Summary of Joel F. Harrington's The Faithful Executioner

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The family had moved to Bamberg eight months earlier, and Frantz had already accompanied his father to several executions in the city and nearby villages. He was testing his son on the most difficult and honorable form of execution, death by the sword.
#2 The local dog slayer, or knacker, had assembled a few stray canines and brought them in his ramshackle wooden cages to the executioner’s residence in the heart of the city. Schmidt paid his subordinate a small tip for the favor and took the animals to the courtyard behind the house.
#3 The insecurity of life was evident from the very beginning. The first two years of a child’s life were the most dangerous, as frequent outbreaks of smallpox, typhus, and dysentery proved particularly fatal to younger victims.
#4 The German states of the 1500s were divided up among more than 300 member states, which ranged in size from small baronial castles to vast territorial principalities. The emperor and his annual representative assembly, the Reichstag, provided a common focus of allegiance and symbolic authority, but they were powerless to prevent or resolve the feuds and wars that regularly broke out among member states.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Germany
• History
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 10 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822529397
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Joel F. Harrington's The Faithful Executioner
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The family had moved to Bamberg eight months earlier, and Frantz had already accompanied his father to several executions in the city and nearby villages. He was testing his son on the most difficult and honorable form of execution, death by the sword.

#2

The local dog slayer, or knacker, had assembled a few stray canines and brought them in his ramshackle wooden cages to the executioner’s residence in the heart of the city. Schmidt paid his subordinate a small tip for the favor and took the animals to the courtyard behind the house.

#3

The insecurity of life was evident from the very beginning. The first two years of a child’s life were the most dangerous, as frequent outbreaks of smallpox, typhus, and dysentery proved particularly fatal to younger victims.

#4

The German states of the 1500s were divided up among more than 300 member states, which ranged in size from small baronial castles to vast territorial principalities. The emperor and his annual representative assembly, the Reichstag, provided a common focus of allegiance and symbolic authority, but they were powerless to prevent or resolve the feuds and wars that regularly broke out among member states.

#5

The sixteenth century was a period of high inflation and unemployment, which led to a decline in the number of nonmilitary jobs available to commoners. The ranks of soldiers for pay accordingly ballooned twelvefold over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

#6

The Plackerei was not limited to the battlefield. It was also common in times of peace, when unemployed or unpaid, some groups of young men would rove about the countryside looking for food, drink, and women.

#7

The people of Frantz Schmidt’s day were terrified by the many dangers they faced, from highwaymen to fire-breathing dragons. They were also terrified by the specter of witchcraft, which hovered menacingly over their lives.

#8

Religion was a major resource during this period, providing explanations for misfortune and sometimes preventive measures. Christians had intonedProtect us, O Lord, from plague, famine, and war!for centuries, and this continued into the later sixteenth century.

#9

The desire for security and order was shared by secular authorities, who were trying to mitigate the effects of earthquakes, floods, famines, and epidemics. But they also wanted to expand their authority and reduce violence.

#10

The executioner was the ruling authorities’ most indispensable means of easing their subjects’ fear of lawless attacks and providing some sense of justice in a society where everyone knew that the great majority of dangerous criminals would never be caught or punished.

#11

The social tolerance that Heinrich Schmidt and his family experienced in 1573 was a recent development, and one that was not guaranteed to last. Since the Middle Ages, professional executioners had been universally reviled as cold-blooded killers for hire, and were thus excluded from respectable society.

#12

The family of executioners was extremely small, and they were known to bond together professionally and socially. They also developed professional networks, and sought to secure gainful employment within the trade for their sons.

#13

The margrave of Hof, Albrecht Alcibiades, had three local gunsmiths arrested in an alleged plot on his life. Rather than sending for a traveling professional to execute them, he invoked an ancient custom and had a bystander do it on the spot.

#14

The town of Hof was a closed society of only 1,000 people, and its insularity and social rigidity were exacerbated by its remote location. The region surrounding the town was wrapped in dense ancient forests, and it was overshadowed by mountains up to 1,000 meters high.

#15

The town of Hof was a frontier town in the cultural sense. It was shaped by a unique mix of Slavic and German influences, and it had been sacked by Hussites, radical followers of the martyred religious reformer Jan Hus. The Vogtland was the regional identity most closely associated with Hof.

#16

The Schmidts’ new home in Bamberg allowed them a much greater degree of anonymity than they had experienced in Hof, and they were perhaps even somewhat accepted by their neighbors.

#17

The second half of the sixteenth century saw the emergence of an increasingly global marketplace, which had negative consequences for many traditional craftsmen and their products. But rather than direct their anger at the new breed of extravagantly wealthy bankers or merchants, most poor but honest artisans attacked seemingly prosperous executioners such as Heinrich Schmidt.

#18

The executioner’s job was to execute people, which was a very public affair. The job was extremely humiliating, and the Schmidts were constantly reminded of it by their neighbors.

#19

The execution of criminals was a medieval Germanic tradition, but it was beginning to change in the late fifteenth century. More and more cities were granting the monopoly of high justice, and the courts were becoming inadequate in dealing with the increasing number of laws and procedures.

#20

The transformation of the part-time hangman into the full-time professional executioner was not complete by the time of Frantz Schmidt’s birth in 1554.