'He plays on the pillory'. The use of musical instruments for punishment in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era.

Illustrations by the Dutch renaissance artists Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Jan Wierix both show a man imprisoned on a pillory, a former place of enforcement of judicial sentences, and playing a musical instrument. Taken as legal iconographic sources, these illustrations of the old saying 'He plays on the pillory' can be understood as references to a specific kind of punishment used in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era. Specifically, delinquents had to wear wooden or iron 'neck violins' or 'neck flutes' while being pilloried or chased through the streets in order to be humiliated in public. As well as this historical fact, there also exists an interpretation that takes the illustrations by Bruegel and Wierix literally. It suggests that these punishment practices originally date back to a more ancient use of real instruments in a penal system that was applied and understood as a 'healing punishment' (poena medicinalis) to banish the ill and re-establish the good in the delinquent, the community and the world as a whole due to musical sounds. By means of legal iconographical and historical methods, this article explores the different nuances of punishment that employed real or symbolic musical instruments. Thus, it examines a historical aspect of 'music in detention' where the (symbolic) sounds do not emanate from the punisher but from the punished themselves.