Download or read book The Faithful Executioner written by Joel F. Harrington and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet Frantz Schmidt: executioner, torturer and, most unusually for his times, diarist. Following in his father’s footsteps, Frantz entered the executioner’s trade as an Apprentice. 394 executions and forty-five years later, he retired to focus his attentions on running the large medical practice that he had always viewed as his true vocation. Through examination of Frantz’s exceptional and often overlooked record, Joel F. Harrington delves deep into a world of human cruelty, tragedy and injustice. At the same time, he poses a fascinating question: could a man who routinely practiced such cruelty also be insightful, compassionate – even progressive? The Faithful Executioner is the biography of an ordinary man struggling to overcome an unjust family curse; it is also a remarkable panorama of a Europe poised on the cusp of modernity, a world with startling parallels to our own.
Download or read book The Executioner s Journal written by Frantz Schmidt and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2016-09-02 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During a career lasting nearly half a century, Meister Frantz Schmidt (1554-1634) personally put to death 392 individuals and tortured, flogged, or disfigured hundreds more. The remarkable number of victims, as well as the officially sanctioned context in which they suffered at Schmidt’s hands, was the story of Joel Harrington’s much-discussed book The Faithful Executioner. The foundation of that celebrated work was Schmidt's own journal--notable not only for the shocking story it told but, in an age when people rarely kept diaries, for its mere existence. Available now in Harrington’s new translation, this fascinating document provides the modern reader with a rare firsthand perspective on the thoughts and experiences of an executioner who routinely carried out acts of state brutality yet remained a revered member of the local community, widely respected for his piety, steadfastness, and popular healing. Based on a long-lost manuscript thought to be the most faithful to the original journal, this modern English translation is fully annotated and includes an introduction providing historical context as well as a biographical portrait of Schmidt himself. The executioner appears to us not as the frightening brute we might expect but as a surprisingly thoughtful, complex person with a unique voice, and in these pages his world emerges as vivid and unforgettable. Studies in Early Modern German History
Download or read book A Hangman s Diary written by Franz Schmidt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1573 to 1617, Master Franz Schmidt was the executioner for the towns of Bamberg and Nuremberg. During that span, he personally executed more than 350 people while keeping a journal throughout his career. A Hangman’s Diary is not only a collection of detailed writings by Schmidt about his work, but also an account of criminal procedure in Germany during the Middle Ages. With analysis and explanation, editor Albrecht Keller and translators C. Calvert and A. W. Gruner have put together a masterful tome that sets the scene of execution day and puts you in Master Franz Schmidt’s shoes as he does his duty for his country. Originally published more than eighty years ago, A Hangman’s Diary gives a year-by-year breakdown on all of Master Schmidt’s executions, which include hangings, beheadings, and other methods of murder, as well as explanations of each crime and the reason for the punishment. An incredible classic, A Hangman’s Diary is more than a history lesson; it shows the true anarchy that inhabited our world only a few hundred years ago. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Download or read book Dangerous Mystic written by Joel F. Harrington and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life and times of the 14th century German spiritual leader Meister Eckhart, whose theory of a personal path to the divine inspired thinkers from Jean Paul Sartre to Thomas Merton, and most recently, Eckhart Tolle Meister Eckhart was a medieval Christian mystic whose wisdom powerfully appeals to seekers seven centuries after his death. In the modern era, Eckhart's writings have struck a chord with thinkers as diverse as Heidegger, Merton, Sartre, John Paul II, and the current Dalai Lama. He is the inspiration for the bestselling New Age author Eckhart Tolle's pen name, and his fourteenth-century quotes have become an online sensation. Today a variety of Christians, as well as many Zen Buddhists, Sufi Muslims, Jewish Cabbalists, and various spiritual seekers, all claim Eckhart as their own. Meister Eckhart preached a personal, internal path to God at a time when the Church could not have been more hierarchical and ritualistic. Then and now, Eckhart’s revolutionary method of direct access to ultimate reality offers a profoundly subjective approach that is at once intuitive and pragmatic, philosophical yet non-rational, and, above all, universally accessible. This “dangerous mystic’s” teachings challenge the very nature of religion, yet the man himself never directly challenged the Church. Eckhart was one of the most learned theologians of his day, but he was also a man of the world who had worked as an administrator for his religious order and taught for years at the University of Paris. His personal path from conventional friar to professor to lay preacher culminated in a spiritual philosophy that combined the teachings of an array of pagan and Christian writers, as well as Muslim and Jewish philosophers. His revolutionary decision to take his approach to the common people garnered him many enthusiastic followers as well as powerful enemies. After Eckhart’s death and papal censure, many religious women and clerical supporters, known as the Friends of God, kept his legacy alive through the centuries, albeit underground until the master’s dramatic rediscovery by modern Protestants and Catholics. Dangerous Mystic grounds Meister Eckhart in a world that is simultaneously familiar and alien. In the midst of this medieval society, a few decades before the Black Death, Eckhart boldly preached to captivated crowds a timeless method, a “wayless way,” of directly experiencing the divine.
