ABSTRACT
Pain is not only a feeling, but an emotion, a complex experience whose historical appraisal involves the study of it as a form of theatre. The rules of teaching and learning pain have been subjected to thematic variations. The history of pain aims to unravel the persuasive procedures that have historically been used to make sense of the experience of harm. Both the visual arts and ascetic practices emphasize the ritual dramatization of violence. The visual representation of violence experiences a remarkable increase from the fifteenth century onwards. The invention of the printing press, and the consequent iconographic explosion, played a central role in the understanding and uses of physical suffering. The pain of the martyr was expressed in a theatrical context in which the scenes depended on norms, conventions and ritualized acts. The continuities and discontinuities in the history of emotions have been a real issue.
