Naughty Monks With Birches
I don’t read French quite well enough to make out the caption of this piece for typing into Google translate. My Twitter source captions it “L’enfer du Couvent, French, c. 1830. Artist unknown.” Machine tranlation turns “L’enfer du Couvent” into “The Hell Of The Convent” for whatever that may be worth.
See Also:
The caption reads “Les supplices de l’Inquisition et les orgies des moines inquisiteurs”, which translates to “The tortures of the Inquisition and the monks’ orgies”.
There’s actually another Twitter source with that information: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/993654436512837632
If inquiring minds need to know:
“The tortures of the Inquisition and the orgies of the inquisitioner monks.”
And what’s with those head-boards? (Reminds me of that plastic radar dish type collar we had to put on our dog to keep her from chewing out the stitches when she had an operation!)
Sorry the French got cut out of my previous comment: Les supplices de l’Inquisition et les orgies des moines inquisiteurs.
I was wondering the same thing, Gretchen. These boards do provide some restraint on their own but they would be more effective with hand holes!
Thanks for the translation.
Thanks everybody! Just guessing about the head boards, but they might slot into items of penitential furniture (like stocks or pillories) not shown in the instant artwork?