The Faithful Executioner Quotes

“How could a society hang a man for stealing honey?” we ask from our perspective; “Why does a man repeatedly risk hanging to steal some honey?” wonders Frantz.”
― Joel F. Harrington, The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century

“Popular prejudice always dies slowly, especially among those individuals most anxious about their own deteriorating economic situation and unstable social status.”
― Joel F. Harrington, The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century

“Why do people do cruel things to one another? And why does God Permit it?”
― Joel F. Harrington, The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death in the Sixteenth Century

“He also makes one last futile plea to be dispatched with a sword stroke to the neck, a quicker and more honorable death than being burned alive, the prescribed punishment for counterfeiting.”
― Joel F. Harrington, The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century

“The even more fundamental distinction between most developed societies today and Nuremberg in the sixteenth century is the notion of inalienable human rights. This other relatively late development in the public sphere, though still contested, provides at least a theoretical and legal basis for limiting state coercion and violence, even in the pursuit of justice. Authoritarian regimes of the past and present recognize no such externally imposed restrictions, nor do they place the sovereignty of the individual on par with, let alone above, the sovereignty of the state. Meister Frantz would have agreed that even apprehended criminals had a right to due process, but the idea that this right included protection of their bodies following incriminating evidence or conviction for a serious offense would have been an incomprehensible concept.”
― Joel F. Harrington, The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death in the Sixteenth Century

“It would have surprised the executioner who so closely identified with the victims of crime to hear his society characterized as especially cruel and heartless, particularly once he learned of such unthinkable modern atrocities as genocide, atomic obliteration, and total war. He would admit that the criminal justice of his day could be harsh, but he would recoil at the notion of trials and incarcerations that extended for years, even decades, sometimes involving long periods of isolation.”
― Joel F. Harrington, The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century

“For many of us on this side of the French Revolution, it’s difficult to understand Meister Frantz’s apparently deep belief in the innate superiority of the rich and the noble. Our modern culture of envy presupposes that the inherited wealth and privilege of others can be resented or coveted, but certainly not respected as divinely ordained. For Schmidt and his contemporaries, though, the hierarchy of birth existed as a natural force, like the weather or the plague—capricious, even destructive, but inevitable.”
― Joel F. Harrington, The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death in the Sixteenth Century