Books Like The Faithful Executioner About Medieval Justice?

Question

Looking for more nonfiction books exploring medieval justice systems, executioners' lives, and criminal punishment history from that era, preferably with personal accounts.

BaeVida · Answer

Looking for more medieval justice? Read some histories about how people were publicly punished and how trials worked in the medieval period. And then there are novels that portray justice systems as dark and as characters rather than as heroically triumphant. Rough Mercy: A Collection of Dark Passions, a web novel, is a good example of this sort of work. The story of a complex magistrate in a superstitious town, each of his rulings has personal cost to him and so is highly morally ambiguous. The novel is dark and procedural.

Cara · Answer

Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms is another excellent insight into the heresy trial of a medieval miller and his battles against the institutionalized church and its folk-anticipatory dynamics. For a more humane portrait of life in the medieval era Boccaccio’s The Decameron (with its darkly comedic vignettes into a society still in the grip of a chaotic and hugely subjective form of ‘law’) is far shorter but immensely rewarding as well.

Vivienne · Answer

Oh, I can literally feel how much I wanted to read ‘The Faithful Executioner’ when I stumbled upon it – such a raw and intense insight into the practices of medieval justice. So far, ‘The Hangman’s Daughter’ by Oliver Pötzsch is the only other book that springs to mind that attempts to humanize the people who carry out execution and at the same time to paint a very accurate and detailed picture of the society they live in.

Similarly, Umberto Eco’s ‘The Name of the Rose’ is a great historical murder mystery set in a medieval monastic setting. Although it is a long dense book, it is very rewarding and contains lots of interesting philosophy and theology. Ken Follett’s ‘The Pillars of the Earth’ is another book that is set in the middle ages, but is viewed through the eyes of justice in the context of a cathedral being built, and lots of political maneuvering.

Valeria · Answer

The Medieval Underworld: From Dormitory to Dungeon in the Czech Lands During the Reign of the Premyslids by Andrew McCall is another very different book on crime and punishment in medieval times which includes descriptions of some of the outcasts of medieval society. The books are not as personal as The Faithful Executioner but are full of fascinating stories. Another book that looks at a single murder case from the 15th century in great detail and using a lot of forensic evidence is Blood Royal by Eric Jager. It’s a very interesting book that also highlights the advantages of being tried in a modern court.

Hazel · Answer

A collection of primary sources of 14th-century wars, trials and feuds can be found in the Chronicles of Jean Froissart. As usual raw and uncut – like reading a medieval Twitter feed, full of beheadings, for example. This would go very well with ‘The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England’. It makes you feel as if you are in a 14th-century courtroom.

Delilah · Answer

There’s something morbidly fascinating about medieval justice. ‘The Faithful Executioner’ successfully conveys a lot of information about the period in a really engaging story. I highly recommend Natalie Zemon Davis’ ‘The Return of Martin Guerre’ (a microhistory about identity and justice in 16th-century France) and William Rosen’s ‘Justinian’s Flea’ (about the Plague and its impact on law in Byzantium). Both of these books manage to uncover the layers of how justice functioned within the rest of life.

shunda83b · Answer

Religion played a large role in executions, as Philippe Ariès discussed in his monumental history of Western attitudes toward death, The Hour of Our Death. A large section of the book deals with the history of the “good death” and, within that, he looks at the deaths of people condemned to death for various crimes.

The executioner’s role in the spiritual purification of the condemned-man adds another dimension to our understanding of the killer of old. Arens in his monumental work on cannibalism quotes from the book ‘The Hour of Our Death’ by Philippe Ariès. A huge section of this history of Western attitudes toward death deals with the ‘good death’ and contains also a very detailed description of the deaths of the condemned.

This work explains the mindset of the executioner and helps us understand his perspective as performing a repugnant yet necessary task as part of the spiritual and social order and how it is completely alien to the executioner’s mindset and to our own secular justice today.

Inday Diaz · Answer

The economic change during the 14th century is important too. The book ‘The Great Transition’ by Bruce M. S. Campbell (pdf, 2004) sets out a thesis which connects climate change, the great plague, and economic collapse in the 14th century. It explains how the collapse of the feudal system of law occurred, with the value of labour skyrocketing after the death of half the population, and how as a consequence of this, old laws about binding peasants to the land fell into abeyance.

