What was it like to be an executioner in the Middle Ages?
livescience.com
What was it like to be an executioner in the Middle Ages?
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Re: What was it like to be an executioner in the Middle Ages?
#2Not in the article, but in the book it self: there is also the function of combating superstition! Lots of people believed incredibly dangerous things. Such as cutting of the (arm or) hand of a new born (and carrying it when you attempt to burglar a house) can make you invisible. This believe was obviously quite dangerous for new borns. Thieves and burglars would sometimes “try their luck”. When they got caught it was the executioners job to also demonstrate/ educate the people.
Re: What was it like to be an executioner in the Middle Ages?
#3Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a medieval RPG, did this quite well. The protagonist Henry does a few jobs for the executioner and they make it clear the isolation and ostracization the executioner suffers, and he lives well out of town.
Re: What was it like to be an executioner in the Middle Ages?
#4The article only mentions the clean executions (other than burning at the stake). There were plenty that were gruesome; essentially tortured to death.
Re: What was it like to be an executioner in the Middle Ages?
#51573 mentioned in article is not Middle Ages, just saying.
Re: What was it like to be an executioner in the Middle Ages?
#6The article only mentions the clean executions (other than burning at the stake). There were plenty that were gruesome; essentially tortured to death.
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Re: What was it like to be an executioner in the Middle Ages?
#7Curious, how many executions per year could there possibly be in Bamberg, Bavaria?
Re: What was it like to be an executioner in the Middle Ages?
#8The Hangman’s Daughter book series gives a pretty great look into this same topic, dramatic flair aside. They’re written by a modern descendent of a Bavarian executioner family who dug into his family’s past and then loosely tied some actual historical events into clever stories (basically the definition of historical fiction, I suppose). They were fun beach reads for me that also taught me a lot about 1600s German life.
Re: What was it like to be an executioner in the Middle Ages?
#9Upon hearing the sad news of Gene Wolfe's passing in April of this year, I took the occasion to reread his Book of the New Sun series. The protagonist is Severian, a banished member of a Torturers guild, who earns some money during his travels by performing professional executions. It's a little unsettling to immerse yourself in a story written in the first-person narrative of this sort of character.
Re: What was it like to be an executioner in the Middle Ages?
#10Curious, how many executions per year could there possibly be in Bamberg, Bavaria?
The only figures I could see casually were that there were approximately 2,000 per year in England during the reign of Henry VIII...so I guess it's not insane to imagine a mid-size town in Germany having 10 or 15 a year? Which would surely be enough to justify professional help?