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THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF A RENAISSANCE-ERA EXECUTIONER AND HIS WORLD, BASED ON A RARE AND OVERLOOKED JOURNAL.
In a dusty German bookshop, the noted historian Joel F. Harrington stumbled upon a remarkable document: the journal of a sixteenth-century executioner. The journal gave an account of the 394 people Meister Frantz Schmidt executed, and the hundreds more he tortured, flogged, or disfigured for more than forty-five years in the city of Nuremberg. But the portrait of Schmidt that gradually emerged was not that of a monster. Could a man who practiced such cruelty also be insightful, compassionate―even progressive?
In The Faithful Executioner, Harrington teases out the hidden meanings and drama of Schmidt's journal. Deemed an official outcast, Meister Frantz sought to prove himself worthy of honor and free his children from the stigma of his profession. Harrington uncovers details of Schmidt's life and work: the shocking, but often familiar, crimes of the day; the medical practice that he felt was his true calling; and his lifelong struggle to reconcile his craft with his religious faith.
In this groundbreaking and intimate portrait, Harrington shows us that our thinking about justice and punishment, and our sense of our own humanity, are not so remote from the world of The Faithful Executioner.
- Sales Rank: #466984 in Books
- Published on: 2013-12-31
- Released on: 2013-12-31
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.17" h x .84" w x 5.50" l, .60 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
From Booklist
Based on the journal of Frantz Schmidt, a Nuremburg executioner who died in the early seventeenth century, this endlessly fascinating book explores not just the life of a professional killer but also the times in which he lived. An executioner was not a thug with an axe; he was a highly skilled professional, trained in the arts of torture and interrogation and expert in dispensing death in a frightening variety of ways. Although executioners filled a vital societal need, they were considered outcasts (even though many of them were successful medical practitioners on the side). Schmidt executed more than 300 people, but, as Harrington reveals here, he was a good, ambitious man who dreamed of returning his family to the social status they enjoyed before Schmidt’s father became an executioner. A sort of real-life companion to Oliver Pötzsch’s 2010 novel The Hangman’s Daughter (which, like its sequels, is set in Germany in the mid-seventeeth century), the book opens a window on a profession and a period in history about which there are few primary sources. --David Pitt
Review
“Fascinating . . . Engrossing . . . Harrington brings out the sheer strangeness of the past . . . In The Faithful Executioner, Mr. Harrington has not only rescued the life of an individual from disgust and condescension but also, by focusing on a career in killing, brought a whole world back to life.” ―The Wall Street Journal
“Remarkable . . . [A] fascinating exploration . . . this is a surprisingly modern, even topical story that poses difficult questions about capital punishment and what Harrington calls ‘the human drive toward retribution.'” ―The Washington Post
“Fascinating . . . One of the pleasures of reading history is to be transported somewhere, even if we aren't sure we want to go.” ―The Chronicle of Higher Education
“Equal parts enlightening and enjoyable.” ―The Daily Beast
“[A] vividly drawn portrait . . . Harrington succeeds in deftly taking us beyond Schmidt's biography to address broader questions. Finely researched and crafted.” ―History Today
“A fascinating read.” ―Publishers Weekly
“Surprisingly poignant . . . A whole teeming world of Reformation Germany comes alive.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“This is a precious story that Harrington has drawn from the journal and archival records, a braiding of Schmidt's words with a re-creation of Schmidt's world, a story that is at once inclusive and atmospheric, deeply intimate and rare . . . It is a wonder-making world, made manifest by an artful historian's hand.” ―Barnes & Noble Review
“Who can imagine how an executioner feels about his trade? Joel F. Harrington has written a considered and fascinating book that helps us hear the voice of one such man, a professional torturer (and healer) who, astonishingly, kept a diary. Exploring both sixteenth-century Nuremberg and the world about the city, he re-creates the social context for the flamboyant displays of cruelty that later centuries find so hard to comprehend. Both the executioner and his victims are rescued from our condescension and restored to their own moral universe―which is not as far from ours as we like to suppose.” ―Hilary Mantel, Man Booker Prize–winning author Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies
“A book as entertaining and revealing as it is improbable and outrageous. Joel F. Harrington has told a marvelous yarn, giving us not just the compelling biography of Meister Frantz but his world.” ―Rick Atkinson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944
“In an astonishing feat of historical reconstruction, Joel F. Harrington uniquely draws us into the emotional world of a man paid to kill professionally--into his troubled sense of achievement and shame. This compelling book is brilliant reading for everyone interested in new ways of thinking about the past as well as crime and punishment today.” ―Ulinka Rublack, author of Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe
“The Faithful Executioner masterfully conjures the heavy stench and bustle of a sixteenth-century southern German city--waterlogged roads, smoky marketplaces, blood-lusty masses laden with bizarre superstitions--via the Lebenslauf of a curious figure: Meister Frantz Schmidt, Nuremburg's state executioner from 1578 to 1617. With the help of Schmidt's private journal, Joel F. Harrington revivifies both the detailed and the abstract with enviable scholarship and style. This is social history at its very best: weird, riveting, addictive.” ―R. Jay Magill Jr., author of Sincerity
“The Faithful Executioner is much more than a description of the many imaginative and horrifying means of torturing and putting prisoners to death. It is a rare and utterly fascinating examination of the society that demands it.” ―New York Journal of Books
About the Author
Joel F. Harrington is a professor of history at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of The Unwanted Child, Reordering Marriage and Society in Reformation Germany, and A Cloud of Witnesses.
