The Executioner in the Premodern West

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Both feared and respected, the executioner was indispensable to the premodern system of justice in the West.  The skill and the service he provided were essential to keeping order but: who were they, how did one become an executioner, and did he wear a mask? Find out this week on Footnoting History! 

Host: Kristin

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Further Reading
Michael Barbezat, Burning Bodies: Communities, Eschatology, and the Punishment of Heresy in the Middle Ages, Cornell University Press, (2018).
 
Richard van Dulmen, Theater of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany, trans. Elisabeth Neu, Polity Press, (1990).
 
Paul Friedland, Seeing Justice Done: The Age of Spectacular Capital Punishment in France, Oxford, (2012).
 
Nella Lonza, “The Figure of Executioner in Dubrovnik: Between Social Acceptance and Rejection (Fourteenth to Eighteenth Century),” Dubrovnik Annals 20 (2016): 93-108.
 
Death in Medieval Europe, ed. Joelle Rollo-Koster, Routledge, (2016).     

Images
“Borreau,” by L. Massard (1836-1839). Content: Printed on border: "Rèigne de Charles II" Written on border: "Executioner" Foxing on image.

"Well Executed?" by 11intheWoods, via Flickr.
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Music: "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin Macleod (www.incompetech.com)

“Borreau,” by L. Massard (1836-1839). Content: Printed on border: "Rèigne de Charles II" Written on border: "Executioner" Foxing on image.

"Well Executed?" by 11intheWoods, via Flickr.