Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History)

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Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts This book presents a social and cultural history of ‘‘dishonorable people’’ (unehrliche Leute), an outcast group in early modern Germany. Executioners, skinners, grave-diggers, shepherds, barber-surgeons, millers, linen-weavers, sow-gelders, latrine-cleaners, and bailiffs were among the ‘‘dishonorable’’ by virtue of their trades. This dishonor was either inherited, often through several generations, or it arose from ritual pollution whereby honorable citizens could become dishonorable by coming into casual contact with members of the outcast group. The dishonorable milieu of the city of Augsburg from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century is reconstructed, to show the extent to which dishonor determined the life-chances and self-identity of dishonorable people. The book then approaches the study of honor from the outside in, by investigating how honorable estates interacted with dishonorable people, and how the pollution anxieties of early modern Germans structured social and political relations within honorable society. K S   is Assistant Professor of History, University of California, Davis.

CAM B RI D G E ST U D I E S I N E A R LY M O DE R N HI S T O R Y Edited by Professor Sir John Elliott, University of Oxford Professor Olwen Hufton, University of Oxford Professor H. G. Koenigsberger, University of London Dr. H. M. Scott, University of St. Andrews The idea of an ‘‘early modern’’ period of European history from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth century is now widely accepted among historians. The purpose of Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History is to publish monographs and studies which illuminate the character of the period as a whole, and in particular focus attention on a dominant theme within it, the interplay of continuity and change as they are presented by the continuity of medieval ideas, political and social organization, and by the impact of new ideas, new methods, and new demands on the traditional structure. For a list of titles published in the series, please see end of the book

Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany

K A T H Y S T U AR T

   Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , United Kingdom Published in the United States by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521652391 © Kathy Stuart 1999 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2000 ISBN-13 ISBN-10

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Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgments List of abbreviations Glossary

page vi vii ix x 

Introduction: defiled trades   

                             

 Medieval versus early modern dishonor



 Honor, status, and pollution



   

           

 The status of executioners and skinners, –



 Living on the periphery of dishonor



   

          :                   

 The infamous fur coat, or the unintended consequences of social discipline



 The executioner’s healing touch: health and honor in early modern German medical practice



   

               

 Guardians of honor: artisans versus magistrates



 Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century



Conclusion: dishonor and the society of orders

  

Selected bibliography Index v

Illustrations  Bird’s eye view of Augsburg in the sixteenth century. SStBA Graph /A. page   Mid-eighteenth-century illustration of crowd assembled as a death sentence is proclaimed. StadtAA, Strafamt: Samuel Valentin, End-Urthel und Verruf . . . Aller derjenigen Manns- und Weibs-Persohnen, so von Einem Hoche-Edlen . . . Rath, des H. R. Reichs Freyen Stadt Augsburg Von Anno  bis Anno  vom Leben zum Tod condemnieret und justifizieret worden . . . Augsburg, n.d.   Drawing of a hanged corpse. StadtAA, RP , fo. , July , .   Drawing of pillory and neck ring. StadtAA, RP , fo. , July , .   Drawing of rope and switches. StadtAA, RP , fo. , February , .   Illustration from execution pamphlet. SStBA, Graphik, Verbrecher, /d.   Execution in . SStBA, Graphik, Verbrecher, /.   The holy executioner, St. Apollinaris. Jacob Schmid, S.J. Trauben der Heiligkeit aus den Do¨rnern der Bo¨sheit, oder verwunderliche Bekehrungen allerhand Mo¨rdern, Ra¨ubern, Zauberern, auch viler zum Tod verurtheilten ¨ beltatern . . . Augsburg, . U 

