Some museums have cool statues and fascinating artifacts. The Museum of Medieval Torture, however, displays cringe-worthy contraptions that reinforce the importance of human rights and tolerance.
Located between the river and Old Town Square in Prague, the museum features the many wicked contraptions used to extract confessions in the dark Medieval ages. While this sounds more like Marilyn Manson’s vacation spot rather than a place of antiquity, but this is a museum with a real message. It reveals the folly of fighting evil with evil. It shows just how inhuman man can be without human rights. It reminds everyone of just how out of hand a “crusade” can become.
Housed on three levels, these instruments of torture include the ever-famous rack, masks (like the one pictured here) put on a person to denote shame and actual capital punishment devices like the cross and the stake. You would think, at the very least, these instruments were used for society’s worst, but they were more often used to flush out witches and heretics — a heretic, of course, simply being someone with a difference of religious opinion.
The museum also features multi-language descriptions of each device, including reasons for their use. Many were to punish biblical “sins” like homosexuality and an unsubmissive woman. Today that sounds ridiculous, just like how our generation marvels that people fought against women’s suffrage and that future generations won’t believe there were people fighting same-sex marriage. And ultimately that’s the lesson of the Museum of Torture. When you have a difference of opinion, especially on religious matters, it’s better to love your neighbor than to rack him up.
Photos courtesy of Jim Linwood, Anonymous Emily and The Cha via Flickr.