Download or read book The Faithful Executioner written by Joel F. Harrington and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet Frantz Schmidt - citizen of Nuremberg, executioner of 394 unfortunates, and torturer, flogger and disfigurer of many hundreds more. Frantz's other distinction was to be a diarist. Drawing on this exceptional and overlooked record that he kept for over 45 years, 'The Faithful Executioner' takes us deep into his world and his thinking. But the picture that emerges is not of a monster. Could a man who routinely practised such cruelty also be insightful, compassionate - even progressive?
Download or read book Summary of Joel F Harrington s The Faithful Executioner written by Everest Media, and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-06-09T22:59:00Z with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The family had moved to Bamberg eight months earlier, and Frantz had already accompanied his father to several executions in the city and nearby villages. He was testing his son on the most difficult and honorable form of execution, death by the sword. #2 The local dog slayer, or knacker, had assembled a few stray canines and brought them in his ramshackle wooden cages to the executioner’s residence in the heart of the city. Schmidt paid his subordinate a small tip for the favor and took the animals to the courtyard behind the house. #3 The insecurity of life was evident from the very beginning. The first two years of a child’s life were the most dangerous, as frequent outbreaks of smallpox, typhus, and dysentery proved particularly fatal to younger victims. #4 The German states of the 1500s were divided up among more than 300 member states, which ranged in size from small baronial castles to vast territorial principalities. The emperor and his annual representative assembly, the Reichstag, provided a common focus of allegiance and symbolic authority, but they were powerless to prevent or resolve the feuds and wars that regularly broke out among member states.
Download or read book Fatal Romance written by Lisa Pulitzer and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2001-07-15 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fatal Romance is the shocking true story of the romance novelist who dreamed of the happiness she wrote of - only to die at the hands of the man she loved.
Download or read book The History Of Torture written by George Ryley Scott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2005. Torture, an enduring and seemingly not declining aspect of man's relationship to his fellow man, is an enduring thread through human history. Whether it be practiced by primitive people, the ancient Greeks or the Catholic Church, whether it be ancient China, Japan, 1930's Germany, or Northern Ireland today, torture is alarmingly systematic and consistent in its methods. Impaling, burning, rack or wheel, mutilation, drawing and quartering, burning or hanging alive in chains. A very comprehensive and readable work.
Download or read book Man at the Cross Road written by Jeanne Blanchet Phd and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Man at the Cross Road is the gripping story of Marcus Casca, the exactor mortis who headed the death squad that crucified Jesus. After serving his army stint, the tough, desensitized legionary returns to Rome, where, unable to readjust to civilian life, he embarks on a twenty-year spree of debauchery and violent crime. His life is altered when, having fainted on the street from a fever, he is rescued by a Christian Jewish couple. Through them, he meets Church fathers Peter and Paul, Aquila and Priscilla, and other prominent figures in the early "Way" movement. Witnessing the Lord's Supper, however, he suspects they are cannibals. Additionally convinced they practice sorcery and constitute a potential threat to Roman security, he becomes a government informer, infiltrating their ranks with the intent of gleaning enough evidence to have them arrested, tried, and executed. Little by little, however, the believers' message of love and salvation works a change in the dissolute thug's heart. But can he commit? Can he truly believe that Christ died for a despicable sinner like himself? And if so, can he ever dare disclose to his new brethren that it was he who crucified their Jesus? For years he wrestles with these questions. At the novel's climax, he is offered the money he desperately needs to treat the life-threatening disease he has contracted if he reveals the group's new secret meeting place, in the process condemning the only friends he has ever known to certain death. Marcus is at a cross roads and must decide once and for all whether he believes. One choice saves his life, the other, his immortal soul.
Download or read book Reordering Marriage and Society in Reformation Germany written by Joel F. Harrington and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-27 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the impact of the Reformation on the ideal and practice of marriage in sixteenth-century Germany.
Download or read book Names and Naming in Early Modern Germany written by Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the many political and social upheavals of the early modern era, names were words to conjure by, articulating significant historical trends and helping individuals and societies make sense of often dramatic periods of change. Centered on onomastics—the study of names—in the German-speaking lands, this volume, gathering leading scholars across multiple disciplines, explores the dynamics and impact of naming (and renaming) processes in a variety of contexts—social, artistic, literary, theological, and scientific—in order to enhance our understanding of individual and collective experiences.