vi

Acknowledgments Finally, to the great relief of everyone involved, this book is finished! Over the years I have benefited from the generous intellectual and moral support of teachers, friends, and colleagues. Among my longsuffering teachers I would like to thank Paul Bushkovitch, Jon Butler, and Alice Kessler-Harris. Klaus Tenfelde welcomed me in his Colloquium at the University of Innsbruck. I enjoyed many exchanges over lunch with Erik Midelfort at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek – and he took me on a pilgrimage! Bernd Roeck first introduced me to the untold treasures of the Stadtarchiv Augsburg. My archival research in Augsburg has been a very fun and exciting part of this project. For that I would like to thank my fellow researchers and archive companions B. Ann Tlusty, Hans-Jo¨rg Ku¨nast, Lyndal Roper, Susanne Eser, Georg Feuerer, Beth Plummer, Benedikt Mauer, Christoph Bo¨hm, Doris Pfister, and Claudia Stein. We were all exploring different aspects of Augsburg’s past, but we developed a spirit of cooperation and intellectual exchange that made our individual research projects all the more exciting. This feeling of intellectual community was greatly enhanced by our regular Thursday night Archiv Stammtisch! The helpful staff at the Stadtarchiv are another reason why research there is so enjoyable. Special thanks go to the indefatigable Alois Senser and Peter Weiss, who (almost) never tired of bringing me meters of archival documents. I would also like to thank the archivists Wolfram Baer, Wolfgang Wu¨st, and Josef Mancal. The Staatsbibliothek Augsburg was also a very congenial place to work. This was due to the professional expertise of Wolfgang Meyer (a mainstay of the Archiv Stammtisch!), and to Ekkehard Nowak’s zany sense of humor. I would also like to thank Direktor Helmut Gier for many valuable tips. This project would never have come to fruition without the support of my friends and colleagues at UC Davis. Special thanks go to Bill Hagen (!), Ted Margadant, Joan Cadden, Mike Saler, Norma Landau, Michael Smith, Cathy Kudlick, Bob Borgen, Paul Teller, Peter Schaeffer, Winfried Schleiner, and Adrienne Martin. My graduate students Michele Clouse, Celeste Chamberland, Katherine Bell, Tracy Miller, and Kathleen Whalen provided helpful feedback. Within the University of California, I have enjoyed brainstorming with David Sabean, Tom Brady, Herman Ooms, Peter Reill, and Randy Head. I have benefited vii

Acknowledgments from conversations with Terry McIntosh, Christopher Friedrichs, Susan KarantNunn, Thomas Robisheaux, Natalie Zemon Davis, Mary Elizabeth Perry, Michael Scha¨fer, Wolfgang Behringer, Rolf Kießling, Johannes Burkhardt, and Wolfgang Weber. The incisive and constructive critiques of the editors of Cambridge Early Modern Studies, Sir John Elliott, Olwen Hufton, Helmut Koenigsberger, and Hamish Scott (to whom I owe special thanks for his rapid marathon reading of the manuscript!) helped strengthen the book considerably. A variety of research grants helped keep body and soul together during the years of research and writing. I am grateful for the generous financial support of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the Social Science Research Council, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Stiftung fu¨r Europa¨ische Kulturgeschichte in Augsburg, and the UC Davis Humanities Institute. Rosemary Shahan, Joanie Erikson, Gay Chung, Mary Francis Mullins, and Phyllis Jestice helped proofread. Pascaline Windand, Futoshi Schibayama, Richard Dinardo, and Jim Mavrikios provided comic relief. Schmuseli, Clyde, Sam, and Foghorn lay next to the computer as I typed. Throughout this enterprise my parents Ruth and John Arnott provided unflagging moral support, and so I dedicate this book to them. Kathy Stuart University of California, Davis

viii

Abbreviations AHV CM CM Prot. EWA GRP HAP HDA HHuStA HWA Restitutiones RP StaatsAA StadtA Munich StadtAA Stadtbed. SStBA Trauungsreg. ZHVS

Archiv des Historischen Vereins Collegium Medicum Protokolle des Collegium Medicum Evangelisches Wesensarchiv Geheime Ratsprotokolle Hochzeitsamt, Hochzeitsamtsprotokolle Handwo¨rterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv (Vienna) Handwerkerakten Restitutiones natalium ac legitimationes Ratsprotokolle Staatsarchiv Augsburg Stadtarchiv Munich Stadtarchiv Augsburg Stadtbedienstete Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg Trauungsregister Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins fu¨r Schwaben

