Let me start a new matter, as an addition to the crucifixion. Some authors wonder if the "crucifixion" wasn't to the some degree identical with the "impaling" and we all know that they were sometimes mixed with one another (I mean cornu). So, let's focus for the moment on the latter (i.e. impaling). I was once anxious about the details of such form of execution, which is one of the most painful, prolonged and humiliating, same as the crucifixion. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the impaling was the routine and popular form of executing rebels and traitors, and it was used at least since 16th to 17th century, especially during the Cossacks Revolt in the first decades of 17th c. In the same time, the Polish POWs where frequently impaled by the Turks while victorious. As a result, one can find some surviving Middle Polish documents as well as private letters of the witnesses containing the detailed account of How this kind of execution was conducted. Let me submit some simplified sketches illustrating the process. I used a female prisoner, although there is no existing account that the Cossack or any other women were ever impaled in Poland since Polish king Przemysl prohibited the impaling of females in the end of 13th c., so this part of a story is a pure fantasy.
The impaling was very simple, a shovel, a log sharpened with an axe, a big hammer and a few meters of rope would do. The sharp pole had been driven into the body of a victim through the anus or through the special incision made with an axe in the crotch with few strokes of a big hammer by one of the men while the other controlled the direction of movement. But the sketches show the execution phases better than I could tell the story. The only comment is needed to the last image, which shows two variants of the final phase. The agony could last up to few days.
(Note: We have no sources regarding how these impalings looked like in 13 th century, but if I want to sketch the impaling of a woman before king's decree, I must draw the woman laying face up, because the pole was inserted through vagina, although this is the only detail we know for sure. But from the Renaissance we have few stories of impaling involving women ordered by the famous Vlad Tepes, the ruler of the neighboring state of Walachia, who represented the same old good East-European school of impaling people, although he had been impaling mostly the Turks).
