CUTTING OFF THE TONGUE Medieval inquisitors treated heretics and blasphemers with unrivaled cruelty. Using cutting-piercing implements and red-hot pincers, they carried out their torments by focusing on the victim’s tongues. Those sentenced were tightly bound and had their mouths forcibly opened, the lower jaw often being fixed by a special hook. The tongs used are burning hot, and one touch from the metal will instantly burn the flesh to the bone. They would torture the tongue and cut it with jagged edges. An interesting fact: In prisons there was a torture practice called “feeding”. For days the prisoner is not given food nor water. Then, exhausted from hunger and thirst, the victim’s tongue is mutilated, then, the victim is made to eat hot, salty prison food which he could not refuse despite suffering from terrible pain in his mouth.