms of “slavery” could be morally permissible.

I daresay that amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations are torture and clearly prohibited. On the other hand there are commonly used types of questioning that subject suspects to nearly “intolerable” pressures.

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