Download or read book All the Shah s Men written by Stephen Kinzer and published by Wiley. This book was released on 2004-08-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first full-length account of the CIA's coup d'etat in Iran in 1953—a covert operation whose consequences are still with us today. Written by a noted New York Times journalist, this book is based on documents about the coup (including some lengthy internal CIA reports) that have now been declassified. Stephen Kinzer's compelling narrative is at once a vital piece of history, a cautionary tale, and a real-life espionage thriller.
Download or read book The Life and Death of the Grim Reaper written by Ryane S. Perez and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Life and Death of the Grim Reaper is about a young boy, Joey Williams, who is seriously ill and very angry about his lot in life. On the night he is destined to die, the Grim Reaper appears at his bedside, not to take his life, but to teach him a lesson. He takes Joey back to a time when life was supposed to be simpler, back to when the Grim Reaper of today was a lonely sixteen year old human boy. He taught him that living a life in anger can only lead to an afterlife of pain.
Download or read book A Cloud of Witnesses written by Joel F. Harrington and published by Houghton Mifflin College Division. This book was released on 2001 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [TofC cont.] The social principles of Christianity / K. Marx -- The twentieth century: Listen America / J. Falwell; The platform of the German Christians -- Western Christianity and contemporary society: The long loneliness / D. Day; Problems of religious pluralism / J. Hick -- Appendices: Alphabetical list of key terms; List of ecumenical councils; Schematic history of Christian churches. This collection of original documents, written by men and women from a myriad of diverse cultures and time periods, illustrates the variety of Christian ideas and practices of the past two millennia. -Back cover. This anthology is ideal for use in historical surveys of western Christianity, whether taught in smaller chronological segments ... or as a one-semester overview of the last 2000 years ... -Pref.
Download or read book Albion s Fatal Tree written by Douglas Hay and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the popular imagination, informed as it is by Hogarth, Swift, Defoe and Fielding, the eighteenth-century underworld is a place of bawdy knockabout, rife with colourful eccentrics. But the artistic portrayals we have only hint at the dark reality. In this new edition of a classic collection of essays, renowned social historians from Britain and America examine the gangs of criminals who tore apart English society, while a criminal law of unexampled savagery struggled to maintain stability. Douglas Hay deals with the legal system that maintained the propertied classes, and in another essay shows it in brutal action against poachers; John G. Rule and Cal Winslow tell of smugglers and wreckers, showing how these activities formed a natural part of the life of traditional communities. Together with Peter Linebaugh s piece on the riots against the surgeons at Tyburn, and E. P. Thompson s illuminating work on anonymous threatening letters, these essays form a powerful contribution to the study of social tensions at a transformative and vibrant stage in English history. This new edition includes a new introduction by Winslow, Hay and Linebaugh, reflecting on the turning point in the social history of crime that the book represents
Download or read book The Unwanted Child written by Joel F. Harrington and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-12-15 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The baby abandoned on the doorstep is a phenomenon that has virtually disappeared from our experience, but in the early modern world, unwanted children were a very real problem for parents, government officials, and society. The Unwanted Child skillfully recreates sixteenth-century Nuremberg to explore what befell abandoned, neglected, abused, or delinquent children in this critical period. Joel F. Harrington tackles this question by focusing on the stories of five individuals. In vivid and poignant detail, he recounts the experiences of an unmarried mother-to-be, a roaming mercenary who drifts in and out of his children’s lives, a civic leader handling the government’s response to problems arising from unwanted children, a homeless teenager turned prolific thief, and orphaned twins who enter state care at the age of nine. Braiding together these compelling portraits, Harrington uncovers and analyzes the key elements that link them, including the impact of war and the vital importance of informal networks among women. From the harrowing to the inspiring, The Unwanted Child paints a gripping picture of life on the streets five centuries ago.
Download or read book The War Before the War written by Andrew Delbanco and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book Selection Winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner of the Lionel Trilling Book Award A New York Times Critics' Best Book "Excellent... stunning."—Ta-Nehisi Coates This book tells the story of America’s original sin—slavery—through politics, law, literature, and above all, through the eyes of enslavedblack people who risked their lives to flee from bondage, thereby forcing the nation to confront the truth about itself. The struggle over slavery divided not only the American nation but also the hearts and minds of individual citizens faced with the timeless problem of when to submit to unjust laws and when to resist. The War Before the War illuminates what brought us to war with ourselves and the terrible legacies of slavery that are with us still.