ix

Glossary Achtbuch late medieval book of punishments Bu¨rgermeister mayor Carnifex Latin: executioner Ehelich legitimate Ehrlich honorable Ex opere operato Latin: by the act itself Henkersknecht executioner’s servant Herrschaft lordship and domination Malefizknecht, Malefizscherge police officer who deals with infamous prisoners Nachtarbeiter ‘‘night-worker,’’ i.e. latrine cleaner Nachtko¨nig ‘‘night-king,’’ i.e. chief latrine cleaner Obrigkeit sovereign authorities Pasquill insulting placard illegally displayed in a public place Rechtlose lewte medieval outlaws Sachsenspiegel mirror of the Saxons Schwabenspiegel mirror of the Swabians Stadtknecht bailiff Stadtpir cone shaped civic symbol of Augsburg Stadtrecht civic law code Taubenreinheit ‘‘dove-like-purity’’ Unehrliche Leute dishonorable people Unehrlichkeit dishonor

x

Introduction: defiled trades In the winter of  an unusual wedding took place in the free imperial city of Augsburg. A young fisherman, Andreas Anhauser, married Barbara Leichnam, the daughter of the local skinner. When Andreas had proposed marriage to Barbara in the preceding summer his parents had been aghast at this mismatch. Both Andreas and Barbara came from families that had long resided in Augsburg, but the Anhausers were citizens and prominent members of the fishermen’s guild, whereas the Leichnam family had filled the post of urban skinner for three generations. Skinners’ work consisted of removing animal carcasses, putting down wild dogs, burying the corpses of suicides in the carrion field, and emptying latrines, among other unsavory tasks. Skinners also assisted the executioner in carrying out a variety of criminal punishments, in particular hangings, the most dishonorable form of execution. The very name of the young bride gave expression to the work her family had performed for generations; her surname Leichnam translates as ‘‘corpse.’’ As skinners, the Leichnam clan belonged to the so-called unehrliche Leute or ‘‘dishonorable people,’’ an outcast group in early modern Germany in which membership was ascribed by birth. The fishermen, by contrast, constituted an ancient and honorable guild. If the young fisherman were to marry into skinners’ stock, his wife’s dishonor would fall on him, an outrage to both his family and his guild. The Leichnam family was no less opposed to the marriage, perhaps because they knew the young couple would face social ostracism. And most likely they also believed that Barbara could make an economically more advantageous match within her own social estate. In spite of their dishonorable status, skinners typically were wealthier than the honorable artisans who despised them. In any case, both sets of parents used their considerable authority over their children to prevent the union. They threatened and cajoled, and when that did not help, they had their children imprisoned. With the girl safely locked away, Andreas was released. He then threw himself in the river Lech in an attempt to drown himself, but he was rescued by passersby. Meanwhile Barbara cut her wrists in prison, but she was saved by the jailer. These joint suicide attempts forced the parents to give in to their children’s 

StadtAA, HAP, –, fo.  on the marriage; Stadt AA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. / on the Leichnam family.



Introduction demands. Before they would endanger the lives and the very souls of their children, they would consent to the marriage. They had done everything in their power to prevent it, the Anhausers claimed, but their boy was ‘‘insane from love’’ (insania filia amoris). They conceded that this was a scandalous and dangerous marriage, but their child’s salvation should take precedence over the ‘‘mere political consideration of dishonor.’’ The fishermen did not agree. To allow this marriage would mean not only accepting Barbara Leichnam into the guild, but her children as well. To incorporate the skinner’s descendants would lead to the everlasting ridicule and dishonor of the entire guild, they wrote in an appeal to the city government. If Andreas insisted on marrying into such dishonorable stock, the fishermen declared, he would be expelled from the guild and forbidden to fish. The city government ruled in favor of the guild. It did not forbid the marriage outright, but the city council decreed that if Andreas went through with it, he could no longer practice his trade. Andreas and Barbara did marry; he was expelled from the fishermen’s guild. Thereafter, he made his living as a day-laborer. This case is an example, albeit a dramatic one, of ritual pollution conflicts involving a variety of defiled trades that frequently disrupted early modern German guilds. Defiled tradesmen and their families were known as Unehrliche Leute, or dishonorable people. Unehrlichkeit or the concept of dishonor first emerged in the fourteenth century, it hardened and coalesced in the first half of the sixteenth century, and developed its greatest virulence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Dishonor was a legal and social distinction which did not necessarily convey any moral meaning – although it often did. Dishonor was a vaguely defined term that applied to widely disparate groups bound by little else than the stigma of dishonor: they included vagrants and criminals of all kinds, prostitutes, bastards, the prenuptially conceived, ethnic and religious minorities such as Jews or gypsies, those who had been made legally infamous by honor punishments, and a variety of occupations and trades. Social status was expressed in terms of honor in the early modern German society of orders (Sta¨ndische Gesellschaft); to be denied status in this society meant to be denied honor. This book does not present a study of dishonor in this generic sense. Instead, we are concerned with social groups who were dishonorable by virtue of their trade. Executioners, skinners, grave-diggers, shepherds, barber-surgeons, millers, linen-weavers, sow-gelders, actors, latrinecleaners, nightwatchmen, and bailiffs were all defined as ‘‘dishonorable people’’ in this specific sense. Throughout the Holy Roman empire dishonorable tradesmen suffered various forms of social, economic, legal, and political discrimination on a graduated scale of dishonor at the hands of ‘‘honorable’’ guild artisans and in ‘‘honorable’’ society at 

