Notes
Abbreviations Used in Notes
Angstmann: Else Angstmann, Der Henker in der Volksmeinung: Seine Namen und sein Vorkommen in der mündlichen Volksüberlieferung (Bonn: Fritz Klopp, 1928).
ASB: Amts- und Standbücher; Staatsarchiv Nürnberg, Bestand 52b.
CCC: Die Peinliche Gerichtsordnung Kaiser Karl V: Constitutio Criminalis Carolina: Die Carolina und ihre Vorgängerinnen. Text, Erläuterung, Geschichte. Edited by J. Kohler and Willy Scheel (Halle an der Saale: Verlag Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1900).
FSJ: Frantz Schmidt’s journal; Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Amb 652.2°.
G&T: Johann Glenzdorf and Fritz Treichel, Henker, Schinder, und arme Sünder, 2 vols (Bad Münder am Deister: Wilhelm Rost, 1970).
GNM: Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg.
JHJ: Journal of prison chaplain Johannes Hagendorn (1563–1624). Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, 3857 Hs.
Hampe: Theodor Hampe, Die Nürnberger Malefizbücher als Quellen der reichsstädtischen Sittengeschichte vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Bamberg: C. C. Buchner, 1927).
Keller: Albrecht Keller. Der Scharfrichter in der deutschen Kulturgeschichte (Bonn: K. Schroeder, 1921).
Knapp, Kriminalrecht: Hermann Knapp, Das alte Nürnberger Kriminalrecht (Berlin: J. Guttentag, 1896).
Knapp, Loch: Hermann Knapp. Das Lochgefängnis, Tortur, und Richtung in Alt-Nürnberg (Nuremberg: Heerdengen-Barbeck, 1907).
LKAN: Landeskirchlichesarchiv Nürnberg.
MVGN: Mitteilungen des Vereins für die Geschichte der Stadt Nürnbergs.
Nowosadtko: Jutta Nowosadtko, Scharfrichter und Abdecker: Der Alltag zweier “unehrlicher Berufe” in der Frühen Neuzeit (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1994).
Restitution: Haus-, Hof-, Staatsarchiv Wien. Restitutionen. Fasz. 6/S, Franz Schmidt, 1624.
RV: Ratsverlaß (decree of Nuremberg city council). Staatsarchiv Nürnberg, Rep. 60a.
StaatsAB: Staatsarchiv Bamberg.
StaatsAN: Staatsarchiv Nürnberg.
StadtAB: Stadtarchiv Bamberg.
StadtAN: Stadtarchiv Nürnberg.
Stuart: Kathy Stuart, Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Wilbertz: Gisela Wilbertz. Scharfrichter und Abdecker im Hochstift Osnabrück: Untersuchungen zur Sozialgeschichte zweier “unehrlichen” Berufe im nordwesten Raum vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Osnabrück: Wenner, 1979).
Preface
1. Heinrich Sochaczewsky, Der Scharfrichter von Berlin (Berlin: A. Weichert, 1889), 297.
2. JHJ Nov 13 1617; see also Theodor Hampe, “Die lezte Amstverrichtung des Nürnberger Scharfrichters Franz Schmidt,” in MVGN 26 (1926): 321ff.
3. Among twentieth-century historians of early modern executioners, characterizations ranged from sociopathic to emotionless to fellow victims of society; Nowosadtko, 352.
4. Meister Frantzen Nachrichter alhier in Nürnberg, all sein Richten am Leben, so wohl seine Leibs Straffen, so Er verRicht, alleß hierin Ordentlich beschrieben, aus seinem selbst eigenen Buch abschrieben worden, ed. J.M.F. von Endter (Nuremberg: J.L.S. Lechner, 1801), reprinted with a commentary by Jürgen C. Jacobs and Heinz Rölleke (Dortmund: Harenberg, 1980). Maister Franntzn Schmidts Nachrichters inn Nürmberg all sein Richten, ed. Albrecht Keller (Leipzig: Heims, 1913), reprinted with an introduction by Wolfgang Leiser (Neustadt an der Aisch, P.C.W. Schmidt, 1979). The English translation of the latter is A Hangman’s Diary, Being the Journal of Master Franz Schmidt, Public Executioner of Nuremberg, 1573–1617, trans. C. V. Calvert and A. W. Gruner (New York: D. Appleton, 1928), reprinted (Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1973).
5. See, for example, the “journals” of Ansbach’s executioners from 1575 to 1603 (StaatsAN Rep 132, Nr. 57); in Reutlingen from 1563–68 (Württembergische Vierteljahrshefte für Landesgeschichte, 1 [1878], 85–86); Andreas Tinel of Ohlau, c. 1600 (cited in Keller, 257); Jacob Steinmayer in Haigerloch, 1764–81 (Württembergische Vierteljahrshefte für Landesgeschichte, 4 [1881]: 159ff.); Franz Joseph Wohlmuth in Salzburg (Das Salzburger Scharfrichtertagebuch, ed. Peter Putzer [Vienna: Österreichischer Kunst- und Kulturverlag, 1985]); Johann Christian Zippel in Stade (Gisela Wilbertz, “Das Notizbuch des Scharfrichters Johann Christian Zippel in Stade [1766–1782],” in Stader Jahrbuch, n.s. 65 [1975]: 59–78). For an overview of early modern executioner registers, see Keller, 248–60.
At most, about one in three German males was to some degree literate. Hans Jörg Künast, “Getruckt zu Augspurg”: Buchdruck und Buchhandel in Augsburg zwischen 1468 und 1555 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1997), 11–13; R. A. Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe: Culture and Education, 1500–1800 (Harlow, UK: Pearson Education, 2002), 125ff.
6. The most famous of these were the memoirs of the Sanson executioner dynasty of Paris, collected by Henri Sanson as Sept générations d’exécuteurs, 1688–1847, 6 vols. (Paris: Décembre-Alonnier, 1862–63); translated and published in an abbreviated English version (London: Chatto and Windus, 1876). For British examples of the genre, see John Evelyn, Diary of John Evelyn (London: Bickers and Bush, 1879); and Stewart P. Evans, Executioner: The Chronicles of James Berry, Victorian Hangman (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2004).
7. In addition to the beginning and end of the journal, as well as the beginning of Schmidt’s tenure in Nuremberg: 1573 (2x); 1576 (3x); 1577 (2x); Mar 6 1578; Apr 10 1578; Jul 21 1578; Mar 19 1579; Jan 26 1580; Feb 20 1583; Oct 16 1584; Aug 4 1586; Jul 4 1588; Apr 19 1591; Mar 11 1598; Sep 14 1602; Jun 7 1603; Mar 4 1606; Dec 23 1606.
8. Friedrich Werner, executed Feb 11 1585. The sole exception is a passing reference to Hans Spiss, my kinsman, who is whipped out of town here with the rods by the Lion (for abetting an escaping murderer); FSJ Jun 7 1603.
9. Keller concludes that “he never succeeds in the ordering of his thoughts” (252).
10. The 1801 version of Endter was based on an eighteenth-century manuscript in the StaatsAN Rep 25: S II. L 25, no. 12. The version edited by Albrecht Keller in 1913 was derived mainly from the late-seventeenth-century copy of GNM Bibliothek 2° HS Merkel 32. My own translation of the FSJ (forthcoming in print) is based on the copy in the 1634 Stadtchronik of Hans Rigel in the StadtBN, 652 2°. Apparently other copies and fragments were produced during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of which at least two survive in the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg (SH MSC Hist. 70 and MSC Hist. 83) and two in the GNM (Bibliothek 4° HS 187 514; Archiv, Rst Nürnberg, Gerichtswesen Nr. V1/3).
11. This motive is suggested by both Keller (Maister Franntzn Schmidts Nachrichters, Introduction, x–xi) and Nowosadtko (“‘Und nun alter, ehrlicher Franz’: Die Transformation des Scharfrichtermotivs am Beispiel einer Nurnberger Malefizchronik,” Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 31, no. 1 [2006]: 223–45), but neither follows through on the implications for the author’s life.
12. Marriage, birth, and death registers, located in the LKAN, have allowed me to reconstruct the externals of Schmidt’s origins and family life. Interrogation protocols and other criminal court records, found principally in the Staatsarchiv Nürnberg, have filled in considerable context on his professional activity. Decrees of the Nuremberg council, known as Ratsverläße, were the most versatile sources, providing a range of revealing information about both aspects of his life. The decrees also helped shed light on his simultaneous work as a medical consultant, particularly in the years following his retirement as Nuremberg’s executioner (only fleetingly mentioned in his journal). Finally, I owe much to the valuable bits of biographical information culled by previous scholars, most notably Albrecht Keller, Wolfgang Leiser, Jürgen C. Jacobs, and Ilse Schumann.
13. For a useful overview, see Julius R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
1. The Apprentice
1. Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 25, Literary and Educational Writings, ed. J. K. Sowards (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 305.
2. Essays, trans. J. M. Cohen (Harmondsworth, UK, and Baltimore: Penguin, 1958), 116.
3. On the apparent premodern indifference to animal suffering, see, most famously, Robert Darnton’s The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Vintage, 1985).
4. This reconstruction is based on the common training experiences of the sons of executioner dynasties, as described in Wilbertz, 120–31. Frantz Schmidt does not provide any account of training with his father in the journal other than the June 1573 beginning of his work as a traveling journeyman.
5. This section is especially indebted to the treatment of Arthur E. Imhof, Lost Worlds: How Our European Ancestors Coped with Everyday Life and Why Life Is So Hard Today, trans. Thomas Robisheaux (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996), 68–105.
6. For a recent overview, see C. Pfister, “Population of Late Medieval Germany,” in Germany: A New Social and Economic History, vol. 1, 1450–1630, ed. Bob Scribner, 213ff.
7. Imhof, Lost Worlds, 72.
8. Imhof, Lost Worlds, 87–88. See also John D. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977). On the Little Ice Age, see Wolfgang Behringer, Kulturgeschichte des Klimas: Von der Eiszeit bis zur globalen Erwärmung (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2007), esp. 120–95.
9. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., German Histories in the Age of Reformations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 96–97.
