The breaking wheel, also known as the Catherine wheel or simply the wheel, was a torture device used for capital punishment from antiquity into early modern times for public execution by breaking the criminal's bones/bludgeoning him to death. As a form of execution, it was used from classical times into the 18th century; as a form of post mortem punishment of the criminal, the wheel was still in use in 19th-century Germany.
The wheel was typically a large wooden wagon wheel with many radial spokes. The condemned were lashed to the wheel and their limbs were beaten with a club or iron cudgel, with the gaps in the wheel allowing the limbs to give way and break.
Alternatively, the condemned were spreadeagled and broken on a saltire, a cross consisting of two wooden beams nailed in an "X" shape,[1][2] after which the victim's mangled body might be displayed on the wheel.[3]
A wheel was sometimes used for the actual bludgeoning. During the execution for parricide of Franz Seuboldt in Nuremberg on 22 September 1589, a wheel was used as a cudgel. The executioner used wooden blocks to raise Seuboldt's limbs, then broke them by slamming a wagon wheel down onto the limb.[4]
The survival time after being "broken" could be extensive. Accounts exist of a 14th-century murderer who lived for three days after undergoing the punishment.[5] In 1348, during the time of the Black Death, a Jew named Bona Dies underwent the punishment. The authorities stated he lived for four days and nights afterwards.[6]