From Heritage Malta: The Cards of Destiny: Gambling, Luck and Magic AND a display of TORTURE INSTRUMENTS From the Middle Ages to the 19th century

Heritage Malta will be exploring tarot cards and their mystical explanations of life and destiny in an exhibition at the Inquisitor's Palace in Vittoriosa. The exhibition will open on June 17th and the agency is expecting its magical and religiously-tabooed theme to attract a large number of visitors.

Titled ‘The Cards of Destiny: Gambling, Luck and Magic', the display will be divided into six sections, namely Playing Cards, Tarots, The Allegories of the Tarots, The Game of Tarots, the Book of Thot, and Cartomacy. Besides exhibiting a wide variety of playing cards, incisions of famous artists, rare books on the subject and other material related to card games, Heritage Malta has also put together illustrations on the history of this mysterious and intriguing ritual, including large scenographies produced by the famous Leonardo Scarpa, who works for renowned Italian film producers such as Pupi Avati. One of the scenographies represents Hell, while there is also a gigantic castle of cards.

The exhibition is being organised in collaboration with the Italian Associazione Culturale ‘Le Tarot' under the patronage of the Ministry for Tourism and Culture of Malta and the Ministry of Culture and the Environment of Italy, with the cooperation of the Biblioteca Classense of Ravenna. All displayed material forms part of an immense collection that the Associazione Culturale ‘Le Tarot' collected throughout the last 25 years.

The oldest references to tarot cards in Europe date back to the 14th century. By the 15th century these came under attack and denounced as the works of the devil. Since the game of tarots was regarded as a gambling game, from the 16th century onwards the Church started to repress it. At the end of the 18th century, after the birth of occultism, a vast production of fortune-telling games started to develop. These developed even further in the 19th century and by the 20th century their success led cards manufacturers to turn to famous painters and illustrators for the images to be printed on new packs.

The display of these rare and history-laden artefacts will be open until the 29th October with tickets costing Lm2 for adults, Lm1 for students and senior citizens and 50c for children aged between 6 and 11 years.

The Art of Pain
TORTURE INSTRUMENTS
From the Middle Ages to the 19th century

Due to its increasing international contacts, Heritage Malta has been chosen to host an internationally renowned exhibition of torture instruments. The exhibition, which is usually displayed at the Historical Torture Museum of San Gimignano in Siena, Italy, will be set up at the Inquisitor's Palace, Vittoriosa and will run for a whole year starting from July 2004. This will be a once in a lifetime opportunity for the general public, both local and foreign, to view and appreciate this unique and fascinating collection. It is also further proof of the endeavour of Heritage Malta to improve its product, service and overall visitor experience in general and of its commitment and vision towards the Cottonera area in particular.

It is important to point out from the start that this is not an exhibition on the methods of torture used by the Roman Inquisition in Malta or elsewhere. It is, on the other hand, a display of over one hundred strange, disquieting and incredibly sophisticated equipment, used by both civil and ecclesiastical institutions and ranging from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, illustrating how human ingenuity in general knows no limits in the search for the most atrocious methods of inflicting pain.

The exhibition has been viewed and appreciated in many countries around the world, under the patronage of the United Nations and Amnesty International, from Spain to Argentina, from Japan to Mexico. It has always been an incredible success with the public, receiving words of praise from critics and the media. It has now gained international fame and has been defined as an incredible testimony against the violation of human rights through the ages.

Instruments have been have been collected from the four corners of Europe over a long number of years. Several pieces dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are extremely rare. Others such as a full-size guillotine are exact replicas of unobtainable originals. All of them have been certified for their authenticity by the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage of Italy. The collection includes devices and instruments used for torture, weapons used for capital punishment and public humiliation as well as contemporary prints. The exhibition complete with illustrations and multi-lingual informative captions.

This collection's uniqueness lies also in the unedited and perfectly sober manner in which it is displayed, depicting the atrocity of human rights violation in a crude but realistic manner. It is also for this reason that the exhibition has always been hosted in important historical buildings which have an adequate atmosphere without inducing negative and artificial sensationalism such as cries of agony, stains of blood or animated mannequins.

There are few phenomena similar to that presented in this exhibition which has changed so little essentially throughout the years, while having undergone such diverse variations. A long series of novelties appear, but they all share the common denominator of ignominy and the exploitation of human suffering. Previously it was used in an ostentatious manner and was approved by the law. Today torture, although illegal, is still practiced discreetly in various parts of the world.