10. Brady, German Histories, 97. See also Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 155–60.
11. I am persuaded by the argument of Hillay Zmora, The Feud in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011). See also his companion volume, State and Nobility in Early Modern Franconia, 1440–1567 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
12. Decree of August 12, 1522, cited in Monika Spicker-Beck, Räuber, Mordbrenner, umschweifendes Gesind: Zur Kriminalität im 16. Jahrhundert (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 1995), 25.
13. Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, An Unabridged Translation of Simplicius Simplicissimus, trans. Monte Adair (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986), 9–10.
14. FSJ Feb 14 1596. More than one in three robbers in one sixteenth-century sample was identified as a landsknecht. Spicker-Beck, Räuber, 68.
15. See Bob Scribner, “The Mordbrenner Panic in Sixteenth Century Germany,” in The German Underworld: Deviants and Outcasts in German History, ed. Richard J. Evans (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), 29–56; Gerhard Fritz, Eine Rotte von allerhandt rauberischem Gesindt: Öffentliche Sicherheit in Südwestdeutschland vom Ende des Dreissigjährigen Krieges bis zum Ende des Alten Reiches (Ostfildern J. Thorbecke, 2004), 469–500; and Spicker-Beck, Räuber, esp. 25ff.
16. Imhof, Lost Worlds, 4.
17. Angstmann, 85.
18. Other infamous occupations included barbers, beggars, street cleaners, tanners, court servants and archers, shepherds, sow-gelders, privy cleaners, millers, night watchmen, actors, chimney sweeps, and tollkeepers. Nowosadtko, 12–13 and 24–28.
19. “Der Hurenson der Hencker,” in 1276 Augsburg Stadtrecht, Keller, 108. The unfree argument falters on the fact that the most common names among executioners were actually from trades and crafts, including Schmidt (smith), Schneider (tailor), and Schreiner (carpenter). A few hangmen may have been condemned criminals but this too seems to have been the exception more than the rule. Angstmann (74–113) is especially influenced by contemporary anthropological research on this subject during the early twentieth century, as well as her findings in the sagas. Some historians even posited, based on Jungian notions of a sacra-lmagical discourse (and no historical evidence), that medieval executioners were the heirs to pagan Germanic priests who led ritual sacrifices and that their subsequent vilification was part of a Christian conversion campaign. Karl von Amira, Die germanischen Todesstrafen (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1922); see also discussion in Nowosadtko, 21–36, and G&T, 14, 38–39.
20. The most celebrated executioner dynasties in early modern Germany were Brand, Döring, Fahner, Fuchs, Gebhardt, Gutschlag, Hellriegel, Hennings, Kaufmann, Konrad, Kühn, Rathmann, Schwanhardt, and Schwarz, G&T, 46; also Stuart, 69.
21. Frantz’s account of his father’s disgrace is found in Restitution, 201r–v, and confirmed in Enoch Widmans Chronik der Stadt Hof, ed. Christian Meyer (Hof: Lion, 1893), 430, which does not mention Heinrich Schmidt by name, however, and specifies that the margrave ordered two servants and one gunmaker hanged. The siege of Hof is described in Friedrich Ebert, Kleine Geschichte der Stadt Hof (Hof: Hoermann, 1961), 34ff.; E. Dietlein, Chronik der Stadt Hof, vol. 1: Allgemeine Stadtgeschichte bis zum Jahre 1603 (Hof: Hoermann, 1937), 329–94; Kurt Stierstorfer, Die Belagerung Hofs, 1553 (Hof: Nordoberfränkischen Vereins für Natur, Geschichts-, und Landeskunde, 2003).
22. Hof’s baptismal records from this period are not extant. I have based this dating on the journal entry of chaplain Johannes Hagendorn, who upon Meister Frantz’s retirement in early August 1618 noted that the executioner had already celebrated his sixty-fourth birthday (JHJ 68r). Since Schmidt’s 1624 restitution edict does not mention that Frantz was already born at the time of his father’s disgrace, this leaves us with a window of roughly November 1553 to July 1554.
23. Ebert, Kleine Geschichte der Stadt Hof, 25–27.
24. Widmans Chronik, 180, 188.
25. Dietlein, Chronik, 434–35.
26. Ilse Schumann, “Der Bamberger Nachrichter Heinrich Schmidt: Eine Ergänzung zu seinem berühmten Sohn Franz,” in Genealogie 3 (2001): 596–608.
27. Johannes Looshorn, Die Geschichte des Bisthums Bamberg, vol 5: 1556–1622 (Bamberg: Handels-Dr., 1903), 106, 148, 217.
28. StaatsAB A231/a, Nr. 1797, 1–Nr. 1809, 1 (Ämterrechnungen, 1573–1584).
29. StadtAB Rep B5, Nr. 80 (1572/73).
30. Stuart, 54–63; G&T, 23; Keller, 120; Wilbertz, 323–24.
31. Whereas Hof was almost exclusively Lutheran, only 14 percent of Bamberg’s population in 1570 was Protestant. Karin Dengler-Schrieber, Kleine Bamberger Stadtgeschichte (Regensburg: Friedrich Puslet, 2006), 78.
32. Wilbertz, 319–21.
33. Werner Danckert, Unehrliche Leute. Die verfemten Berufe, 2nd ed. (Bern: Francke, 1979), 39ff. On guild moralism, see Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, 1648–1871 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), 90–107.
34. The Berlin executioner was identified by his gray hat with red trim, and some fourteenth-century executioners apparently wore caps covering their ears but never their faces. In 1543 the city of Frankfurt am Main required its executioner to wear “red, white and green stripes at the top of his vest sleeves” or pay a fine of 20 fl., Keller, 79ff., 121–22; G&T, 26–28; Nowosadtko, 239–48.
35. Wilbertz, 333; Nowosadtko, 266; also Stuart, 3.
36. Carolingian rulers continued to refer to these officials by their Roman name of carnifices (literally, flesh-makers) as well as apparitores or more simply as knaves (Knechte) or lords of the court (Gerichtsherren). By the thirteenth century, the chief figure had become the Fronbote or beadle (also Büttel), called by the Sachenspiegel (1224) “a holy emissary” or “knave of God,” thereby reinforcing the sacral nature of his duty. There is no mention of a full-time executioner in either the Sachenspiegel or Schwabenspiegel (1275), G&T, 14. See also Keller, 79–91.
37. Bambergensis Constitutio Criminalis, published as Johann von Schwarzenberg: Bambergische halßgericht und rechtliche Ordnung, Nachdruck der Ausgabe Mainz 1510 (Nuremberg: Verlag Medien & Kultur, 1979), 258b.
38. Stuart, 23–26; Nowosadtko, 50–51, 62; G&T, 9, 15; Keller, 46–47.
39. Stuart, 29ff.
40. Bambergensis; CCC.
41. CCC, preamble.
42. The term Nachrichter was introduced in Nuremberg as early as the thirteenth century but didn’t catch on elsewhere until the sixteenth century (cf. articles 86, 96, and 97 of the CCC), spreading to the north by the beginning of the seventeenth century. Scharfrichter, by contrast, was used early in the sixteenth century in the same way everywhere in German lands. On the multiple regional variations of German names for the executioner, see Angstmann, 4–75, especially 28–31, 36–43, and 45–50; also Keller, 106ff.; and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1877), 4, pt. 2: 990–93; 7: 103–4; and 8: 2196–97.
43. CCC, art. 258b.
44. Gerd Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör: Kriminalität, Herrschaft, und Gesellschaft in einer frühneuzeitlichen Stadt (Bonn: Bouvier, 1991), 155; Schumann, “Heinrich Schmidt Nachrichter,” 605; Angstmann, 105.
45. In a late-sixteenth-century sample from Cologne this comprised three-quarters of executions during the period, 85 of 193 executions for theft and 62 for robbery, Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör, 154.
46. FSJ Apr 5 1589.
47. Transportation to foreign colonies was more popular in England during the eighteenth century and France during the nineteenth century. See André Zysberg, “Galley and Hard Labor Convicts in France (1550–1850): From the Galleys to Hard Labor Camps: Essay on a Long Lasting Penal Institution,” in The Emergence of Carceral Institutions: Prisons, Galleys, and Lunatic Asylums, 1550–1900, ed. Pieter Spierenburg (Rotterdam: Erasmus Universiteit, 1984), esp. 78–85; also Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 79–81.
48. On the origin of Nuremberg’s discipline- and workhouse, see Joel F. Harrington, “Escape from the Great Confinement: The Genealogy of a German Workhouse,” in Journal of Modern History 71 (1999): 308–45.
49. FSJ Dec 15 1593; Sep 5 1594; Mar 29 1595; May 19 1601; May 28 1595; Nov 22 1603; Aug 17 1599; May 2 1605; Jan 25 1614 (2x); Jul 19 1614; Jan 11 1615; Jan 12 1615. See also Harrington, “Escape from the Great Confinement,” 330–32.
50. “Ob Kriegsleute auch in seligem Stande sein können” (1526), in D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Herman Böhlau, 1883ff.; reprint, 1964–68), 19:624–26; “Kirchenpostille zum Evangelium am 4. Sonntag nach Trinitatis,” ibid., 6:36–42; “Von weltlicher Obrigkeit, wie weit man ihr Gehorsam schuldig sei,” ibid., 11:265.
51. Praxis rerum criminalium, durch den Herrn J. Damhouder, in hoch Teutsche Sprach verwandelt durch M. Beuther von Carlstat (Frankfurt am Main, 1565), 264ff. Jacob Döpler, Theatrum poenarum, suppliciorum, et executionum criminalium: oder, Schau-platz derer leibes und lebens-straffen (Sondershausen, 1693), 1:540.
52. G&T, 23.
53. In Bayreuth on Sep 2 1560; G&T, 5398.
54. RV 1313: 14v (Mar 4 1570).
55. Nowosadtko, 196; Wilbertz, 117–20.
56. Keller, 114–15.
57. Keller, 245–46. Rotwelsch was a combination of the Latin jargon of wandering monks and students with Hebrew, Yiddish, and Romany (Gypsy). Like English Cockney, the majority of words were created by a change in meaning (through metaphor or “formal techniques such as substitution, affixing, or reversal of consonants, vowels, and syllables”), Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 182–83; and see also his Abbild und soziale Wirklichkeit des Bettler- und Gaunertums zu Beginn der Neuzeit: Sozial-, mentalitäts-, und sprachgeschichtliche Studien zum Liber vagatorum (1510) (Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, 1988), especially 26–106; also Siegmund A. Wolf, Wörterbuch des Rotwelschen: Deutsche Gaunersprache (Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut, 1956); Ludwig Günther, Die deutsche Gaunersprache und verwandte Geheim und Berufssprachen (Wiesbaden: Sändig, 1956).