StadtAA, HWA, Fischer , , correspondence between the Anhausers, guild, and magistrates; StadtAA Strafamt, Zucht- und Strafamtsprotokolle, –, fo.  names Andreas Anhauser as a Tagwerker (day-laborer) in .



Introduction large. As a matter of course, dishonorable people were excluded from most guilds. In the case of the most extreme dishonor, that of executioners and skinners, Unehrlichkeit could lead to exclusion from virtually all normal sociability. Executioners and skinners might be pelted with stones by onlookers, they might be refused access to taverns, excluded from public baths, or denied an honorable burial. Dishonor was transmitted through heredity, often over several generations. The polluting quality of dishonor is one of its defining characteristics. By coming into casual contact with dishonorable people or by violating certain ritualized codes of conduct, honorable citizens could themselves become dishonorable. Being labeled dishonorable had disastrous consequences for an honorable artisan. The guildsman who was tainted by dishonor suffered a kind of social death. He would be excluded from his guild and forbidden to practice his trade, so that he would lose both his livelihood and the social and political identity which guild membership conferred. The fear of pollution through personal contact could go so far that neighbors and onlookers would refuse to help a dishonorable person even in the face of mortal danger. A dramatic example is the executioner’s wife who was left to die in childbirth in the north German town of Husum in the s, because the midwife refused to set foot in the executioner’s house.

        ,      ,              The history of dishonor is closely related to the history of sovereignty and lordship (Herrschaft). What does it tell us about the nature of social control and the relationship of the popular classes to governmental authority that the very instruments who exercised this authority were dishonorable people? Throughout the empire executioners, bailiffs, and other low-level police officers were at the center of dishonor. Both the authorities and the dishonorable officers of law enforcement fended off accusations of dishonor with the argument that they were ‘‘the arm of justice.’’ One executioner argued, for example, that he did not ‘‘swing his sword for his own pleasure’’ but executed the judgments meted out by the ‘‘honorable’’ 

   

Karl-Sigismund Kramer, ‘‘Ehrliche/Unehrliche Gewerbe,’’ in Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, eds., Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, vol.  (Berlin, ), pp. –. Richard van Du¨lmen, ‘‘Der infame Mensch. Unehrliche Arbeit und soziale Ausgrenzung in der fru¨hen Neuzeit,’’ in Richard van Du¨lmen, ed., Arbeit, Fro¨mmigkeit und Eigensinn. Studien zur historischen Kulturforschung (Frankfurt a.M., ), pp. –. StadtAA, HWA, Ba¨cker , September , . StaatsAA, Lehen und Adel c (Herrschaft Babenhausen), August , .  StadtAA, RP , fo. r, for June , . StadtAA, HWA, Maurer , June–December . [Augustus Giese], Der weheschreiende Stein, u¨ber den Greuel, daß man die Diener der Justiz bis anher nicht zu Grabe tragen, und nun auch Ihrer etlichen Frauen in Kindsnoth niemand helfen will (n.p., ), pp. –. Though this tract was published anonymously, its author was Augustus Giese, a doctor of law who served for many years as a city councilor of Husum. In this function he was responsible for arbitrating dishonor conflicts, a task which he found deeply frustrating.



