[The following is in regards to the torture of a famous Dutch painter, Johannes Symonsz van der Beeck, famously known to his contemporaries as Torrentius. A bit of relevant context, courtesy of Wikipedia: “Despite his reputation as a still life master, few of Torrentius' paintings survive, as his works were ordered to be burned after he was accused of being a Rosicrucian adherent of atheistic and Satanic beliefs. The tortured painter was thrown into prison as a convicted blasphemer until being permitted to leave the country as a political gesture for England's Charles I, an admirer of van der Beeck.”]
By late Autumn, the magistrates of Haarlem had grown weary of Torrentius’s obduracy, and they applied to the Court of Holland for permission to resort to more violent methods. This was readily granted, and on Christmas Eve 1627 Torrentius was interrogated by a certain Master Gerrit, who was Haarlem’s executioner and also its chief torturer.
Heavy weights were tied to the painter’s legs while four men hauled him into the air by ropes that had been attached to his wrists; he was left hanging in this way while more questions were put to him. Afterward he was stretched on the rack until his limbs were pulled from their sockets. A third torture damaged his jaw and left him temporarily unable to eat, and at one point, it appears, some effort was actually made to shoot him. But the efforts of the torturers were to no avail. Through all his agony, Torrentius continued to deny he was a Rosicrucian [an alleged heretical secret society].
Supporters of the painter, who spoke to Master Gerrit in the tavern of the Gilded Half-Moon after the prisoner had been returned to his cell, were told he had impressed the executioner as an honest man. The only words Torrentius had spoken, Gerrit said, were, “Oh my Lord, my God!”
Source:
Dash, Mike. “The Heretic.” Batavia's Graveyard. Three Rivers Press, 2003. 51. Print.
Further Reading:
AFAIK they were not heretical at all. They were as catholic as the templars IIRC.