58. See the fascinating overview of Angstmann, especially 2–73.
59. Jacob Grimm et al., Weisthümer (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1840), 1:818–19; Eduard Osenbrüggen, Studien zur deutschen und schweizerischen Rechtsgeschichte (Schaffhausen: Fr. Hurter, 1868), 392–403; Keller, 243.
60. Keller, 247–48; G&T, 68–70.
61. FSJ 1573; Aug 13 1577; Mar 19 1579.
62. Wilbertz, 123.
63. Based on the 1772 Meisterbrief of Johann Michael Edelhäuser, G&T, 99. For the full text of a Meisterbrief from 1676, see Keller, 239; also Nowosadtko, 196–97.
64. Restitution, 201v–202r.
2. The Journeyman
1. Essays, 63.
2. Hollfeld: twice in 1573, once in 1575; Forchheim: four times in 1577, once in 1578; Bamberg: once in 1574, twice in 1577.
3. Harrington, The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 78–79. Katherine A. Lynch (Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800: The Urban Foundations of Western Society [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 38) estimates that migrants constituted 3–8 percent of most German urban populations.
4. Angstmann, especially 2–73.
5. For examples of these symbols, see Spicker-Beck, Räuber, 100ff. See also Florike Egmond, Underworlds: Organized Crime in the Netherlands, 1650–1800 (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1993); and Carsten Küther, Menschen auf der Strasse: Vagierende Unterschichten in Bayern, Franken, und Schwaben in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1983), especially 60–73.
6. Two-thirds of all early modern homicides involved stabbings, most commonly in taverns. Julius R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 123. On the drinking culture of Meister Frantz’s day, see B. Ann Tlusty, Bacchus and Civic Order: The Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2001); B. Ann Tlusty and Beat Kümin, eds., Public Drinking in the Early Modern World: Voices from the Tavern, 1500–1800, vols. 1 and 2, The Holy Roman Empire (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011); Marc Forster, “Taverns and Inns in the German Countryside: Male Honor and Public Space,” in Politics and Reformations: Communities, Polities, Nations, and Empires: Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Brady, Jr., ed. Christopher Ocker et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 230–50.
7. For a typical reference that Meister Frantz “drank neither wine nor beer,” see ASB 210: 248v.
8. FSJ Nov 18 1617; Dec 3 1612; Mar 15 1597; Nov 14 1598.
9. In one 1549 account from Nuremberg, a suspected child murderer was confronted with the corpse of a newborn found in the household’s common toilet: “When the master of the house said, ‘Oh! You innocent baby, if one among us here is guilty [of your murder], then give us a sign,’ then supposedly the left arm of the child immediately lifted up,” whereupon the accused maid immediately fainted, ASB 226a: 32v; FSJ May 3 1597; StaatsAN 52a, 447: 1155; Ulinka Rublack finds references to the Bahrprobe in some seventeenth-century criminal records (The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany [Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1999], 58) and Robert Zagolla claims that the practice continued in some locations even later (Folter und Hexenprozess: Die strafrechtliche Spruchpraxis der Juristenfakultät Rostock im 17. Jahrhundert [Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2007], 220).
10. FSJ Jul 6 1592; Jan 16 1616; also JHJ Jan 16 1616. Johann Christian Siebenkees, ed. (Materialien zur nürnbergischen Geschichte [Nuremberg, 1792], 2:593–98) records two instances of the bier test in sixteenth-century Nuremberg, one in 1576 and one in 1599.
11. E.g., RV 1419: 26v. See also Knapp, Loch, 25ff.; Zagolla, Folter und Hexenprozess, 327–28.
12. Christian Ulrich Grupen, Observationes Juris Criminalis (1754), quoted in Keller, 200.
13. Only 1 to 2 percent of criminal suspects in late-sixteenth-century Cologne were tortured, the great majority of them professional robbers and thieves. Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör, 109–15; also Stuart, 141–42.
14. G&T, 86–88; Zagolla, Folter und Hexenprozess, 399–400.
15. See CCC, art. 131, para. 36, on sufficient grounds for torture in infanticide cases; also Rublack, Crimes of Women, 54; Wilbertz, 80; and Nowosadtko, 164.
16. FSJ May 10 1599; Knapp, Loch, 37.
17. FSJ Dec 4 1599; Dec 23 1605. See also RV 2551: 23r–v (Oct 10 1663).
18. JHJ 88v–89r (Feb 8 1614). The interrogators of both Helena Nusslerin (RV 1309: 16v [Nov 12 1569]) and of Barbara Schwenderin (RV 1142: 31v; 1143: 8r [May 8 1557]) were ordered to wait eight days before further torture. Similarly, Margaretha Voglin was allowed two weeks to grow stronger before her execution was carried out (RV 2249: 24v [Feb 19 1641]).
19. StadtAN F1-2/VII (1586).
20. ASB 215: 18.
21. Magistrates accused Kreuzmayer of “many hundred sacramental curses.” ASB 212: 121r–122v, 125v–126r; FSJ Sep 5 1594.
22. For a detailed analysis of Mayr’s case, see Harrington, Unwanted Child, 177–227.
23. ASB 215: 332r.
24. It is difficult to estimate how many torture sessions Schmidt took part in per year. Contemporary Ansbach executioners (1575–1600) had an average rate of about one per week, Angstmann, 105.
25. FSJ Apr 21 1602.
26. See, for instance, FSJ May 25 1581; Feb 20 1582; Aug 4 1586 (2x); Jul 11 1598.
27. FSJ Jul 6 1592. On widespread questioning of torture’s reliability among contemporary jurists, see Zagolla, Folter und Hexenprozess, 34ff.
28. 1588 and 1591, cited in Knapp, Loch, 33. On the latitude of executioners in this respect, see Zagolla, Folter und Hexenprozess, 367–73; also Joel F. Harrington, “Tortured Truths: The Self-Expositions of a Career Juvenile Criminal in Early Modern Nuremberg,” in German History 23, no. 2 (2005): 143–71.
29. Based on a sample of 114 torture outcomes from Cologne, 1549–1675, Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör, 114–17. In Cologne and Rostock, for instance, six in ten robbers were tortured versus only one in ten homicides, Zagolla, Folter und Hexenprozess, 48, 61–63.
30. Jacob Grimm, “Von der Poesie im Recht,” first published in 1815.
31. Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 60.
32. FSJ Aug 13 1578; Oct 9 1578; Nov 9 1579; Feb 7 1581; May 6 1581; Apr 22, 1585; Jun 25 1586; Aug 23 1593; Sep 25 1595; Oct 24 1597; Feb 23 1609; Nov 25 1612; Jan 30 1614. See Jütte, Poverty and Deviance, 164ff., on the branding of vagrants during this period. The ear-clippings were on Jan 29 1583; Sep 4 1583; Jan 22 1600; Aug 4 1601; and Dec 9 1600. The sole tongue-trimming was on Apr 19 1591.
The young journeyman does not record the number or nature of corporal punishments administered during these early years, but he witnessed or assisted his father cutting off at least six ears and two fingers, as well as administering two brandings. In 1576 he notes of the executed Hans Peyhel, Two years ago at Herzogenaurach I cut off his ears and flogged him with rods. During the period 1572–1585, Heinrich (or occasionally Frantz Schmidt before 1578) administered 85 floggings, 11 ear-clippings, 3 finger-choppings, and 2 brandings. Schumann, “Heinrich Schmidt Nachrichter,” 605.
33. StaatsAB A231/a, Nr. 1797, 1–Nr. 1803,1.
34. Jason P. Coy, Strangers and Misfits: Banishment, Social Control, and Authority in Early Modern Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 2–3; Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör, 148–53. The use of banishment overall appears to have peaked in German lands during the second half of the sixteenth century. In addition to the unrecorded floggings before 1578, journal references to other whippings are found in FSJ Feb 29 1580; Jun 7 1603; and Aug 4 1586.
35. FSJ Oct 24 1597.
36. FSJ Jan 10 1583.
37. One flogging by Schmidt’s predecessor in 1573 resulted in a fatality the next day, Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 63.
38. Stuart, 143.
39. Keller, 100.
40. Siebenkees, Materialien, 1:543ff; Keller, 189–96; Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 52–53. Both traditions continued in some German localities into the eighteenth century.
41. Keller, 7.
42. Siebenkees, Materialien, 2:599–600. A 1513 case is cited in Keller, 160. See also G&T, 55–56; Richard van Dülmen, Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany, trans. Elisabeth Neu (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1990), 88–89; and CCC, arts. 124, 130, and 133.
43. Keller, 185; Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 58.
44. FSJ Mar 6 1578. For a fuller account of Apollonia Vöglin’s ordeal, see Harrington, Unwanted Child, 21–71.
45. FSJ Jan 26 1580; jurist opinions cited in Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 58.
46. FSJ Jul 17 1582; Aug 11 1582; Jul 11 1598; Mar 5 1611; Jul 19 1595; Aug 10 1581; Oct 26 1581; Jun 8 1587; Oct 11 1593.
47. FSJ Jan 18 1588.
48. FSJ 1573; 1576; Aug 6 1579; Jan 26 1580; Mar 3 1580; Aug 16 1580; Jul 27 1582; Aug 11 1582; Aug 14 1582; Nov 9 1586; Jan 2 1588; May 28 1588; May 5 1590; Jul 7 1590; May 25 1591; Jun 30 1593; Jan 2 1595; Mar 15 1597; Oct 26 1602; Aug 13 1604; Dec 7 1615.