Most helpful customer reviews
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
Like stepping back into another, darker, time. Excellent book.
By D. Graves
Some books are engrossing: you don't want to stop reading. This is as engrossing a book as you'll ever read - and it's non-fiction.
Think of it: the diary of an executioner of the late 1500s to early 1600s - a time when thousands were brutally tortured and put to death by barbaric means - has been preserved. Further, the man and his journal entries are then made the centerpiece of a detailed and captivating social history of the time and place in which he carried out his 361 executions, a history entirely different than what the common reader might expect. This is, in fact, what this excellent book is all about. As a lover of history, I cannot recommend this volume highly enough; it is like stepping back into another, darker, time.
The story of Meister Frantz Schmidt (b. 1555, d. 1634), executioner of Nuremberg from 1578 to 1617 (after a bloody "apprenticeship" in Bamberg from 1573 to 1578) is one you will not soon forget. It is not a story for the squeamish. However, the author does not serve horror for horror's sake: the times were, in fact, horrific. Executions were carried out by garoting (rope), sword, breaking wheel (for the most violent of criminals), burning (for those considered worse than violent criminals: counterfeiters and homosexuals), and drowning. Schmidt made diary entries for each of his 361 executions, the latter ones more detailed than the earlier, as well as for the 345 "light" punishments of cutting off an ear or finger, or flogging. However, these violent events only punctuate the social history of Schmidt's life and times; not only the crimes and criminals which kept the executioner steadily employed (and, in fact, fairly wealthy) but the societal structure of crime and punishment and of the executioner's place in that society.
Frantz Schmidt was a truly fascinating man who, after retirement as executioner, became a man of medicine, and who, upon his death, was given a state funeral. His diaries have been published since 1801. However, it is the expertise of a historian, the author, which gives us such an engrossing, well-rounded picture of the man and his times. One of the best books on history I have ever read.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Integrity
By J. Brian Watkins
Couldn't put the book down until I finished. The premise is startling--a man tasked with the regular torture and execution of criminals manages to preserve not only his own sanity and self-respect, but obtains some grudging measure of respect from his society. What is the secret to his success? My reading of his story was that he lived a life of integrity--he chose to act according to self-imposed rules that he believed would demonstrate respect for law and order. He chose to confront the sobering responsibilities that he was born to by becoming the most sober man in the city.
This guy lived the Milgram Experiment--when authority directed him to punish in any number of horrific ways, he complied. It was a job and it appears that he didn't enjoy inflicting pain but saw his role as a necessary evil if society was to be protected. Having read this book, one appreciates the value of the rule of law. Perhaps we could not have the degree of societal respect for the rules we currently enjoy without a history of crucifixions and torture, but it is not impossible to revisit the days and times of our ancestors who dealt with the same basic problems we do and try to think of whether or not our society has truly evolved.
My take on the book was that one can find success despite any obstacles that society or circumstance may impose. It takes hard work, unyielding ethics and a great deal of patience; characteristics that are as necessary in today's world as they were in the 16th century.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating look into an ancient profession.
By Linda C. Schiess
It's a topic that won't appeal to everyone, but it is a fascinating look into the history of the executioers occupation. It covers the apprenticeship, how they were treated by the rest of the population, ostracized and how they had their own fraternal order of professionals with annual conferences.
The gentlemans journal opens a whole new perspective to the profession, which also served as Doctor and phamacist in may rural towns of the time. It also describes how sons studied under their fathers starting as early as age 10 by assissting with prepe and cleanup and by 16 were practicing with the equipment to prepare for their first event.
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