Introduction authorities, which left him with a clear conscience. Such arguments notwithstanding, punishment meted out in the name of sovereign authorities (Obrigkeit) was central to plebeian ideas about dishonor. There were certain things honorable men did not do, namely hunting down, capturing, whipping, torturing, or executing criminals. A stigma attached to the performance of criminal punishments. One goal of this study is to understand what the existence of this stigma reveals about the nature of lordship and sovereignty, about the process of state-building, and about common folk’s responses to governmental attempts to ‘‘discipline’’ them. The paradigm of ‘‘social disciplining,’’ first developed by Gerhard Oestreich, has been one of the dominant theoretical approaches of historians of early modern Germany in recent years. Social disciplining and ‘‘confessionalization’’ are seen as two interlocking processes. During the implementation of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Catholic territories developed distinct confessional cultures. But despite differences in religious culture, statebuilding followed a broadly similar pattern in Catholic and Protestant territories. Government authorities and territorial churches cooperated to form the ‘‘confessionalized’’ absolutist state. This modernizing state set out with growing efficiency to ‘‘discipline’’ its subjects, i.e. to control the burgeoning population of the poor, to impose labor discipline, to impose stricter norms of sexual morality, to impose confessional orthodoxy, and to eradicate popular superstitions. The effect was, as historians who apply the social disciplining model suggest, to transform and domesticate popular culture in general, and to inculcate an all-round obedience to the instruments of the state. Historians of other European countries have described a similar process. Peter Burke has described the repression of popular festivities, and the drunkenness, gluttony, and moral disorder elite reformers associated with them, as ‘‘the triumph of Lent.’’ Robert Muchembled has interpreted the witchhunt in France as a comprehensive effort by the absolutist state to ‘‘acculturate’’ rural society and to extirpate popular ‘‘superstitions.’’ According to the German social disciplining paradigm, this process began in the late middle ages in the cities. Urban disciplining practices were then imitated by the nascent absolutist territorial states in the sixteenth century. Social discipline really  

  

 Quote from . StadtAA, HWA, Maurer . StadtAA, HWA, Weber . Gerhard Oestreich, ‘‘Strukturprobleme des europa¨ischen Absolutismus,’’ in his Geist und Gestalt des fru¨hmodernen Staates (Berlin, ). On social discipline, see also R. Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe – (London/New York, ), especially pp. –; Stefan Breuer, ‘‘Sozialdisziplinierung. Probleme und Problemverlagerungen bei Max Weber, Gerhard Oestreich und Michel Foucault,’’ in Soziale Sicherheit und Soziale Disziplinierung. Beitra¨ge zu einer historischen Theorie der Sozialpolitik, eds. Christian Sachße und Florian Tennstedt (Frankfurt a.M., ), pp. –; Winfried Schulze, ‘‘Gerhard Oestreichs Begriff ‘Sozialdisziplinierung in der fru¨hen Neuzeit’,’’ Zeitschrift fu¨r historische Forschung  (), –. Kaspar von Greyerz, ‘‘Confession as a social and economic factor,’’ in Germany: a New Social and Economic History, vol.  (New York, ), pp. –. Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, ), pp. –. Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, – (Baton Rouge, ), pp. –.