49. RV 1551: 5v (Jan 2 1588).
50. FSJ Jul 27 1582; Nov 9 1586; Jan 2 1595; Feb 10 1597; Mar 15 1597; Dec 7 1615.
51. FSJ Mar 29 1595. Frantz Schmidt only specifies the number of nips four times in his journal: 2 nips: Feb 11 1585; 3 nips: Aug 16 1580 and Oct 23 1589; 4 nips: Mar 5 1612. Again, drawing and quartering for treason, made infamous by Foucault and others, remained an extremely rare form of execution in the early modern era, too much of an anomaly to be useful in any social historical context.
52. FSJ May 10 1599; JHJ Aug 4 1612.
53. FSJ Feb 11 1584; Feb 12 1584; Oct 21 1585; Dec 19 1615. See also above, pages 173–79. The first woman was not hanged in Hamburg until 1619, Aachen in 1662, and Breslau in 1750. Keller, 171; G&T, 55.
54. Cited in Keller, 170. See also CCC, arts. 159 and 162; Wilbertz, 86–87.
55. FSJ Sep 23 1590; Jul 10 1593; also Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 136.
56. FSJ: 187 executions with the sword; 172 executions with the rope. During Heinrich Schmidt’s tenure in Bamberg, from late 1572 to early 1585, 105 of 106 executions were either hanging (67) or decapitation (38). Schumann, “Heinrich Schmidt Nachrichter,” 605.
57. Overall, decapitations constituted 47.5 percent (187 of 394) of Frantz Schmidt’s capital punishments.
58. FSJ Jun 5 1573; 1573; 1576. For Schmidt’s references to himself as the Nachrichter (never Henker), see Restitution, 201v–202v.
59. Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 52–53; Wilbertz, 87–88.
60. FSJ Mar 19 1579; Aug 16 1580; Jul 17 1582; Aug 11 1582; Jul 7 1584.
61. Keller, 157, 160–65.
62. Dülmen, Theatre of Horror, especially 5–42.
63. JHJ Mar 5 1612, quoted in Hampe, 73.
64. JHJ 97r–v (Mar 7 1615); FSJ Mar 7 1615. See also Stuart, 175ff., on the importance of a good death on the scaffold.
65. Hampe, 73.
66. Hampe, 69, 75.
67. Hampe, 19; also Richard J. Evans, Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600–1987 (Oxford, UK, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 69–70.
68. FSJ Feb 9 1598.
69. ASB 226a: 58v; FSJ Sep 23 1590.
70. FSJ Feb 18 1585; Sep 16 1580; also Dec 19 1615. “Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist” (1562) and “Was mein Gott will” (1554), Jürgen C. Jacobs and Heinz Rölleke, commentary to 1801 version of Schmidt journal, 230.
71. JHJ Mar 5 1611.
72. FSJ Mar 11 1597; JHJ Mar 11 1597. See also Dec 18 1600; Mar 18 1616.
73. FSJ Nov 6 1595; Jan 10 1581; 1576; Jul 1 1616; JHJ Jul 1 1616.
74. FSJ Mar 9 1609; Dec 23 1600; Jul 8 1613.
75. FSJ Jul 11 1598.
76. FSJ Jan 28 1613; JHJ Jan 28 1613; ASB 226: 56r–57v.
77. FSJ Aug 16 1580.
78. JHJ Feb 28 1611; FSJ Feb 28 1611.
79. 1506, 1509, 1540, and Jul 20 1587. FSJ Feb 12 1596; Sep 2 1600; Jan 19 1602; Feb 28 1611. Two additional notations of putzen, which appear only in the Bamberg manuscript (Dec 17 1612; Feb 8 1614), were clearly the interpolations of a later editor, based on chronicle descriptions, since Schmidt is referred to in the third person. Hampe, 31; also G&T, 73–74.
80. Angstmann, 109–10; Wilbertz, 127–28; Dülmen, Theatre of Horror, 231–40; Keller, 230.
81. StaatsAN 52b, 226a: 176; Hampe, 79; RV 2250:13r–v, 15r–v (Mar 16 1641), 29r–v (Mar 30 1641), 59r (Apr 1 1641); StadtAN FI-14/IV: 2106–7.
82. Restitution, 202v. At another point, Schmidt records that I executed at some risk (FSJ Jan 12 1591). The stoning of Simon Schiller and his wife took place on Jun 7 1612.
83. G&T, 68; also Angstmann, 109.
84. RV 1222: 5r (Apr 14 1563); RV 1224: 5r (Jun 28 1563); RV 1230: 29v (Dec 9 1563), 38r (Dec 16 1563); RV 1250: 31v (Jun 19 1565); RV 1263: 20r (Jun 4 1566).
85. RV 1264: 17v (Jun 28 1566); RV 1268: 8v (Oct 10 1566); RV 1274: 2r (Apr 14 1567); RV 1275: 14r (Apr 14 1567); RV 1280: 24r (Sep 10 1567); RV 1280: 25v (Sep 12 1567). The seven children of Lienhardt and Kunigunda Lippert were Michael (baptized Oct 25 1568), Lorentz (Nov 8 1569), Jobst (Dec 27 1570), Conrad (Jul 17 1572), Barbara (Jul 10 1573), Margarethe (Feb 13 1575), and Magdalena (Dec 6 1577). LKAN Taufungen St. Sebaldus.
86. RV 1310: 24r–v (Dec 3 1569), 29r–v (Dec 7 1569); RV 1402: 22r (Oct 24 1576); RV 1404: 1r (Dec 6 1576), 39v (Dec 28 1576).
87. RV 1405: 24v (Jan 14 1577).
88. ASB 222: 75v (23 Oct 1577).
89. RV 1421: 14v (Mar 21 1578); RV 1422: 24v (Apr 5 1578), 58r–v (Apr 25 1578), 68r (Apr 29 1578).
90. RV 1423: 33v (May 16 1578).
3. The Master
1. Essays, 76.
2. Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle, trans. Christopher Maurer (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 73.
3. FSJ Oct 11 1593.
4. StaatsAB A245/I, Nr. 146, 124–125r. For other especially scandalous examples of fraud, see FSJ Feb 9 1598; Dec 3 1605; Jul 12 1614; also Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 247ff.
5. Stuart Carroll, Blood and Violence in Early Modern France (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), 49.
6. Brevis Germaniae Descriptio, 74; cited in Klaus Leder, Kirche und Jugend in Nürnberg und seinem Landgebiet: 1400–1800 (Neustadt an der Aisch: Degener, 1973), 1. My brief description of Nuremberg’s appearance is greatly indebted to Gerald Strauss’s much more lyrical and evocative description in Nuremberg in the Sixteenth Century (New York: John Wiley, 1966), 9–35, which remains the single best English-language overview of daily life in early modern Nuremberg. I have also found the following surveys particularly helpful: Emil Reicke, Geschichte der Reichsstadt Nürnberg (Nuremberg: Joh. Phil. Rawschen, 1896; reprint, Neustadt an der Aisch: P.C.W. Schmidt, 1983); Werner Schultheiß, Kleine Geschichte Nürnbergs, 3rd ed. (Nuremberg: Lorenz Spindler, 1997); Nürnberg: Eine europäische Stadt in Mittelalter und Neuzeit, ed. Helmut Neuhaus (Nuremberg: Selbstverlag des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, 2000); and the indispensable reference work Stadtlexikon Nürnberg, ed. Michael Diefenbacher and Rudolf Endres (Nuremberg: W. Tümmels Verlag, 2000).
7. Reicke, Geschichte der Reichsstadt Nürnberg, 998.
8. Andrea Bendlage, Henkers Hertzbruder. Das Strafverfolgungspersonal der Reichsstadt Nürnberg im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Constance: UVK, 2003), 28–31.
9. William Smith, “A Description of the Cittie of Nuremberg” (1590), MVGN 48 (1958), 222. For information on the informers (Kundschaftler) employed by the city, see Bendlage, Henkers Hertzbruder, 127–37.
10. During his thirteen years in Bamberg, Heinrich Schmidt’s annual income—paid by the execution, not by the week—averaged 50 fl., with a peak of 87 fl. from 1574 to 1575 and a low of 29 fl. the following year. StaatsAB A231/1, Nr. 1797/1. For the details of Frantz’s contract, see RV 1422: 68r (Apr 29 1578); also Knapp, Loch, 61–62. The Bregenz executioner had a base salary of 52 fl. annually plus 1–2 fl. per execution; the Munich executioner was paid 83 fl. annually until 1697; while their Osnabrück counterpart received 2 thaler (1.7 fl.) per execution. Nowosadtko, 65–67; Wilbertz, 101.
11. RV 1119: 9v, 11v, 12r, 17r–v, 18r, 20r (Nov 13–15 1554); Knapp, Loch, 56–57.
12. StaatsAN 62, 54–79; LKAN Beerdigungen St. Lorenz, 57v: “Jorg Peck Pallenpinder bey dem [sh]onnetbadt Sep 16 1560.” At least two of the nine children born to Jorg and Margareta Peck died in childhood, possibly others. LKAN Taufungen, St. Sebaldus: 93v (Magdalena; Jul 24 1544), 95r (Maria; Sep 20 1545), 96r (Jorg; May 26 1546), 97r (Gertraud; Mar 14 1547), 99r (Sebastian; Aug 10 1549), 104v (Georgius; Dec 1 1551), 105v (Barbara; Oct 6 1552), 107v (Magdalena; Aug 30 1554), 110v (Philipus; Nov 29 1555).
13. LKAN Trauungen, St. Sebaldus 1579, 70; RV 1430: 34r (Dec 7 1579).
14. Stadtlexikon Nürnberg, 437.
15. Ernst Mummenhoff, “Die öffentliche Gesundheits- und Krankenpflege im alten Nürnberg: Das Spital zum Heilige Geist,” in Festschrift zur Eröffnung des Neuen Krankenhauses der Stadt Nürnberg (Nuremberg, 1898), 6–8; Stuart, 103.
16. G&T, 92. In the late sixteenth century, the Nuremberg Lion earned a base annual salary of 52 fl., Bendlage, Henkers Hertzbruder, 36–37, 89.
17. RV 1576: 6v, 10v (Nov 11 and 18 1589); StaatsAN 62, 82–145.
18. FSJ Aug 16 1597.
19. Knapp, Loch, 67.
20. Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör, 103.
21. Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 64–81. On the incarceration of the insane during this period in German history, see H. C. Erik Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), especially 322–84.
