2023-08-19 04:25:54
Raised ax and a reputation blacker than the hood they wore to hide their identity. The work of the executioner, one of the longest in our history, has been as ill-fated as it is hated by our society. And that, despite the fact that they put the material edge, but did not select the victim with their finger. “People run away from me, some look at me with fear, others seem to disgust me, but I am not the one who kills, the one who kills is the law,” he explained. Cesareo Fernandez Carrascothe person in charge of executing the prisoners in Madrid at the end of the 19th century, in an interview.
What was the work of a medieval executioner like, then? What is true and what is false in what the movies have told us? As the historian Joel Harrington, author of ‘The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death in the Sixteenth Century’ explains, his task was closely followed by a State eager to eradicate crime from its borders: «There was something common to all countries of old Europe. They all tried to apply their criminal law in the most efficient way possible.
The moral end of the executioner
The problem, in his words, was that most of the criminals and bandits used to escape. That created a knock-on effect against which justice fought through our protagonists. “When they caught someone, they set an example and ended up with them by organizing a public show,” she completes. This is corroborated by the historical disseminator Juan Eslava Galán in one of his most outstanding works: ‘Executioners and torturers’.
In it, the author affirms that the passing of the decades made an event designed to set an example and prevent society from seeing crime as a way of life became a true circus. An example of this is that, during executions in medieval Spain, “the atmosphere heated up in the morning” and “the artisans left their jobs to attend, the fat wineskin hanging from their shoulders, to the tasty spectacle.” In Madrid, in fact, the coachmen walked through the streets shouting “A two reales to the gallows!” Just like when there was a bullfight.
The Doctor of Philosophy Francisco Pérez Fernández also delves into the use that the powers made of the executioner in the Middle Ages. In his dossier ‘The institutional figure of the executioner as a public mirror (18th–20th century). The executioner of sentences and the psychological variant of him’, he explains that his public executions were of “vital importance” to society because they operated as a moral theater. “They had many elements typical of a show whose quality was inevitably submitted to the criteria of the attendees and in whose staging the executioner took on, often against his will, a central role,” he adds. The sad conclusion is that justice was not long in being associated with cruelty; and the same thing happened with our protagonists, who began to be seen as sadistic characters who worshiped death.
Stinking, hated and rich
That vision turned the executioner into a plague-ridden character, a subject who lived on the outskirts of the city and who was not allowed to set foot in a church. «When they got married, the wedding was celebrated in his house. Some schools wouldn’t even accept their children,” adds Harrington. This isolation meant that they were on a par with prostitutes, lepers, or criminals. Galán agrees that he “became a character discriminated against by his neighbors” and an “impure being who stained.”
He is not without reason. The association of the figure of the executioner with brutality caused his fellow citizens to avoid dealing with him. «In some places he was prohibited from putting his hands on any goods that were for sale; he had to go to the market equipped with a wand with which he pointed out what he wanted to buy. The executioner’s hand, like that of the leper, defamed what he touched; That is why she was the one who burned the condemned books and the one who crossed out the noble shields of the knights accused of high treason. Nobody wanted his tools to come into contact with this cursed character, “adds Galán.
For this reason, in 17th century England, he was endowed with a mask that sought to preserve his anonymity. Not to make it more scary; nor to generate discomfort among those present. Nothing of that. Simply, so that he could live peacefully among good citizens.
However, that same rejection that he generated in society made the executioner obtain rich benefits in exchange for remaining in office. It all started with a good salary to which was added a series of gifts that he could collect from the merchants and restaurateurs in the area. Something logical, because on the days of execution they made cash (sometimes up to three times more) at the expense of their work. “In different places he even received donations in kind for free, as well as other invitations, since there were many who refused to receive money from his bag,” Pérez explains.
As if that were not enough, he also used to keep a tip that the prisoner’s relatives gave him in exchange for not making him suffer excessively. According to Harrington, the most striking thing is that, despite the remuneration, society “did not queue, in principle, to be an executioner.” Quite the opposite. Most saw it as an undesirable job and the local powers had to “hunt down and corner” some professionals until they decided to take the axe.
Selection
The most usual thing was that the selected one was an experienced butcher and versed in the trade, a common practice in Antwerp. Although anyone was good at finishing off the inmates. «In different places in Central Europe, unexpectedly and as if it were a rite of passage, the youngest adult in the city was in charge of the executions. In Franconia, it had to be the last newlywed in the town who held the position, as it was considered a way to pay an imaginary debt incurred by his entry into civil society, “adds Pérez.
However, over the decades this work began to be passed down from father to son. This is confirmed by Harrington himself, who gives as an example Frantz Schmidt, a 16th and 17th century executioner who left his memoirs written and whose experiences he has studied to the millimeter. “His father had received the job by order of a prince and, with it, began one of the many ‘executing dynasties’ of the Middle Ages,” the author explains.
This change was linked to the historical moment, the 17th century, in which the executioner was given the position of public official. This made his trade finish professionalizing. In his memoirs, Schmidt claims that, when he was just 19 years old, he had to practice swinging various pumpkins and decapitating a dog before he was declared ready to start killing people. Harrington also explains that, in some European countries, the laws required the executioner to finish off the prisoner with less than three blows. In addition, and if the execution turned into a carnage, our protagonist could suffer severe consequences. «The executioners could be attacked by angry spectators. If they survived, the authorities punished them by withholding their salary, imprisonment or dismissal,” says history teacher Hannele Klemettila-McHale.
Other cities limited themselves to granting large rewards to executioners who carried out their work in the most efficient and clean way. That made many of them become true experts in human anatomy. Again, the clear example is that of Frantz Schmidt. And it is that, in addition to knowing the details of the human body, he also practiced as a doctor. “He saved many more people than he executed. We must forget that image of a hooded, anonymous and sadistic character, ”says Harrington. In the words of Pérez, this has been replicated until the 19th century, when “driven by necessity or misfortune, there were many literate people -teachers, doctors, soldiers and even lawyers- who took an interest in the vacant positions of executioner when the pertinent calls were presented.”
This article was originally published in August 2019
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