The economy had a significant effect on the administration of justice. For instance, fleeing serfs were increasingly harshly punished by their lords in their attempts to maintain control over them. Crimes of poverty, such as theft, were probably either punished more severely or showed more leniency, depending on the local situation. As the powerful and their laws eroded, the justice system went through many changes. Hence the many revisions of the law and the increasing frequency of public executions, which became ever more symbolic.

It gives one a sense of the ‘why now’ of the Great Transformation and how, in the era of Franz Schmidt’s career, a great deal of social change was going on that would in turn greatly affect the population of his dungeon and the reasons for their presence there.

Ian Abela · Answer

I wanted to read about law and punishment in Japan during the Edo period, so I picked up ‘The Tokugawa World’ edited by Gary P. Leupp. It has some great essays about professional executioners (kubikiri) and elaborate codes of conduct as well as the punishments of crucifixion and the like. It is amazing to read about another culture that deals with the same human problems of state-sanctioned violence and judicial ritual in a completely independent parallel development.

The comparison between European medieval justice and the Tokugawa regime helps to highlight some universal characteristics of states, such as the need for the state to be the sole agency of violence, the use of violence as spectacle to deter crimes, and the categorization of crimes based upon severity. But there are also many important cultural differences between how honor played a role in the lives of individuals in Europe and Japan, how privileged forms of death such as seppuku were utilized in Japan, and the different methods of torture used in each society. The comparison thus prevents us from viewing European medieval justice as normative or the only way in which to solve a common human problem: the problem of how to maintain social order.

Evelyn joy Santayana · Answer

Honestly, the more dry entries are in ‘The Faithful Executioner’ for me are the lineage entries etc. However, I would highly recommend “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco instead for a more propulsive and novelistic take on similar subjects.

A murder mystery set in a medieval monastery, where heresy, justice and knowledge are the main themes of the novel. You get a lot of insight into the Monastic life of the time as well as the theological disputes of the era that could lead to burning at the stake. It’s a world dominated by divine law but increasingly also by human corruption.

A very detailed and research based book by the semiotician Eco. You will get immersed in the world of a 14th century monastery and in the thoughts of its inhabitants as they search for the killer of one of their brothers and, in the process, they debate about heresy, and about justice and power and knowledge. This book is quite challenging but extremely rewarding. It explores the things that an executioner would consider while thinking about sin and punishment.

Jeremy Bucher · Answer

I once tried to read a book on medieval torture. I managed to get through one chapter and then I just couldn’t continue it any more. Knowing about torture in the past is quite different from reading a detailed description of how a breaking wheel worked, for example. How do others cope with reading about such things without feeling their soul has been slightly dulled by it all?

Sylvia Tenorio Campit · Answer

Philosophy – for a real in-depth study of this subject Michel Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish” is a good place to start, particularly the first chapter “The Spectacle of the Scaffold”. Here Foucault sets out his theory of pre-modern punishment as political rituals where the sovereign reinforces his power by destroying the body of the criminal.

After reading ‘The Faithful Executioner’ reading Foucault’s ‘Discipline and Punish’, in particular the first chapter ‘The Spectacle of the Scaffold’ will change your perspective completely on all descriptions of execution crowds and on all details of the procession to the scaffold. Even a rough grasp of the key concepts in this challenging book will provide a brand new deeper understanding of everything you read on the subject.

Patricia · Answer

Research specific punishments in history. Hanged by David R. Bentley is a lengthy, detailed book chronicling the history of hanging in England. By the Neck by Steve G. is a similar lengthy book detailing another method of execution. Both of these ‘monographs’ cover great detail on one method of punishment, tracing its history, evolution and the social attitudes towards it.

These in-depth accounts of individual punishments trace the history of the specific execution method, covering its technological evolution, social history, and cultural perceptions. There is a focus on the ‘drop’ method of hanging being a more efficient and humane way of killing, and how the science of neck-breaking as opposed to strangulation has been developed. In addition to these very detailed ‘how’ accounts of individual punishments, there is also much to be learned about the hierarchical ways in which people of the past classified pain and dignity in relation to execution. The biographical approach found in ‘The Faithful Executioner’ (Schmidt used a sword for beheadings, typically the method of execution reserved for members of the nobility) helps to answer the ‘why’ of such a system.

Books Like The Faithful Executioner About Medieval Justice?

13 Answers

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