22. For instance, a stay of eleven weeks and three days in 1588 cost Christoph Greisdörffer 13 fl., 2 d. 8 H; paid in full at his release, StaatsAN 54a, II: 340.
23. Öhler was appointed Lochhirt on Oct 26 1557 and at a salary of 2 fl. per week was almost as well paid as Frantz Schmidt, RV 1148: 24v–25r (Oct 26 1557). On the duties of Nuremberg wardens, see Bendlage, Henkers Hertzbruder, 37–42.
24. StaatsAN 52a, 447: 1002 (Jun 23 1578); Knapp, Loch, 145–47.
25. Knapp, Loch, 20–21.
26. Knapp, Loch, 20. FSJ Jul 3 1593; Nov 22 1603, Sep 15 1604. See also prison suicides recorded for 1580, 1604, 1611, and 1615, as well as attempted suicides mentioned by Frantz Schmidt, StadtAN F1, 47: 8314, 876r; FSJ Jul 11 1598; May 10 1599. In 1604 a convicted murderer stabbed an accused rustler to death in prison (ASB 226: 17r–v).
27. StaatsAN 52a, 447: 1009–10; ASB 226: 23v; RV 1775: 13r–v (March 1605). The collective rebuilding of the gallows was prescribed in CCC, art. 215. See also Keller, 209ff.; Knapp, Loch, 69–70; Dülmen, Theatre of Horror, 70–73.
28. FSJ Sep 3 1588; Nov 5 1588; Dec 22 1586.
29. FSJ Jun 15 1591. Jacobs, commentary to 1801 Schmidt journal, 212.
30. William Ian Miller, Humiliation: And Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 16.
31. FSJ Dec 16 1594; Jun 21 1593.
32. FSJ Nov 10 1596; Jan 12 1583.
33. FSJ Aug 16 1580.
34. FSJ Jan 4 1582; Jul 24 1585; Oct 5 1597.
35. FSJ Jul 10 1593; and see, e.g., Dec 23 1605.
36. FSJ Oct 11 1593; Feb 9 1598; Jul 12 1614.
37. FSJ May 12 1584.
38. Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 100. For a fuller account, see Wilhelm Fürst, “Der Prozess gegen Nikolaus von Gülchen, Ratskonsulenten und Advokaten zu Nürnberg, 1605,” MVGN 20 (1913): 139ff.
39. FSJ Dec 23 1605.
40. FSJ Apr 10 1578; Aug 12 1578; 1576.
41. FSJ Apr 15 1578; 1576; Dec 22 1586; Jun 1 1587; Feb 18 1585; May 29 1582. See also Nov 17 1582; Sep 12 1583.
42. FSJ Mar 6 1578; Jan 26 1580; Aug 10 1581; Jul 17 1582, Jun 8 1587; Jul 20 1587; Mar 5 1612.
43. ASB 210: 74vff., 112 r; ASB 210: 106r–v. See also Norbert Schindler, “The World of Nicknames: On the Logic of Popular Nomenclature,” in Rebellion, Community, and Custom in Early Modern Germany, trans. Pamela E. Selwyn (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), especially 57–62; also F. Bock, “Nürnberger Spitzname von 1200 bis 1800,” MVGN 45 (1954): 1–147, and Bock, “Nürnberger Spitzname von 1200 bis 1800—Nachlese,” MVGN 49 (1959): 1–33. The same naming tendencies were evident in contemporary England: Paul Griffiths, Lost Londons: Change, Crime, and Control in the Capital City, 1550–1660 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 179–92.
44. JHJ 39v.
45. FSJ Jul 19 1614; Jun 22 1616; Sep 16 1580; Aug 4 1612; Aug 23 1594; Nov 21 1589; Aug 16 1587; Apr 30 1596; Jul 4 and Jul 7 1584.
46. Schmidt frequently mentions punishments elsewhere in Franconia that suggest more than word-of-mouth news, for instance, he identifies one condemned thief as Hans Weber from Neuenstadt,… whom I saw whipped with rods out of Neuenkirchen ten years ago (FSJ Aug 4 1586). See also Jan 29 1583; Feb 9 1585; Jun 20 1588; Nov 6 1588; Jan 15 1594; Mar 6 1604.
47. FSJ May 29 1582; Nov 17 1582; Sep 12 1583; Dec 4 1583; Jan 9 1581; Jul 23 1583. See also archer Georg Mayr whipped out of town for theft (Aug 11 1586); and Nov 18 1589; Mar 3 1597; Aug 16 1597; May 2 1605; Feb 10 1609; Dec 15 1611. For details on the frequent disciplining of such employees, see Bendlage, Henkers Hertzbruder, 165–201, 226–33.
48. FSJ Mar 3 1597; Aug 16 1597; May 25 1591.
49. FSJ Feb 10 1596; Mar 24 1590.
50. Griffiths, Lost Londons, 138; see also 196ff. on contemporary English terms for men of ill repute.
51. FSJ May 21 1611; Nov 24 1585.
52. FSJ May 24 1580; Apr 15 1581; Dec 20 1582; Nov 19 1584; Aug 14 1584; Mar 16 1585; Nov 17 1586; Nov 21 1586; Jul 14 1593; Jul 26 1593; Oct 9 1593; Nov 10 1597; Dec 14 1601; Mar 3 1604; Feb 12 1605; Nov 11 1615; Dec 8 1615. See also corporal punishments of Sep 8 1590; Jan 18 1588; Dec 9 1600; Apr 21 1601; Jan 27 1586.
53. FSJ Oct 9 1578; Oct 15 1579; Oct 31 1579; Oct 20 1580; Jan 9 1581; Jan 31 1581; Feb 7 1581; Feb 21 1581; May 6 1581; Sep 26 1581; Nov 25 1581; Dec 20 1582; Jan 10 1583; Jan 11 1583; Jul 15 1583; Aug 29 1583; Sep 4 1583; Nov 26 1583.
54. FSJ Oct 20 1580; Jan 10 1583; Jan 31 1581; Apr 2 1589; Jan 2 1588; Jan 18 1588. See also May 5 1590; Jun 11 1594; Jan 3 1595; Jun 8 1596.
55. On overall criminal pattern for female crime and executions, see Rublack, Crimes of Women; Otto Ulbricht, ed., Von Huren und Rabenmüttern: Weibliche Kriminalität in der frühen Neuzeit (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau, 1995); Joel F. Harrington, Reordering Marriage and Society in Reformation Germany (Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 228–40; and Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör, 178–79.
56. FSJ Feb 9 1581; Mar 27 1587; Jan 29 1599.
57. FSJ Jul 7 1584.
58. FSJ Nov 6 1610; Jul 19 1588. See also Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996).
59. FSJ Jul 3 1593; Dec 4 1599; May 7 1603; Mar 9 1609.
60. FSJ Jul 20 1587; Sep 15 1604.
61. Cf. accounts of annual tributes required of Hof’s Jews and frequent break-ins to Jewish homes, often leaving bits of pork behind. Dietlein, Chronik der Stadt Hof, 267–68; FSJ Sep 23 1590; Aug 3 1598; Oct 26 1602.
62. FSJ Sep 23 1590; Aug 25 1592; Jul 10 1592; and Jul 10 1593.
63. On this question of fluid early modern identity, see Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), and Valentin Groebner, Who Are You? Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe, trans. Mark Kyburz and John Peck (Cambridge, MA: Zone, 2007).
64. FSJ Dec 2 1613; see also Jul 3 1593; Jul 12 1614.
65. FSJ Jan 23 1610.
66. FSJ Feb 23 1593; May 3 1596; Jul 27 1594; Sep 8 1590.
67. FSJ Aug 12 1579; Jul 28 1590; Apr 21 1601. See also Apr 18 1598; Feb 9 1581; Feb 12 1600.
68. FSJ Jan 29 1588.
69. FSJ Jul 4 1588; Jul 30 1588; Dec 16 1594; Jul 4 1588; Feb 10 1597.
70. FSJ May 28 1588.
71. FSJ Feb 12 1596; Jul 11 1598; Nov 18 1617; Nov 13 1617.
72. FSJ Jan 16 1616. See also Jul 17 1582.
73. FSJ Jan 23 1595; Mar 4 1606; May 23 1615; Jun 25 1617; Jan 23 1610; Nov 14 1598.
74. FSJ Oct 16 1584; Oct 23 1589; Mar 8 1614. See also Oct 27 1584.
75. FSJ Mar 3 1580; Nov 17 1580; Jul 3 1593; Mar 30 1598; Jan 18 1603; Nov 20 1611; Nov 2 1615. See also Apr 29 1600.
76. FSJ May 27 1603.
77. FSJ Jul 2 1606.
78. FSJ Jul 23 1578; Jun 23 1612. See also May 2 1579; Apr 10 1582; Jun 4 1599.
79. FSJ Apr 28 1579; Jun 21 1593. See also Feb 28 1615.
80. FSJ Nov 18 1589. See also Apr 10 1582; Nov 1 1578; Sep 2 1598.
81. FSJ Jul 12 1614; Jan 22 1611.
82. FSJ Mar 6 1578; Jul 13 1579; Jan 26 1580; Feb 29 1580; Aug 14 1582; May 5 1590; Jul 7 1590; Mar 15 1597; May 20 1600; Apr 21 1601; Aug 4 1607; Mar 5 1616.
83. FSJ Jan 26 1580; May 5 1590; Jul 7 1590; Jun 26 1606; Feb 8 1614.
84. FSJ May 17 1606; Aug 4 1607; Dec 6 1580; Nov 17 1584.
85. FSJ Jun 11 1585. See also Jun 21 1593; Dec 23 1601; Sep 15 1604; Jul 9 1605; Nov 20 1611; Mar 5 1612; Nov 19 1613.
86. FSJ Oct 15 1585; Oct 21 1585; Apr 14 1586; Apr 25 1587; Jul 15 1589.
87. FSJ Nov 11 1585.
88. FSJ Jun 1 1581; Jul 27 1582; Oct 3 1587.
89. The popular stereotypes of spousal murder in early modern Germany typically contrasted the cool and calculating murdering wife with the violent and passionate husband. See Silke Göttsch, “‘Vielmahls aber hätte sie gewünscht einen anderen Mann zu haben,’ Gattenmord im 18. Jahrhundert,” in Ulbricht, Von Huren und Rabenmüttern, 313–34.
