Why Nobody Would Touch the Medieval Executioner

In 1578 the city of Nuremberg hired a new executioner. They paid him like a surgeon, gave him a free house, and then wouldn't shake his hand. Frantz Schmidt never wanted the job. His father was forced into it in 1553, and the shame came with it for the whole family. Frantz trained on pumpkins, kept a diary of every execution for forty years, never drank, and on his days off healed around 15,000 sick people. Councillor Grubb and his runner Bones hire him, pay him, get healed by him - and still won't sit next to him. Then, at seventy, Frantz writes to the Emperor to get his name back. Topics covered: Frantz Schmidt, the executioner of Nuremberg, Joel Harrington's The Faithful Executioner, Hof 1553, executioners as dishonourable people, the Hangman's House, executioner healers, the 1624 imperial pardon, medieval and early modern punishment. 0:00 You're Hired 0:26 How It Started 1:51 The Pumpkins 3:04 The Job Offer 4:40 The Day Job 6:04 The Other Job 7:06 Pushing Back 8:10 The Letter to the Emperor #History #Medieval #Executioner Sources Joel F. Harrington, The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013) Frantz Schmidt, The Executioner's Journal, trans. and ed. Joel F. Harrington (University of Virginia Press, 2016) Kathy Stuart, Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge University Press, 1999) Joel F. Harrington, "The Executioner's Craft", Slate (2013) Executed Today, "1573: Meister Frantz Schmidt's first execution" (Joel Harrington, 2013) Public Books, "Progress and Execution" Longreads, "What Life Was Like for an Executioner's Family in the 16th Century" (2013) Chapter 16, "Death Becomes Him" Wikipedia, "Franz Schmidt (executioner)"; "Executioner" New history episodes every week. This video was researched, written, and narrated with AI assistance, based on the published historical sources listed above.