In Nuremberg, an executioner called Meister Franz Schmidt, kept a personal journal of all

the executions and criminal punishments that he had administered through his 45-year career

from his first execution when he was 19 in 1573 to his retirement in 1618.

By his own estimate, he personally killed 394 people and flogged or disfigured hundreds

more.

Now, while historians had known of the journal, until Professor Joe Harrington came across

it, no one had thought to use it to investigate the mind of the executioner, to reconstruct

his life, or to see what the journal could tell us about the world in which he lived.

Joe Harrington is Centennial Professor of History at Vanderbilt University.

His distinguished academic career has focused on the history of the Reformation and early

modern Germany, writing among other things about marriage and the fate of foundlings and

orphans.

In 2013, he published his critically-claimed book on Meister Franz Schmidt, the faithful

executioner, life and death, honour and shame in the turbulent 16th century.

He was translated into 13 languages and named one of the best books of the year by the

data teagraph and history today, and quite rightly because it's a wonderful book.

And I'm delighted that it's author joined me now to explore Franz Schmidt's life and

the role of the executioner in early modern society more generally.

So Joe, in the 16th and 17th centuries punishment, as we know it was always corporal and

often capital and it's basically state-sponsored violence.

And so historians have talked about the theatre of horror and the spectacle of suffering.

What was the point and the purpose of it?

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