90. Two wives: FSJ Feb 15 1580; Apr 27 1583; Jul 9 1583; Mar 26 1584; Oct 29 1584; Jun 6 1586; Jul 14 1590. Three wives: Dec 1 1580; Apr 3 1585. Four wives: Apr 3 1585; May 29 1588. Five wives: Nov 5 1595.
91. FSJ Jul 28 1590. See also Feb 20 1582; Oct 16 1582; Apr 27 1583; Jul 9 1583; Mar 16 1585; Sep 20 1586; Oct 4 1587; Jul 10 1592; Jul 23 1605; Dec 6 1609.
92. FSJ Jul 28 1590. See also Feb 20 1582; Oct 16 1582; Apr 27 1583; Jul 9 1583; Mar 16 1585; Sep 20 1586; Oct 4 1587; Jul 10 1592; Jul 23 1605; Dec 6 1609.
93. FSJ Feb 28 1611; Jun 7 1612.
94. RV 1431: 37v (Dec 29 1579); RV 1456: 46r (Nov 8 1580); RV 1458: 25v (Dec 28 1580).
95. StaatsAN 44a, Rst Nbg Losungamt, 35 neue Laden, Nr. 1979; StaatsAN 60c, Nr. 1, 181r; also RV 1507: 9v–10r (Aug 19 1584); RV 1508: 32r (Sep 25 1584).
96. Shortly after Easter 1582 Frantz requested and received permission to visit his ailing father in Bamberg. RV 1475: 23v (Apr 10 1582).
97. ASB 210: 154; also RV 1523: 8r–v, 23r, 25r, 31r (Feb 1, 8, 9, 10, 1585). StaatsAN 52a, 447: 1076.
98. FSJ Feb 11 1585. See also Jul 23 1584.
99. StaatsAB A245/I, Nr. 146, 106v–107v; StaatsAN 52a, 447: 1076–77. In another passage, Schmidt not only identifies a culprit as a kinsman but also relegates the flogging to his assistant, FSJ Jun 7 1603.
100. StaatsAB A231/1, Nr. 1809, 1.
101. StadtsAB B7, Nr. 84 (May 1 1585); StadtsAB B4, Nr. 35, 102r–v (1586); RV 1517: 21v–22r (May 25 1585).
102. StadtAN F1–2/VII: 682.
103. St. Rochus Planquadrat H5, #654; Ilse Schumann, “Neues zum Nürnberger Nachrichter Franz Schmidt,” in Genealogie 25, nos. 9–10 (Sep–Oct 2001): 686.
104. Hilpoltstein (FSJ Jul 20 1580; Aug 20 1584; Mar 6 1589; Sep 19 1593; Feb 28 1594); Lauf (FSJ Aug 4 1590; Jun 8 1596; Jun 4 1599); Sulzbach (FSJ Feb 23 1593; Mar 11 1597); Hersbruck (FSJ Jul 19 1595; Dec 18 1595; Feb 10 1596; Sep 2 1598); Lichtenau (FSJ Apr 18 1598). See also RV 1706: 38r (Jan 12 1600).
105. LKAN St. Sebaldus, 49v, 50v, 70v.
106. One local study from the period, for instance, found that only one in six poor families had more than three children resident at the same town, while nearly three in four upper-middle-class and wealthy families enjoyed this privilege. On the other hand, based on a sample of 782 executioner families during the early modern period, three boys and three girls was the average among executioner families, Jürgen Schlumbohm, Lebensläufe, Familien, Höfe: Die Bauern und Heuerleute des osnabrückischen Kirchspiels Belm in proto-industrieller Zeit, 1650–1850 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1994), 201, 297; G&T, 45–50.
107. RV 1621: 3v, 10v (Jul 14 1593); ASB 308 (Bürgerbuch 1534–1631): 128v.
4. The Sage
1. Essays, 398.
2. FSJ Mar 15 1597.
3. RV 2122: 23r–v (May 19 1631). StaatsAN Rep 65 (Mikrofilm S 0735). The plague and winter of 1600 are recounted in StaatsAN 52b, 226a: 1256–57.
4. See especially the excellent overview of Joy Wiltenburg, Crime and Culture in Early Modern Germany (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012).
5. FSJ 1573; Nov 9 1586; Nov 17 1580; Mar 3 1580; Aug 16 1580; Dec 14 1579.
6. FSJ Oct 11 1604; Apr 18 1598.
7. FSJ Mar 29 1595.
8. Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 179–80.
9. FSJ Apr 28 1579; Dec 6 1580; Jul 27 1582.
10. FSJ Oct 23 1589. See also Oct 16 1584; Mar 13 1602; Oct 11 1604.
11. FSJ Apr 28 1579; Mar 5 1612; Jan 16 1616; Jan 27 1586; Sep 23 1590; May 18 1591; Dec 17 1612. See also 1574; May 25 1581; Feb 20 1582; Aug 4 1586; Dec 22 1587; Jan 5 1587; May 30 1587; Apr 11 1592; Jun 21 1593. On the vulnerability of nighttime, see Craig Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
12. FSJ Aug 29 1587; Oct 16 1584.
13. FSJ Jun 30 1593.
14. FSJ Sep 18 1604; Aug 13 1604. See also Jan 2 1588; Jul 10 1593; Feb 28 1615.
15. FSJ Jan 16 1616.
16. FSJ Jun 4 1599.
17. Four of these included violent robbery (Dülmen, Theatre of Horror, appendix, table 5), as did several cases from the sixteenth century. In three instances, the rape of minors resulted in executions (FSJ Jul 3 1578; Apr 10 1583; Jun 23, 1612).
18. FSJ Mar 13 1602; Aug 22 1587. See also Nov 19 1612; Jun 2 1612; Dec 7 1615.
19. FSJ Jun 4 1596; Nov 28 1583; Nov 13 1599.
20. FSJ Jul 17 1582; Aug 11 1582; May 27 1603; May 8 1598; May 17 1611; Oct 11 1608.
21. FSJ Oct 13 1604.
22. FSJ Jul 15 1580.
23. FSJ 1578; Jul 15 1580; May 25 1581; Feb 20 1582; Mar 14 1584; Aug 4 1586; Jan 2 1588; Jul 4 1588; Jun 21 1593; Feb 10 1596; Jul 22 1596; Jul 11 1598; Jan 20 1601; Apr 21 1601.
24. FSJ May 25 1581.
25. FSJ Jul 21 1593. See also three cases in 1573; Jul 15 1580; May 25 1581; Feb 20 1582; Aug 4 1586; Dec 8 1587; Feb 10 1596; Jul 22 1596; Apr 21 1601.
26. FSJ 1574.
27. FSJ Oct 11 1603. Other examples of corpse desecration are 1574; May 25 1591; Aug 28 1599; Jul 15 1580; Jan 2 1588; Mar 13 1602; Dec 2 1596; Mar 15 1597; Mar 5 1612.
28. FSJ May 2 1605; Jul 29 1600; Nov 12 1601; Dec 2 1596; Feb 18 1591; Jun 21 1593; Jul 11 1598. See also 1573; 1574; Feb 11 1585; May 4 1585; May 2 1605.
29. FSJ Mar 3 1597; Jul 29 1600; Feb 10 1596; Jan 17 1611; Feb 20 1582; Jul 27 1582.
30. FSJ: 300 of 394 capital punishments; 301 of 384 corporal punishments.
31. On the “Code of the West,” see especially Richard Maxwell Brown, “Violence,” in The Oxford History of the American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner II et al. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994), 393–95. I am indebted to my colleague Dan Usner for this citation.
32. Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 170–77, 191–95.
33. FSJ Oct 26 1602; Mar 17 1609; May 4 1585. See also Apr 28 1586.
34. FSJ 1577; Apr 10 1578; Oct 6 1579; Nov 28 1583; Apr 28 1586; Feb 18 1591; Jun 1 1587; Oct 13 1588; Aug 11 1600; Aug 11 1606. Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 31–37. See also Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör, 265–322.
35. FSJ Oct 13 1588.
36. FSJ Aug 7 1599.
37. FSJ Apr 20 1587.
38. FSJ Apr 11 1592.
39. FSJ Sep 20 1587; Mar 6 1604.
40. Harrington, Unwanted Child, 30–34.
41. FSJ Oct 5 1597; Jul 8 1609; also Jul 1 1609.
42. FSJ Jan 9 1583; Jul 18 1583; Sep 1 1586; Jul 4 1584; also Jun 16 1585.
43. FSJ Jun 28 1614.
44. FSJ Feb 22 1611.
45. FSJ Jul 20 1587.
46. See Ulinka Rublack “‘Viehisch, frech vnd onverschämpt’: Inzest in Südwestdeutschland, ca. 1530–1700,” in Ulbricht, Von Huren und Rabenmüttern, 171–213; also David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher, and Jon Mathieu, eds., Kinship in Europe: Approaches to the Long-Term Development (1300–1900) (New York: Berghahn, 2007).
47. FSJ Jul 23 1605; Jan 29 1599; Mar 5 1611; Feb 28 1611; Jul 7 1584. See also Mar 27 1587; Apr 23 1588; Apr 2 1589; Jun 26 1594; Jun 17 1609.
48. The best work on this subject is Helmut Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland, 1400–1600 (London and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
49. FSJ Aug 13 1594.
50. FSJ Mar 11 1596.
51. FSJ Mar 11 1596; Aug 10 1581.
52. FSJ Jul 3 1596. For evidence of a surprisingly tolerant atmosphere in this respect, see Maria R. Boes, “On Trial for Sodomy in Early Modern Germany,” in Sodomy in Early Modern Europe, ed. Tom Betteridge (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2002), 27–45.
53. FSJ Apr 19 1591. See also Jul 15 1584; Oct 13 1587; May 17 1583; Jul 15 1585. On the fear of divine retribution for blasphemy, see Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 277–79.
