The opening of Peter Lewis’ barnesandnoble.com review of Joel F. Harrington’s The Faithful Executioner, a new volume about the 16th-century man who did “god’s work” in the gallows:

“Frantz Schmidt was a master executioner. He had a notarized certificate to prove it. He apprenticed under a master; he paid his journeyman’s dues. He mostly worked in the imperial city of Nuremberg during his forty-five years of service, 1573-1618. He executed 394 people: men, women, and some boys and girls. Schmidt, always poised, delivered a good death, whether he beat you to kingdom come with a wagon wheel or applied the pitch and touched the flame, slipped the noose or cut off your head.

A ‘good death’ was meant to shock and awe the locals, to keep them ruly in the absence of any effective central authority during some seriously unruly times. Executions were carefully orchestrated, ritualized brutality that sated the drive for retribution, with clear rules and conduct. The fathers of Nuremberg, a city then at the zenith of its power and wealth, hired Frantz Schmidt: reliable, honest, pious, reflective, loyal, sober Frantz, a rare bird in the world of executioners.”