Lessons from the Dungeon of Doom: How the Enlightenment Freed Us from the Rack

During a Highlander-themed weekend, I recently took in the sites, sounds, and smells of the Ohio Renaissance Festival. The air buzzed with bagpipe music and the smell of chimney cakes baking over hot coals. Jugglers, jesters, and jousters kept audiences cheering, while mead flowed freely from wooden mugs. It’s a lively, colorful blend of fantasy and nostalgia. These events thrive on spectacle and escapism. And let’s face it: no one goes to a Renaissance festival expecting an accurate history lesson.

But tucked amid the merriment and make-believe is one exhibit that breaks from the pageantry and shines the light of history: the Dungeon of Doom. This exhibit dives straight into the darker side of Medieval history. The torture devices on display—the rack, the thumb screws, and the breaking wheel—aren’t playful props. They’re reminders of how real people once suffered under a justice system that believed pain could reveal truth and cleanse sin. In the Middle Ages, torture wasn’t viewed as cruelty—it was seen as necessary to purify the soul or squeeze out the truth. Justice was public, bloody, and often theatrical—a warning to everyone else to obey the law and the Church.

To be sure, the chimney cake—a “tradition since the 15th century”—was not a Medieval torture device.

Upon leaving the exhibit of twisted iron shapes as grim tools of “justice,” I noted that perhaps we underestimate the impact of the Enlightenment on human rights. The same Europe that once built dungeons and breaking wheels eventually produced the Enlightenment, an age when thinkers began to challenge everything—including criminal justice and human rights.

Philosophers like Cesare Beccaria, Voltaire, and Montesquieu argued that justice should be based on reason, not revenge. Beccaria condemned torture as both immoral and irrational in his 1764 book On Crimes and Punishments. He argued that punishment should never be about inflicting pain for pain’s sake but about preventing future harm:

“. . . [I]t is evident that the intent of punishments is not to torment a sensible being, nor to undo a crime already committed. Is it possible that torments, and useless cruelty, the instruments of furious fanaticism, or of impotency of tyrants, can be authorized by a political body? which, so far from being influenced by passion, should be the cool moderator of the passions of individuals. Can the groans of a tortured wretch recal the time past, or reverse the crime he has committed? The end of punishment, therefore, is no other, than to prevent others from committing the like offence. Such punishments, therefore, and such a mode of inflicting them, ought to be chosen, as will make strongest and most lasting impressions on the minds of others, with the least torment to the body of the criminal.”

The Enlightenment’s critique of torture and cruelty resonates strongly in modern law. Echoing earlier prohibitions in the English Bill of Rights (1689) and Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids “cruel and unusual punishments.” This principle directly reflects Enlightenment thinking: punishment should be just, measured, and aimed at preventing harm rather than satisfying vengeance or spectacle.

Despite this Enlightenment legacy, ongoing questions about the Eighth Amendment remain. While it is clear that Medieval torture practices violate the amendment, debate continues over what standards courts should use to judge cruelty. Disagreement also persists over whether the clause addresses only methods of punishment or also excessive or disproportionate sentences. Is the death penalty itself unconstitutional, or only when executed in particularly cruel ways? Should prisons be allowed to use extended solitary confinement? These questions ensure the Eighth Amendment remains a contested provision in constitutional law.

In our modern world, the rack and iron maiden are now unthinkable—not just morally but legally—a centuries-long shift from fear-based enforcement to the protection of individual dignity. The Enlightenment didn’t just change how people were punished—it reshaped how we think about human dignity. It’s easy to take that for granted until you see what came before it, encased in rusted iron and shadowed light.