54. FSJ Jan 5 1587; Jun 25 1590; Jul 29 1600. See also Aug 12 1600; Jan 19 1602; Apr 21 1601.
55. FSJ Feb 10 1609; Mar 9 1609; Jan 23 1610; Jan 19 1602.
56. FSJ Oct 1 1605.
57. FSJ Jan 27 1586. See also Aug 4 1586; Jan 2 1588; Mar 4 1589; Sep 23 1590.
58. Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 119–22. See also 233ff., on the “diebliche Behalten” identified by executing magistrates.
59. FSJ Dec 29 1611; Jul 19 1588.
60. FSJ Jan 12 1615; Sep 12 1583; Jul 23 1584; Aug 3 1598; Aug 26 1609.
61. FSJ Nov 14 1598.
62. FSJ Nov 18 1617.
63. FSJ Dec 13 1588; Nov 18 1597; Oct 13 1601.
64. FSJ Sep 15 1604.
65. FSJ Apr 29 1600. See also Jul 1 1616.
66. FSJ Oct 25 1597. See also Jun 1 1587.
67. FSJ Mar 9 1609.
68. FSJ Nov 18 1617; Sep 2 1600. See also Jul 23 1594; Jul 13 1613.
69. FSJ Oct 17 1587; Sep 7 1611; Sep 14 1602; Sep 16 1595.
70. FSJ Oct 1 1612; Jul 8 1613.
71. FSJ Oct 11 1593; Feb 9 1598; Mar 20 1606; Feb 23 1609; Jul 12 1614.
72. FSJ May 4 1585; Nov 17 1584; Oct 5 1588; May 7 1603. Explicitly “good deaths” included Jan 10 1581; Nov 6 1595; Dec 23 1600; Sep 15 1605; Sep 18 1605; Jul 8 1613.
73. JHJ, quoted in Hampe, 71; FSJ Jul 19 1614. See also May 17 1611.
74. JHJ 39v.
75. JHJ, quoted in Hampe, 19.
76. JHJ, quoted in Hampe, 17–18.
77. FSJ Jan 11 1588.
78. FSJ Jan 28 1613; Jul 8 1613.
79. FSJ Feb 20 1582; Sep 18 1604. See also Aug 11 1582; Oct 9 1593.
80. JHJ Mar 10 1614.
81. Dülmen, Theatre of Horror, 28–32; Schwerhoff, Köln im Kreuzverhör, 166ff.
82. StaatsAN 226a, 40v, 77r.; JHJ 153r; FSJ Mar 15 1610.
83. Hampe, 14–16.
84. Ibid., 83.
85. FSJ Oct 3 1588. See also Jul 12 1614; Jun 15 1588; May 23 1597; Dec 18 1593.
86. JHJ Mar 10 1614, quoted in Hampe, 16.
87. Quoted in Hampe., 83.
88. FSJ Feb 10 1609.
89. Keller, 144–45, 148.
90. FSJ Jan 10 1581; also Oct 16 1585.
91. FSJ Apr 11 1592; Mar 4 1606; Oct 11 1593; Aug 11 1606; Mar 5 1612. See also Mar 17 1609; Sep 5 1611.
92. See Harrington, Unwanted Child, 195–214.
93. CCC, art. 179 and art. 14.
94. Harrington, Unwanted Child, 221–25.
95. StadtAN F1–14/IV: 1634.
96. FSJ May 16 1594; Jul 22 1593; Jun 4 1600; Nov 29 1582.
97. FSJ Oct 1 1612.
98. Hampe, 84. The five boys in the first group were forced to watch the execution of their eighteen-year-old leader, Heinrich Lind, before they were publicly flogged and banished. A group of thirteen boys the same year, “of whom none was over twelve years old,” was also banished after flogging. StadtAN F1–2/VII: 529; Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 9.
99. FSJ Jan 25 1614; StaatsAB A245/I Nr. 146, 82v; ASB 210: 86v.
100. FSJ Oct 7 1578; Mar 19 1579; Apr 28 1580; Aug 2 1580; Oct 4 1580; Feb 11 1584; Feb 12 1584; Jul 20 1587; May 15 1587; Sep 5 1594; May 3 1597; Jun 16 1604; Jan 12 1615; Dec 19 1615; also ASB 226a: 49r–52v.
101. ASB 226a: 48r; FSJ Jan 25 1614.
102. FSJ Feb 11 1584; Feb 12 1584.
103. FSJ Sep 5 1594; May 3 1597; Jun 16 1604; Feb 28 1615; Dec 14 1615.
104. FSJ Jan 12 1615. See also Dec 14 1615.
105. FSJ Dec 19 1615; ASB 218: 72vff.
106. FSJ Jan 29 1588; Jan 13 1592. See also Feb 11 1584; Feb 12 1584; Jun 5 1593; Jan 12 1615; Dec 14 1615; Dec 19 1615.
107. FSJ Oct 25 1615.
108. FSJ May 19 1601.
109. Joel F. Harrington, “Bad Parents, the State, and the Early Modern Civilizing Process,” in German History 16, no. 1 (1998): 16–28.
110. FSJ Jan 8 1582; 1574; Apr 15 1578; Mar 6 1606; Apr 2 1590; Jan 14 1584.
111. FSJ Dec 12 1598; Mar 6 1606; Jul 18 1583; Sep 1 1586; Jun 7 1612. RV 1800: 48v–49r (Mar 14 1607).
112. FSJ Jan 14 1584; also Jan 8 1582.
113. ASB 213: 214v.
114. FSJ May 2 1605.
115. FSJ Jun 16 1604.
116. ASB 210: 154r. FSJ Feb 11 1585.
117. Dieter Merzbacher, “Der Nürnberger Scharfrichter Frantz Schmidt—Autor eines Meisterliedes?,” in MVGN 73 (1986): 63–75.
118. Stuart, 179–80.
119. FSJ Apr 2 1590.
120. FSJ Sep 15 1604. On the theme of the good and bad thieves in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century art, see Mitchell Merback, The Thief, the Cross, and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 218–65.
5. The Healer
1. Essays, 174.
2. FSJ Jan 2 1588; Jan 11 1588; Jan 18 1588.
3. Geoffrey Abbott, Lords of the Scaffold: A History of the Executioner (London: Eric Dobby, 1991), 104ff.
4. ASB 210: 289r–v, 292v–293v.
5. Restitution, 201v.
6. RV 1119: 13r (Jul 22 1555); G&T, 104–6.
7. Nowosadtko, 163. In 1533, Augsburg’s retired executioner was unable to support himself as a full-time medical consultant and was forced to ask for his old job back. Stuart, 154.
8. Robert Jütte, Ärzte, Heiler, und Patienten: Medizinischer Alltag in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich: Artemis & Winkler, 1991), 18–19.
9. Angstmann, 92; Keller, 226. Paracelsus, Von dem Fleisch und Mumia, cited in Stuart, 160.
10. Matthew Ramsey, Professional and Popular Medicine in France, 1770–1830: The Social World of Medical Practice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 27; Nowosadtko, 165.
11. On the proliferation of general medical knowledge among artisanal families, see Michael Hackenberg, “Books in Artisan Homes of Sixteenth-Century Germany,” Journal of Library History 21 (1986): 72–91.
12. Artzney Buch: Von etlichen biß anher unbekandten unnd unbeschriebenen Kranckheiten/deren Verzeichnuß im folgenden Blat zu finden (Frankfurt am Main, 1583).
13. The edition I consulted was Feldtbuch der Wundartzney, newlich getruckt und gebessert (Strasbourg, 1528).
14. One popular work, the 1532 Spiegel der Artzney of Lorenz Fries, was in fact structured around questions during the consultation. See Claudia Stein, Negotiating the French Pox in Early Modern Germany (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 48–49.
15. Jütte, Ärzte, 108. See also David Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006).
16. In a sample of 2,179 cases, 36.6 percent of the injuries were treated by wound doctors in late-sixteenth-century Cologne. Jütte, Ärzte, table 6; G&T, 111.
17. Nowosadtko, 163–66.
18. Restitution, 202r.
19. Valentin Deuser was able to obtain an imperial privilege in 1641 that allowed him “to make house calls in any location and practice without hindrance as a wound doctor and barber,” G&T, 41.
20. Restitution, 203r–v.
21. RV 1726: 58r–v (Jul 7 1601).
22. RV 1835: 25r (Oct 14 1609).
23. Mummenhoff, “Die öffentliche Gesundheits,” 15; L.W.B. Brockliss and Colin Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1997), 13–14.
24. In 1661 the Nuremberg council answered an angry query from Augsburg physicians about their own executioner’s wide-ranging medical activities, stating that such activities were acceptable for executioners, Stuart, 163.
25. G&T, 41. For accounts of conflicts elsewhere, see Wilbertz, 70ff.; Stuart, 164–72; G&T, 109ff.
26. In Nuremberg this was usually Saint Peter’s, although sometimes on land within the cemetery that was not consecrated, Knapp, Loch, 77.
27. Karl H. Dannenfeldt, “Egyptian Mumia: The Sixteenth Century Experience and Debate,” in Sixteenth Century Journal 16, no. 2 (1985): 163–80.
28. Stuart, 158–59; Stuart compares the distributing of blood and occasionally body parts to Christian communion, 180.
29. Markwart Herzog, “Scharfrichterliches Medizin. Zu den Beziehungen zwischen Henker und Arzt, Schafott und Medizin,” in Medizinhistorisches Journal 29 (1994), 330–31; Stuart, 155–60; Nowosadtko, 169–70.
30. Nowosadtko, 179.
31. Stuart, 162; Angstmann, 93.
32. For a different interpretation of the intersection of art and anatomy, see Andrea Carlino, Books of the Body: Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning, trans. John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
33. Roy Porter, Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine (London: Allen Lane, 2002), 53–58.
34. Nowosadtko, 168–69.
35. G&T, 67.
36. Hampe, 79–81.
37. Cited in Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 64.
38. FSJ Jul 21 1578; RV 1425: 48r (Jul 17 1578).
39. FSJ Jun 1 1581; Oct 16 1584; Dec 8 1590; Dec 18 1593. Pessler was still dissecting executed criminals in 1641. Knapp, Kriminalrecht, 100.
