The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death in the Sixteenth Century
Joel F. Harrington
Meet Frantz Schmidt: executioner, torturer and, most unusually for his times, diarist.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Frantz entered the executioner’s trade as an Apprentice. 394 executions and forty-five years later, he retired to focus his attentions on running the large medical practice that he had always viewed as his true vocation.
Through examination of Frantz’s exceptional and often overlooked record, Joel F. Harrington delves deep into a world of human cruelty, tragedy and injustice. At the same time, he poses a fascinating question: could a man who routinely practiced such cruelty also be insightful, compassionate – even progressive?
The Faithful Executioner is the biography of an ordinary man struggling to overcome an unjust family curse; it is also a remarkable panorama of a Europe poised on the cusp of modernity, a world with startling parallels to our own.
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About Joel F. Harrington
Reviews for The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death in the Sixteenth Century
Dan Jones
Telegraph
Opens a window on a gruesome world
Daily Express
This is a marvelous book about a fascinating subject… It is a virtuoso performance… A brilliant microhistory, a triumph of technique and a wonderful read
Peter Marshall
Literary Review
Who can imagine how an executioner feels about his trade? Joel F. Harrington has written a considered and fascinating book which helps us hear the voice of one such man, a professional torturer (and healer) who, astonishingly, kept a diary
Hilary Mantel This is a sympathetic, intelligent and surprisingly tender book
The Times
Harrington does an excellent job at recreating the thoughts and fears of a man whose job is one of the most loathed and caricatured
Ben Wilson
Daily Telegraph
A vivid window on a fascinating age
Michael Kerrigan
Scotsman
Fascinating… This is a surprisingly modern, even topical story that poses difficult questions about capital punishment and what Harrington calls ‘the human drive toward retribution’
Daniel Stashower
Washington Post
Vividly drawn… Finely researched and crafted
Kat Hill
History Today
Macabre but fascinating
Simon Griffith
Mail on Sunday Event