The Faithful Executioner

Joel F. Harrington recovers the extraordinary journal of Frantz Schmidt, a professional executioner who carried out hundreds of executions and corporal punishments in Nuremberg between 1573 and 1618 while seeking social rehabilitation. The book illuminates evolving concepts of crime, punishment and honour in early modern Germany through the meticulous self-accounting of a remarkable and contradictory life.

ISBN 9780809049936 · Farrar, Straus & Giroux · 2013