For context, this is likely the old testament prophet Isaiah, who in certain apocryphal sources died by being sawed in half on the orders of King Manasseh of Judah. The orientation of the saw, and whether Isaiah was magically hiding inside a tree trunk at the time, seem to have been left to the artist’s discretion. I can’t find this particular illumination after a bit of googling, but here are some more examples in this blog post (I have not vetted it and do not vouch for it, but the writer seems to be a professional researcher who identifies as having broken with fundamental Christianity in his youth).
As always, medieval illuminators are not particularly interested in historical accuracy, but rather familiarity with the cultural roles, hence a very European two-person saw and woodcutters in European garb, but Isaiah himself is in “Biblical” robes as they would have understood them. If there was any thought given to lighting, it’s perfectly sensible for it to be emanating from the prophet.
The worst is they didn’t understand lighting. Are their pants glowing from the massive erections they have torturing this man, or is the man a light bulb because where the fuck is his lighting coming from?
To be fair, that fella likely committed a heinous crime such as believing that the earth was not the center of the solar system, or speaking to a wealthy person
Before tv, phones and such, watching someone get sawed in half was probably the best form of entertainment you could have. Other than watching a play or something.
I feel like you might bleed out a bit faster that way. It takes a minute to get through the skull, the pelvis has all sorts of joints for the saw to get through and if they’re taking the spine out with the cuts you might not feel a ton after a few strokes.
Nah, head would be the way to go. You would bleed out so fast and there are not a lot of pain sensors there. You would feel a bad headache and then the saw would tear up your brain, and that’s it.
Pelvis you will go into a long state of shock, but only after your genitals are all cut up.
From the little bit of older literature I’ve read, violence is normal. Hitting the wife if she speaks up is just everyday occurrence. Don Quixote hits Sancha a few times. Even the stories of my grandparents were full of getting slapped or hit with a ruler by nuns and pastors in Catholic school.
This image is upsetting me. I mean, that just doesn't seem like a practical axis to get that job done. That guy is gonna start flopping around any minute now and then you're going to go find a vice or whatever to hold him. At that point just tilt him on the side and go lengthwise like a hot dog bun.
Well, it’s probably a necessity. First, that saw blade doesn’t look long enough to get a enough action to cut a man in half like that. Even if his legs were apart and you only measured from head to hole, there’s still probably not a while lot of room to maneuver the saw which is gonna make this grim work even worse: it’s also gonna be hard.
Second, it’s gonna be harder because you have so much blade in constant contact with your material. I mean, you’re not gonna cause any saw burns or nothing, but you’re definitely gonna piss off your saw bois. This was a time before power tools and friction makes you sore.
Now I’ll admit it’s gonna be harder to keep a straight line all the way down, but we had already talked about the need for a clamp, so why not set up a fence alongside it? I mean, if we’re optimizing we might as well go for quality, too.
Hell, might as well go all the way. Drag the whole setup out to the mill and (assuming this isn’t already a saw mill) build a contraption that reciprocates the saw using the mill to power it. Now, not only do you have the means to easily cut a man in half, you then also have a saw mill.
I suppose, too, it could act as a deterrent for future… Um… What was the condemned is guilty of? Sex out of wedlock? Stealing bread?
Oh! We should put a conveyor at the start of it! I bet we could strap a whole sinners’ family to it at once!
Well, you go at an angle, obviously. Just lay him down on a board and do it at a 30 degree angle through the whole thing. I get that it's medieval times and we don't have bandsaws yet, but the principle is the same and we did know how to cut long things in half.
Either way you can't cut a board standing straight on its short end, let alone a floppy pleb. That's just physics.
I mean, arguably you could just cut in the other direction altogether and you're gonna get the job done just as well. I'm not sure why these guys need a guy split in half specifically in that direction, unlesss they are trying to get some very particular decorations going. Which I guess at that point in time is entirely possible.
That’ll work, but adding a board as a platen is just the first step towards the saw mill proposal. It’ll be easier and far better than just sitting him down and going at the poor bastard’s skull, and for simplicity and speed that’s the way. But if we have the time and resources, I say we do the saw mill thing because at the end of that we have both two halves of a guy and a functioning saw mill.
For pedantry’s sake, my shitty jigsaw says I can cut a board just about any way it’s sitting. Granted it’s dumb, but it’s possible. Sorry, the Wellakshuly devil got to me there.
And yeah, I gave up on trying to glean some meaning from client requests. They want a guy bisected and they’ve got the florins, they’re gonna get two halves of a guy. The mistake I see there is that they’ve obviously tried to save money by hiring a cowboy outfit to do a professional job
You young people try to do everything the easy way. Sometimes it’s harder to stay true to tradition but you are forgetting that our ancestors have their reasons for the way they did things and staying true to these processes builds character and that flopping around and asking a boy servant to fetch a vice is part of what makes the experience special.
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