Introduction began to take hold in the seventeenth century when absolutist states imposed a ‘‘disciplining of the staff’’ (Stabsdisziplinierung) to shape their officer corps and state bureaucracy into reliable instruments of government. Finally, in the eighteenth century this process reached its successful conclusion with the stage of ‘‘fundamental disciplining,’’ when social disciplining effectively reached all levels of society. There is a striking overlap in this chronology of social disciplining and the history of dishonor. Discrimination against dishonorable people reached its greatest virulence just when the process of social disciplining was allegedly reaching its successful conclusion. Although social disciplining is seen as a more or less all-encompassing process, this paradigm is obviously of particular relevance in studies of deviance, marginality, and poverty. Unehrlichkeit emerged as a social category in the fourteenth century. Discrimination against dishonorable people coincided with the increasing stigmatization of a variety of marginal groups in the late middle ages. In his broad-ranging synthesis The Emergence of a Persecuting Society, R. I. Moore has documented a concerted effort by the centralizing institutions of church and state in the late middle ages to persecute deviants of all kinds with new vigor. This was a European-wide trend. Jews, lepers, heretics, sodomites, and prostitutes were symbolically associated in a new coherent ideology of persecution. They were assimilated ‘‘into a single rhetoric.’’ In Moore’s interpretation, the persecution of deviants is a concomitant of the emergence of new bureaucratic regimes. Persecution of deviants was instigated by elites. Popular anti-semitism, for example, was whipped up by the sermons of mendicant friars. Church and state developed a kind of tool-kit of infamy, a flexible array of measures to mark and segregate deviants. According to Frantisek Graus, the treatment of prostitutes was paradigmatic in this regard. Prostitutes enjoyed relative tolerance in the high middle ages, when ecclesiastical authorities justified their existence as a ‘‘lesser evil.’’ But in the fourteenth century, city governments began to issue new legislation restricting prostitutes to certain areas of the city, creating a new social topography of deviance in the process, and imposing ‘‘stigma symbols,’’ vestimentary signs of infamy which would visibly distinguish them from honorable women. Authorities applied the same measures to Jews, lepers, and beggars. Historians see the proliferation of begging ordinances in cities across Europe around  as a first step in governments’ new social disciplining program. These ordinances distinguished between   



Breuer, ‘‘Sozialdisziplierung,’’ p. . R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, –  (Cambridge, ), p. . Ibid., pp. –. Diane Owen Hughes, ‘‘Distinguishing signs: ear-rings, Jews, and Franciscan rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance city,’’ Past and Present  (), –, and Robert Ju¨tte, ‘‘Stigma-Symbole. Kleidung als identita¨tsstiftendes Merkmal bei spa¨tmittelalterlichen und fru¨hneuzeitlichen Randgruppen (Juden, Dirnen, Aussa¨tzige, Bettler),’’ Saeculum  (), –. Frantisek Graus, ‘‘Randgruppen der sta¨dtischen Gesellschaft im Spa¨tmittelalter,’’ Zeitschrift fu¨r historische Forschung  (), –.



Introduction the ‘‘deserving poor’’ – invalids, widows, orphans – and ‘‘strong beggars’’ who were unworthy of alms and who should be compelled to work by coercive measures. This new public policy towards poverty contributed to the ‘‘criminalization’’ of the able-bodied poor. This was the group on whose back the social disciplining process was carried out, the group that experienced the repressive apparatus of the state in all its brutality. In the sixteenth century the social boundary excluding dishonorable people from honorable society hardened and coalesced, just as the persecution of marginal groups in general reached new intensity. In the age of Reformation and CounterReformation, modernizing states hunted deviants more efficiently. The purifying impulse was strongest when governments were confronted by the presence of an opposing religious camp in the immediate proximity. The European witch-hunt, for example, was most bloody in the political and confessional patchwork of the Holy Roman empire. Goaded on by the presence of a competing religion just beyond their borders, confessional states set out to create a Godly state, a ‘‘heavenly Jerusalem,’’ within their own territory. Bernd Roeck interprets the persecution of Jews, religious dissenters, witches, the resident and vagrant poor, gypsies, dishonorable people, bastards, homosexuals, and highwaymen as part of a general program to create the ‘‘ideal Christian state.’’ The disciplining of marginal groups had wider social ramifications, contributing to the formation of the absolutist state. In his study of highway robbery in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany, for example, Uwe Danker argues that early modern territorial states instrumentalized the prosecution of bandits in order to consolidate political domination (Herrschaft). The exemplary marginalization and punishment of deviants served to inculcate obedience, orthodoxy, thrift, and work discipline in the general population. There are significant problems with this social disciplining approach to the topics of marginality in general and dishonor in particular. First, discipline should not be seen as a unilateral process imposed by elites. In an incisive criticism of the social disciplining model, Lyndal Roper has argued that ‘‘discipline is not a natural accompaniment of the rise of centralized authority, but a concept around which rival political claims could be staked out.’’ In fact, sometimes it was the ‘‘bastions of 

