History abounds in martyrs -religious, lay and antireligious- who suffered this fate, one that may be worse even than being burnt at the stake with a slow, small fire, or being dipped into boiling oil. Owing to his inverted position, which assures ample oxygenation of the brain and impedes the general loss of blood, the victim does not lose consciousness until the saw reaches the navel -and even the breast, if one is to believe accounts of the early eighteen-hundreds.

The Bible tells us (II Samuel 12:31} that David, Hebrew king and Christian saint, exterminated the inhabitants of Rabbah and all the other Ammonite cities by putting man, woman and child "under saws, and under hatrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln". This species of just slightly less than divine approbation has greatly contributed to the favour that the saw, axe and stake have always enjoyed among the Righteous, so much so that the saw was often meted out to homosexuals of both sexes, though predominantly to men. In Spain la sierra was a means of execution in the armed forces until the end of the eighteenth century, according to contemporary references which however do not cite any factual data. In Catalonia, during Napoleon’s and Wellington’s peninsular campaigns in 1808-14, the Catalonian guerillas subjected tens and perhaps hundreds of French, Spanish and British officers to the saw, little caring for the alliances of the moment. In Lutheran Germany the saw awaited the leaders of rebellious peasants, and in France witches pregnant by Satan.

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