Corporal Punishment

a special kind of criminal punishment, which had arisen even in antiquity and which has persisted in several countries into the mid-20th century. Corporal punishment consisted in the public infliction of physical torment on the offender—for example, by beating with sticks (rods, switches) or with a knout or whip, by the amputation of extremities, the excision of the tongue, the tearing of the nostrils, and branding. It was widely used to compel the payment of tax arrears (in ancient Egypt) and debts (Russian pravezh, or the exaction by force of a debt or damages); it was universally used as a means to deal with slaves and to punish offending serfs.

In Western Europe, various forms of corporal punishment were established in law from the 13th century. Corporal punishment figured prominently in, among others, the “bloody legislation against the dispossessed,” the Carolina, and measures taken against heretics.