 

 

Bronislaw Geremek, ‘‘Criminalite´, vagabondage, paupe´risme. La marginalite´ a` l’aube des temps modernes,’’ Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine  (), –; Robert Ju¨tte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, ), pp. –. Brian P. Levack, The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe (London, ), pp. –, –. Bernd Roeck, Außenseiter, Randgruppen, Minderheiten. Fremde im Deutschland der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Go¨ttingen, ), pp. –; Bernd Roeck, ‘‘Christlicher Idealstaat und Hexenwahn. Zum Ende der Europa¨ischen Verfolgungen,’’ Historisches Jahrbuch  (), –. Uwe Danker, Ra¨uberbanden im alten Reich um . Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte von Herrschaft und Kriminalita¨t in der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M., ), p. . Christian Sachße and Florian Tennstedt, ‘‘Sicherheit und Disziplin. Eine Skizze zur Einfu¨hrung,’’ in Christian Sachße and Florian Tennstedt, eds., Soziale Sicherheit und Soziale Disziplinierung. Beitra¨ge zu einer historischen Theorie der Sozialpolitik (Frankfurt a.M., ), pp. –, p. .



Introduction resistance’’ to state centralization that were the champions of discipline. In German cities, guild corporations played this role. Second, the social disciplining perspective tends to obscure the fact that marginal groups were sometimes persecuted by middling groups in society as a form of resistance to the expanding authority of the state. For example, political conflict between urban commoners and patricians sometimes sparked pogroms. By attacking local Jews, commoners undermined the authority of their patrician lords, who served as the Jews’ patrons. By studying marginal groups en gros we run the risk of creating a kind of grab-bag of deviance, in which essential differences are obscured, making the stigmatization of these diverse groups appear to be part of the same social process. But the marginality of witches, hunted by church and state with the goal of exterminating them, had little in common with the marginality of their executioners, who, as we shall see, at times derived considerable social advantages from their outcast status. Although popular denunciation was usually the first step in the making of a witch, there would have been no witch-hunt without the participation of elites and the judicial institutions of the state. Women and men who died in the European witch-hunt were, in part, victims of the disciplining drive of the modernizing state. Like the prosecution of witches, the criminalization of the vagrant poor was state driven. By contrast, the marginalization of dishonorable people followed a different dynamic. Unlike witches and vagabonds, dishonorable people did not suffer at the hands of the state. Much to the contrary, their persecution originated with urban guildsmen, who forced the exclusion of dishonorable people – often against the express commands of the state. For centuries artisans defied governmental attempts to rehabilitate dishonorable people. From  through the eighteenth century imperial and local governments regularly issued mandates attempting to cleanse defiled trades of their stigma of dishonor.      , ‘‘   ,’’          In  Leonhard Eder, a journeyman butcher in the small Austrian town of Horn, addressed a petition to the Holy Roman emperor in which he recounted a lifealtering misfortune that had befallen him. Leonhard had accidentally killed a dog. One day while he was rinsing slabs of meat at the city well, a ‘‘small starving weak  



 

Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London/New York, ), p. . See R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, ), pp. –; Christopher Friedrichs, ‘‘Anti-Jewish politics in early modern Germany: the uprising in Worms, –,’’ Central European History  (), –. For an interpretation of the European witch-hunt in the context of social disciplining, see for example, Michael Kunze, Highroad to the Stake: a Tale of Witchcraft (Chicago, ), and Christina Larner, Enemies of God: the Witch-hunt in Scotland (London, ). Ju¨tte, Poverty and Deviance, pp. –. Hans Proesler, ed., Das gesamtdeutsche Handwerk im Spiegel der Reichsgesetzgebung von – (Berlin, ), pp. , , , , .