40. FSJ Jun 26 1578; Aug 22 1587.
41. FSJ Jan 20 1601; Aug 29 1587.
42. FSJ Jun 4 1596; Mar 21 1615; Oct 1 1605.
43. FSJ Sep 14 1602.
44. Angstmann, 99–101; StaatsAN 42a, 447: 1063 (Aug 7 1583).
45. Döpler, Theatrum poenarum, 1:596; Nowosadtko; 183–89; RV 2176: 56r (Jul 15 1635); Hartmut H. Kunstmann, Zauberwahn und Hexenprozess in der Reichsstadt Nürnberg (Nuremberg: Nürnberg Stadtarchiv, 1970), 94–97.
46. Nowosadtko, 98–117; Zagolla, Folter und Hexenprozess, 368; Wolfgang Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria: Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry, and Reason of State in Early Modern Europe, trans. by J. C. Grayson and David Lederer (Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 401, table 13. On the witch craze elsewhere in Franconia, see also Susanne Kleinöder-Strobel, Die Verfolgung von Zauberei und Hexerei in den fränkischen Markgraftümern im 16. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr Siebeck, 2002).
47. Kunstmann, Zauberwahn, 39–44.
48. FSJ Jul 28 1590.
49. ASB 211: 111r–114r; see also Kunstmann, Zauberwahn, 69–78.
50. ASB 211: 111r.
51. FSJ Jul 28 1590.
52. Kunstmann, Zauberwahn, 78–86. Later in the century, Nuremberg too would succumb to the surrounding mania and execute three men and two women for witchcraft (compared to 4,500 for surrounding Franconia).
53. FSJ Nov 13 1617; ASB 217: 326r–v.
54. FSJ Oct 13 1604.
55. FSJ May 2 1605; Dec 23 1600.
56. FSJ Dec 13 1588.
57. FSJ Jul 8 1613; JHJ Jul 8 1613.
58. FSJ May 10 1599.
59. FSJ Mar 6 1604; ASB 215, cited in Hampe, 59–60.
60. ASB 218: 324r–342r.
61. FSJ Mar 7 1604; Aug 17 1599; Mar 20 1606; Feb 18 1585.
62. FSJ Sep 25 1595; Nov 26 1586.
63. FSJ Feb 9 1598. On this topic, see the fascinating book by Johannes Dillinger, Magical Treasure Hunting in Europe and North America: A History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
64. Between 1601 and 1606, Schmidt traveled at least once a year, and often twice, for executions in Hilpoltstein, Altdorf, Lauf, Salzburg, Lichtenau, and Gräfenberg (FSJ Jun 20 1601; Jul 8 1601; Mar 3 1602; May 7 1603; May 27 1603; Jun 16 1604; Aug 13 1604; May 6 1605; May 17 1606). He journeyed to Heroldsberg and Hersbruck in 1609 (Feb 10 and Mar 17), then once to Eschenau on Jan 17 1611. Meister Frantz averaged only two floggings annually during the following seven years, even though there were demonstrably other such corporal punishments administered.
65. ASB 226: 43r–v; FSJ Feb 28 1611.
66. StaatsAN 52a, 447: 1413–14; RV 1871: 7v, 22v–23v, 25v, 31v–32r.
67. StaatsAN 52a, 447: 1493.
68. Siebenkees, Materialen, 4:552; FSJ Jul 29 1617.
69. RV 1943: 12v, 18r–v, 24v (Nov 10, 12, 13 1617).
70. JHJ Nov 13 1617.
71. RV 1943: 37v, 58r, 80r, 85r–v (Jul 13, 17, 24, 27 1618); 1953: 10 v, 41r, 47r (Aug 1, 10, 12 1618).
72. RV 1953: 55v–56r, 72v, 80r (Aug 14, 20, 22 1618); 1954: 33v, 74r (Sep 7 and 21 1618); 1957: 42r (Dec 4 1618).
73. RV 1963: 4 v, 27r–v, 39r (Apr 29, May 8 and 13 1619).
74. RV 2005: 104r–v (Jul 17 1622); 2018: 45v (Jun 23 1623); 2037: 17r (Nov 16 1624); 2038: 32r (Dec 12 1624); 2068: 117r (Apr 17 1627); 2189: 30r–v (Jul 22 1636); 2194: 25r–v (Dec 7 1636); 2214: 36r (May 31 1638).
75. Keller, 174.
76. RV 1969: 29v (Oct 22 1619); 1977: 54v (Jun 7 1620); 1991: 35v (Jun 8 1621).
77. RV 2052: 92v (Feb 21 1626).
78. RV 2044: 29v–30r, 64r–v (Jun 23 and Jul 4 1625); 2045: 13r–v, 41r–v, 71v (Jul 18 and 26, Aug 3 1625); 2047: 16r (Sep 13 1625); 2048: 1v (Oct 6 1625); StadtAN B 14/1 138, 108v–110r: down payment of 373 fl. 27¼ kr.; remainder paid after cleaning of house (Sep 22 1625), StadtAN B1/II, no. 74 (c. 1626).
79. RV 1959: 37v–38r (Jan 23 1619); RV 1968: 9r (Sep 18 1619).
80. RV 2040: 29v–30r (Feb 10 1625).
81. RV 2002: 2r (Apr 4 1622); RV 2046: 7r–v (Aug 13 1625).
82. RV 2071: 25v (Jun 26 1627); StaatsAN B1/III, Nr. VIa/88.
83. StaatsAN 54a II: Nr. 728.
84. Restitution, 209r–211r.; RV 2039: 34v (Jan 17 1625).
85. LKAN St. Lorenz Taufungen 910 (Jan 4 1612); Schumann, “Franz Schmidt,” 678–79.
86. RV 1877: 15r, 21r, 31v–32r (Dec 2, 4, and 7 1612).
87. RV 1929: 64r (Nov 13 1616); 1931: 49v–49r (Dec 30 1616); 1933: 8v–9r (Feb 8 1617).
88. RV 2025: 25v, 37r (Jan 8 and 14 1624). She is initially listed as Rosina Schmidin and later as Rosina Bückhlin; there is no reference to her husband.
89. StaatsAN Rep 65, Nr. 34: 42r, 56r.
90. Between 1680 and 1770, at least nine at University of Ingolstadt alone, G&T, 17–20, 111–12; Nowosadtko, 321ff.
91. RV 2122: 23r–v (May 19 1631).
92. RV 2131: 74v (Feb 3 1632); LKAN Lorenz 512. Nürnberger Kunstlerlexikon, ed. Manfred H. Grieb (Munich: Saur, 2007), 1:24; StaatsAN 65, 20 (Feb 24 1632).
93. LKAN Lorenz 109; StaatsAN Rep 65, Nr. 34: 56.
94. LKAN Lorenz L80, 129; RV 2162: 49v (Jun 13 1634).
95. StaatsAN 65, 32: 244.
Epilogue
1. In Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 180.
2. Walker, German Home Towns, 12.
3. StaatsAN 54a II: Nr. 728; also RV 2189: 30r–v (Jul 22 1636); 2194: 25r–v (Dec 7 1636); 2225: 97r (May 10 1639); 2232: 10v–11v (Nov 2 1639); 2243: 91v (Sep 23 1640). By Schlegel’s own estimate, he had only ninety-seven clients in Nuremberg, as contrasted with over fifteen hundred in his previous position.
4. Maria died on Apr 12 1664; Frantzenhans on Feb 26 1683 (LKAN Beerditgungen St. Lorenz, fol. 311, 328).
5. Evans, Rituals of Retribution, 109–49.
6. I am strongly swayed by Richard Evans’s devastating criticisms of the teleological and otherwise flawed arguments of Michel Foucault and Philippe Ariès in this respect, although a bit more sympathetic to Norbert Elias, whose “civilizing process” remains valuable in other cultural contexts (Rituals of Retribution, 880ff.). Steven Pinker’s recent popularization of the latter, however, unfortunately amplifies one of the weakest components of Elias’s theory, namely the alleged rise of empathy during the eighteenth century on. According to Pinker, for instance, “Medieval Christendom was a culture of cruelty,” and only with the advent of Enlightenment “humanism” did “people beg[i]n to sympathize with more of their fellow human beings,” Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011), 132–33. For more nuanced analyses of changes in popular sensibilities regarding public executions, see Pieter Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), and Paul Friedland, Seeing Justice Done: The Age of Spectacular, Punishment in France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), especially 119–91. I am grateful to my colleague Lauren Clay for bringing the second work to my attention.
7. Cf. similar conclusions of Dülmen, Theatre of Horror, 133–37.
8. Keller, 262–79; Stuart, 75–82, 227–39; Nowosadtko, 305–16, 333–36; Knapp, Loch, 60–61.
9. This section is especially indebted to the excellent treatment of Nowosadtko, “‘Und nun alter, ehrlicher Franz.’”
10. Letter dated Sep 3 1810; Achim von Arnim und Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, ed. R. Steig (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1904), 69–70.
11. G&T, 49; Nowosadtko, “‘Und nun alter, ehrlicher Franz,’” 238–41.
12. See especially Stephen Brockmann, Nuremberg: The Imaginary Capital (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006).
13. See the fascinating historical excursion in Wolfgang Schild, Die Eiserne Jungfrau: Dichtung und Wahrheit, Schriftenreiche des Mittelalterlichen Kriminalmuseums Rothenburg ob der Tauber (2001). I thank Dr. Hartmut Frommer for bringing this publication to my attention.
14. For discussions of the twentieth-century historiography of the early modern executioner in Germany, see Wilbertz, 1ff.; Nowosadtko, 3–8; and Stuart, 2–5.
15. Among the multitude of literary works incorporating the “medieval hangman” as a central character, the most successful have been Wilhelm Raabe’s Das letzte Recht (1862) and Zum wilden Mann (written in 1873, published in 1884); and the plays of Gerhart Hauptmann (Magnus Garbe, 1914; second version, 1942) and Ruth Schaumann (Die Zwiebel, 1943). More recently the figure has become the subject of popular romance novels such as Oliver Pötzsch’s The Hangman’s Daughter (English translation by Lee Chadeayne; Seattle: AmazonCrossing, 2011) or Der Henker von Nürnberg (Mannheim: Wellhöfer, 2010), a collection of imaginative short stories edited by Anne Hassel and Ursula Schmid-Spreer.
16. I take this term from Evans, Rituals of Retribution, xiii.
17. Pinker, Better Angels of Our Nature, especially 129–88.