The history of humanity is a long story of tragedies in which torture unfortunately features on a wide scale. Society tried to control the body and soul of those considered as unworthy. All sorts of people who did not conform, in a way or another, to the dictated normal patterns of behaviour, be they heretics, political opponents, common criminals, witches, and even the mentally ill, were subjected to these cruel instruments to purge themselves and pay their debt to the community which they had offended through their non-conformity. These horrors formed an integral part of human existence for many centuries when torture was considered an essential part of the legal procedure throughout Europe, expounded by a matter-of-course attitude by generations of jurists. It was an accepted tool in the judicial process, be it to find the truth or to pay for a crime, an official form of physical injury that reflected a particular attitude towards the body that gave little thought to physical pain or body integrity. In a world and culture where imprisonment was mostly reserved for those awaiting trial, punishment was normally carried out publicly in the form of severe corporal suffering and death in a spectacular manner in order to educate the spectators.

Executions had their particular ceremonial as all other events in social life during the early modern period, when ritual was a form of communication by action which was public, stereotyped and symbolic. Executions were dramatised in order to serve as a sort of morality play, with the edifying aspect lying in a punishment suffered humbly, dutifully, and, above all, penitently, convinced of the righteousness of his punishment. It was a dramatic performance carefully managed by the authorities to show to people that crime did not pay. The publicity given to public executions had a precise aim in mind: to terrorise the people. They were intended to draw spectators; if they did not, they did not answer their purpose. There was an intense process of casting social conduct into a normative framework of specific behaviours. It was common practice for contemporary criminal courts to attach great importance to public rituals for pedagogic reasons, seeking to take maximum advantage of suffering to frighten and dissuade, thus inducing the masses of society to conformity. It warned potential transgressors that justice would be practised. Extreme punishment was meant to act as a deterrent to further crime and to convince the community that it was in their interests to live an ordered life. It was a form of social control deemed capable of creating community consensus and solidly uniting the whole society against the extreme wickedness of the horrible crime that had been committed.

The manner in which sentences were executed was at least as important as the content of the sentences. The legal infliction of pain and death was a show before an audience, staged so as to make the deepest impression on the spectators. The scaffold served as a stage on which the ritual drama of justice was enacted in its most visible and conspicuous form. For the various authorities of early modern Europe, it was the most forceful means of bolstering their power and exerting social control. An execution that took place in secret, therefore, would not have had any meaning.

Through some incredibly sophisticated equipment, including hanging cages, pillories, stretching wheels, iron pincers, chastity belts and starvation masks, this unusual exhibition documents the aberrations of intolerance and fanaticism that man, in his lucid delirium, is capable of when he wants to cause pain and death of fellow humans. Human wickedness, the pleasure of inflicting pain and the desire to impose principles without respecting the freedom and right of a different opinion of others, however, are not the particular characteristic of an era, but an integral part of human history.

Even though the instruments on display belong to the past, others which are more sophisticated are being still used in an occult manner in our day and age. As we have unfortunately seen recently in Iraq, it is wrong to consider torture as a historical fact, a custom of past eras which have been surpassed by social, political or moral evolution. Nowadays torture is hardly ever spoken about. We have grown to be indifferent to this subject, so much so as to consider it alien from our world and culture. This sort of ‘culture change' become evident from the eighteenth century onwards, when a variety of social forces, including the increasing use of imprisonment as a punishment in itself, brought about a new mentality with a marked tendency towards non-physical discipline. This movement reflected changing attitudes towards the human body as a result of a growing sensitivity to violence and an aversion to physical suffering. Torture however still exists in all parts of the world and is continuously being refined by electronics and psychological techniques. Many of the victims are only guilty of being followers of a particular idea.

The main objective of this exhibition is that of launching a message against torture. Besides denouncing torture, the death penalty, and any other kind of inhuman and degrading treatment, it exhorts the attention of all those countries where human rights are still far from being practised. Even if the devices on display fill us with repugnance, they are nevertheless precious historical documents which must be conserved and displayed. It is horrifying to think that familiar household materials like wood and iron can be perversely used for such shocking purposes. In order to acquire a conscience on torture and its effects, it is necessary to see it face to face through these inanimate objects. In fact the exhibition is intended to shock the public and cause an intensive and instinctive feeling of repulsion. The particularly difficult nature of the topic is not enough to keep these horrible instruments under cover. This would serve the cause of perpetrators of torture themselves, who always act in silence under a veil of secrecy. Silence renders us accomplices of these villains, if not victims.

This exhibition recounts a horror story which our conscience has conveniently removed from our collective memory, and alerts us against the possible use of violence, in different forms, as a method for resolving human conflict. It is a moment of reflection, not only on the past, but also on the present and future. To say NO to torture and any kind of human rights violation is a form of individual liberation and is one of the most effective mechanisms for building a more equal and democratic society. The protection of human rights is a universal responsibility which exceeds the limits of nationality, race, political or religious ideology.

A full-colour catalogue of the exhibits, together with a study on the use of torture by the Roman Inquisition in Malta and other publications on the Inquisitor's Palace, are available for sale.

Entrance fees:
Adults: Lm3.00
Students Lm1.50
Senior Citizens: Lm1.50
Children aged 6-12: 50c

June 28, 2006   Posted in: Maldives