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Originally Posted by shayde78
The martyrdom of Saints is a frequent Medieval theme. I know we don't typically discuss some of the more ghastly applications of the arms we collect, but this still has value as source material.
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In the long centuries when books were scarce and literacy rates were low, pictures were an important teaching tool. The clergy could read about saints in hagiographies, their congregations absorbed a lot of the information via sermons and graphics. And we are aware that sensationalism always grabs peoples' attention!
Looking at church art in various Italian cities, I was always impressed by the fact that some martyrdoms were more frequently depicted than others, it perhaps requires inquiry as to whether the lives or achievements of those saints had particular relevance to the problems that people of the era were most concerned with. For instance, one can hardly miss paintings or sculptures of St. Sebastian shot with arrows (someone researching crossbows and their spanners can learn a bit about their development from dated artworks showing them), St. Catherine and the spiked wheel (usually shown broken to illustrate the triumph of right over wrong), St. Barbara (patroness of ordnance workers and cannoneers) holding a model of the tower in which her pagan father imprisoned her before her death).
The association between saints and their particular demises, being a theme in religious art, has affected other aspects of culture. Hence the term "Catherine wheel" as a name for a particular type of pyrotechnic device (and a number of pubs in Britain, including one in Kensington, London). And the gridiron on which St. Lawrence was roasted alive providing the groundplan for the enormous palace/mausoleum complex "El Escorial" built by the Spanish Habsburgs near Madrid.