Epitomes of Evil
Representations of Executioners in Northern France and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages
By (author) Hannele Klemettila
Hangmen were familiar characters from urban reality to people living in France and the Burgundian Netherlands in the late Middle Ages. These officers played an essential role in the new penal system. However, general attitudes towards public executioners were highly ambiguous, often hostile and disparaging. In past imagery, various hangman figures, real or fictitious, were closely linked to ideas of otherness, cruelty, sin and evil. They were identified with criminals, marginal people and demons. In the period of the late Middle Ages, the hangman’s representations were actively exploited, shaped and modified for various reasons by different social and cultural groups in different products of culture, religious as well as secular. This study casts light on ways of perceiving the executioner in French and Burgundian culture and society from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. The primary sources used in this work consist of wide and varied printed and non-printed textual materials such as chronicles, writings by legal experts and theologians, drama and poetry. Significant role is also given to the testimony offered by pictorial art, both sacred and profane, especially miniatures and panel paintings.
- By (author) Hannele Klemettila
Other Titles in this Series
Sixteenth-century Antwerp and its Rural Surroundings
Social and Economic Changes in the Hinterland of a Commercial Metropolis (ca. 1450 - ca. 1570)
Volume 14
Subaltern City?
Alternative and Peripheral Urban Spaces in the Pre-modern Period (13th-18th Centuries)
Volume 46
La police de Bruxelles entre reformes et revolutions (1748-1814)
Police urbaine et modernite
Volume 29
Message in a Bottle
Merchants' letters, merchants' marks and conflict management in 1533-34. A source edition
Volume 57
For the Common Good
State Power and Urban Revolts in the Reign of Mary of Burgundy, 1477-1482
Volume 17
Urban public debts, urban government and the market for annuities in Western Europe (14th-18th centuries)
Volume 3
Public Opinion and Political Contest in Late Medieval Paris
The Parisian Bourgeois and his Community, 1400-1450
Volume 60
Innovation and Medieval Communities
The Circulation of Ideas and Practices in and out of the Town (1200-1500)
Volume 63
Economies, Public Finances, and the Impact of Institutional Changes in Interregional Perspective
The Low Countries and Neighbouring German Territories (14th-17th centuries)
Volume 36
Les identites urbaines au Moyen Age. Regards sur les villes du Midi francais
Actes du colloque de Montpellier 8-9 decembre 2011
Volume 32
Sociabilite urbaine et criminalisation etatique
La justice namuroise face a la violence de 1360 a 1555
Volume 39
The Seven Sorrows Confraternity of Brussels
Drama, Ceremony, and Art Patronage (16th-17th Centuries)
Volume 37
Moving Pictures. Intra-European Trade in Images, 16th-18th Centuries
Intra-European Trade in Images, 16th-18th Centuries
Volume 34
Governments of the Universitates
Urban Communities of Sicily in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Volume 21
Similar Books
A Late Antique Harrowing of Hell and Its Medieval Reception
Eusebius of Alexandria's Sermons 15 and 17 (CPG 5524; 5526) and their Latin Rewritings
Volume 99
Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs
An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches
Volume 90
Crossroads of Cultures
Multilingual Diversity in Dutch Literature from Late Medieval Flanders
Volume 41
Innovation and Medieval Communities
The Circulation of Ideas and Practices in and out of the Town (1200-1500)
Volume 63
Linguistic and Cultural Dynamics in a Frontier Society
New Perspectives on Northeastern Bavaria and Western Bohemia in the Early Middle Ages
Volume 9
Medieval Debates on Foreknowledge: Future Contingents, Prophecy, and Divination
Acts of the XXVII Annual Colloquium of the SIEPM, Trento 12-15 September 2023
Volume 31
Medieval Yeghegis, Armenia
History, Archaeology, Society. Local Multiplicities and Global Connections of a Rural Centre on the Silk Road(s)
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)
Volume 10
Women in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Studies from Western Europe and North Africa
Volume 44
Networking through Biography
Constructing Intellectual Junctions in Antiquity, the Renaissance and the Arabo-Islamic World
Volume 19
Un fascicolo di prediche pistoiesi del 1233. (Pistoia, Archivio Capitolare, C.112)
A cura di Gilda P. Mantovani, Marco Petoletti e Riccardo Saccenti
Volume 556
