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The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century, by Joel F. Harrington

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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

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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.

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Product details

Paperback: 320 pages

Publisher: Picador (December 31, 2013)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1250043611

ISBN-13: 978-1250043610

Product Dimensions:

5.5 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches

Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.3 out of 5 stars

72 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#14,909 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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.

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.

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.

This book is simply amazing. I was engrossed from beginning to end. What starts out as a straightforward journal written by a teetotalling German executioner in the 16th century becomes a vibrant history demonstrating that this period was not only violent but magical.Who knew that executioners regularly practiced the healing arts? Or that the body parts of the recently dead were thought to possess medicinal benefits? Or that once an executioner, always an executioner--and your children too?Joel Harrington writes in a clear, compelling style that was a joy to read. His research is superb, and his wise conclusions about the life of Meister Frantz Schmidt and what he desperately wanted for his family are both inspiring and heartbreaking.Read this book. That is all.

Although not recommended for the faint of heart, this book gives much more than graphic and gruesome accounts of 16th century German crime and criminal justice--the latter with sanctioned torture to elicit confessions, burning "witches" alive, and other forms of painful punishment and death. (Underscoring how painful and frightening were some execution methods, are accounts of prisoners throwing themselves down before the court and kissing the judges' hands in gratitude for commuting their sentence to mere beheading.) Historian Joel Harrington mines the journal of Nuremberg executioner Frantz Schmidt and other contemporary sources to paint a convincing portrait of the social class restraints, religious imperatives, superstitions, political realities, epidemics, and medical practices of a distant time and place--though in some ways revealing how little we have changed.

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