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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 prove himself worthy of honor and
free his children from the stigma of his profession. Harrington
uncovers details of Schmidt's life and work: the shocking, but
often familiar, crimes of the day; the medical practice that he
felt was his true calling; and his lifelong struggle to reconcile
his craft with his religious faith.
In this groundbreaking and intimate portrait, Harrington shows us
that our thinking about justice and punishment, and our sense of
our own humanity, are not so remote from the world of "The Faithful
Executioner."
Throughout the many political and social upheavals of the early
modern era, names were words to conjure by, articulating
significant historical trends and helping individuals and societies
make sense of often dramatic periods of change. Centered on
onomastics-the study of names-in the German-speaking lands, this
volume, gathering leading scholars across multiple disciplines,
explores the dynamics and impact of naming (and renaming) processes
in a variety of contexts-social, artistic, literary, theological,
and scientific-in order to enhance our understanding of individual
and collective experiences.
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.
Meister Eckhart was a medieval Christian mystic whose wisdom
powerfully appeals to seekers seven centuries after his death. In
the modern era, Eckhart's writings have struck a chord with
thinkers as diverse as Heidegger, Merton, Sartre, John Paul II, and
the current Dalai Lama. Dangerous Mystic grounds Meister Eckhart in
a world that is simultaneously familiar and alien.
The baby abandoned on the doorstep is a phenomenon that has
virtually disappeared from our experience, but in the early modern
world, unwanted children were a very real problem. In The Unwanted
Child, Joel F. Harrington skillfully recreates sixteenth-century
Nuremberg to explore what befell abandoned children in this period
in vivid detail. From the harrowing to the inspiring, this
critically acclaimed text paints a gripping picture of life on the
streets five centuries ago.
This book examines the impact of the Protestant Reformation on both the ideal and practice of marriage in sixteenth-century Germany. Unlike previous specialized and esoteric monographs, this study synthesizes the author's extensive archival work with a broad array of scholarly research in legal, theological, and, especially, social history. His most important conclusion is the minimal impact of Protestant marriage reforms, and the striking similarity in this respect to concurrent Catholic measures, particularly in the actual formation and preservation of marriages.
This book examines the impact of the Protestant Reformation on both
the ideal and practice of marriage in sixteenth-century Germany.
Combining extensive archival work with a broad synthesis of
scholarly research in legal, theological, and social history, it
provides the most comprehensive evaluation to date of the
Reformation's impact on marriage. The author compares Protestant
reforming goals and achievements to those of contemporary
Catholics. All sixteenth-century campaigns to restore 'traditional
family values', he argues, must be viewed in the context of more
gradual social transformations in private morality, public
authority, and familial relations. The apparent innovations of the
reformers - including the abolition of clerical celibacy and
introduction of divorce - fade in comparison to their much greater
adherence to the theological, legal and social traditions shared
with their Catholic ancestors and contemporaries.
During a career lasting nearly half a century, Meister Frantz
Schmidt (1554-1634) personally put to death 392 individuals and
tortured, flogged, or disfigured hundreds more. The remarkable
number of victims, as well as the officially sanctioned context in
which they suffered at Schmidt's hands, was the story of Joel
Harrington's much-discussed book The Faithful Executioner. The
foundation of that celebrated work was Schmidt`s own
journal--notable not only for the shocking story it told but, in an
age when people rarely kept diaries, for its mere existence.
Available now in Harrington's new translation, this fascinating
document provides the modern reader with a rare firsthand
perspective on the thoughts and experiences of an executioner who
routinely carried out acts of state brutality yet remained a
revered member of the local community and was widely respected for
his piety, steadfastness, and popular healing. Based on a long-lost
manuscript thought to be the most faithful to the original journal,
this modern English translation is fully annotated and includes an
introduction providing historical context as well as a biographical
portrait of Schmidt himself. The executioner appears to us not as
the frightening brute we might expect but as a surprisingly
thoughtful, complex person with a unique voice, and in these pages
his world emerges as vivid and unforgettable.
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