Examples include the painting The Triumpth of Death (In the background), as well as the opening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I have no idea what this is or what it's purpose is, though since I always see it with a corpse I assume it is some kind of execution or torture device, or possibly buzzard feeder.
So, does anyone have any leads on what these things are? Do they have some mundane function that isn't corpse-related? And if so, why are the corpses there in the first place?
There is no doubt that this device ended up feeding buzzards and other carrion-eating birds.
You are referring to a breaking wheel, or often a Catherine Wheel. The criminal's body is laid over top of a cart wheel or wagon wheel and blows on the arms and legs over the gaps between spokes would break the bones. The limbs might then be threaded into the spokes, the wheel hauled up on a pole and the punished was meant to die slowly and spectacularly. Evidence of use of this torture-unto-death comes from the middle ages up through the early modern period.
Although I would question some of the author's evaluation of origins in medieval law, Pieter Spierenburg's The Spectacle of Suffering Executions and the Evolution of Repression : from a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience (Cambridge, 1984), is very good on medieval criminal punishment.
This is a breaking wheel or gallows wheel used for torture and execution as the article in the link explains.
Coincidentally, it is also the source of the idea that storks bring babies. An excerpt from my draft, Introduction to Folklore:
One common practice related to childbirth resulted in a traditional fict [a story told to be believed to children, but not believed by the parents] of western culture. A woman was in jeopardy during birth because a host of supernatural creatures might seek to abduct her and leave a replica in her place that would appear to be her corpse. To avoid such a fate, people sealed the house, ushering children outside. When the birth was complete, the doors and windows could be reopened and the children returned. There was a need, however, to explain the arrival of the infant.
Parents wanting to avoid the topic of conception and childbirth relied on the fact that the only opening to the house was the chimney. European peasants had observed that storks nested on the little-used gallows wheel in towns. These looked like wagon wheels positioned horizontally on tall poles, and storks found them a safe place to nest. The birds were regarded as good luck, so it was not uncommon for people to construct a similar wheel on top of their roofs to attract nesting storks. When children asked about the origin of the infant, it was easy to suggest that it had arrived by way of the chimney and that the stork had accomplished this deed.
An informative book on the cultural reception of cruel punishments like breaking on the wheel is Mitchell B. Merback's The Thief, the Cross, and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (1999). He argues in part that the grisly depictions in art of the execution of the two thieves crucified with Jesus--broken limbs, compound fractures, gushing blood, agonized expressions, etc.--was one way for people to process public executions. The book is simultaneously disturbing and thought-provoking.
