The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century

Format: Paperback Language: English ISBN: 1250043611 ISBN13: 9781250043610 Release Date: December 2013 Publisher: Picador USA Length: 320 Pages Weight: 0.65 lbs. Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.3" 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 p