Introduction dog’’ snapped up a piece of lamb. Leonhard recovered the meat and took it to the butcher’s stall, but the dog followed him into his master’s house. Leonard caught the dog, swung him around by the tail, and flung him into the alley. Unfortunately for Leonhard, the dog landed on his head and died. Even though he had not used a ‘‘deadly weapon’’ or purposefully killed the dog (as his fellow journeyman was willing to attest), Leonhard was now dishonorable in the eyes of his fellow butchers. It was obviously not cruelty to animals the butchers objected to, but the fact that by this action Leonhard had likened himself to the skinner, for it fell within the skinner’s duties to put down wild dogs. Deprived of his livelihood, Leonhard begged the emperor to remove the taint of infamy he had contracted due to the death of the dog. Leonhard’s dishonor resulted from his transgression of a pollution prohibition, not from any ethical-moral flaw. The communication of dishonor in this case corresponds to Mary Douglas’s definition of ritual pollution, which occurs ex opere operato, i.e. it is effective regardless of the moral condition of the actor. Intention is irrelevant, and pollution is likely to be sparked inadvertently. The contagious quality of early modern German dishonor has led a number of scholars to explain Unehrlichkeit as a ‘‘taboo.’’ In Die Germanischen Todesstrafen (), Karl von Amira argues, for example, that the dishonor of the executioner originated in the conflict between Germanic pagan religion and medieval Christianity. Among the pre-Christian Germanic tribes, public executions took the form of sacrifices offered to the gods. The person who carried out the execution, often a priest, established immediate contact with the gods so that he became endowed with some sacral power (‘‘mana’’). Thus contact with this person became dangerous and he was treated with reverence and awe. With Christianization the execution lost its character as a sacrifice and the feelings of awe and reverence for the magical efficacy of the pre-Christian priest were somehow transformed into their opposite (‘‘taboo’’). Persons who carried out executions, now mostly slaves or criminals, inspired feelings of revulsion and disgust. Werner Dankert developed the ‘‘taboo’’ theory further, with the goal of identifying the unifying factor, the ‘‘fundamental motive,’’ that would explain the defamation of all outcasts, including witches and Jews. For Dankert the explanation lay in the fact that all pariahs were associated with liminal situations in the human life-cycle (which he groups under such headings as ‘‘death and the afterlife’’ and ‘‘eros, vegetation’’) and were somehow heir to pre-Christian Germanic cults. These pariahs were invested with ‘‘mana,’’ a magical-religious potency that enabled them to heal as well as to harm. Although no sources have    

 HH StA, Restitutiones /E, Leonhard Eder, . By the act itself. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: an Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, ), pp. –. Karl von Amira, Die Germanischen Todesstrafen. Untersuchungen zur Rechts- und Religionsgeschichte (Munich, ), pp. –. Werner Danckert, Unehrliche Leute. Die verfemten Berufe (Bern/Munich, ).



Introduction been identified to back up these speculations, the ‘‘taboo’’ theory continues to hold considerable attraction for scholars of Unehrlichkeit. The tenacity of the taboo theory is probably due to the fact that there are indeed some intriguing structural parallels between German dishonor and patterns of ritual pollution in a number of non-Western societies. We will briefly sketch out some comparisons here, the purpose of which is not to arrive at any cross-cultural generalizations about pollution behavior, but rather to highlight the unique features of early modern German dishonor. Most obviously, there is considerable overlap in trades defined as dishonorable or impure in different societies. Barbersurgeons, leather-workers, and latrine-cleaners number among the ‘‘untouchables’’ in India. In Japan, trades associated with dead animals and leather work were classed among the pariah group of the burakumin. Burakumin served as village watchmen, executioners, morticians, and night-soil fertilizers. However, we should note that butchers, defiled in both Japan and India, did not number among the dishonorable trades in early modern Germany. Sociability and commensality with untouchables, burakumin, or dishonorable people could be defiling for members of higher castes or estates. Pariah groups in Germany, India, and Japan practiced social endogamy and formed hereditary castes. At first sight Amira’s and Dankert’s analogy with Polynesian mana/taboo seems apt, since dishonor was at times characterized by a similar fundamental ambivalence. The German executioner, as we shall see, was believed to be endowed with the gift of healing, and spent more time practicing medicine than carrying out criminal executions. However, the taboo theory is based on a profound misinterpretation of the phenomenon of Unehrlichkeit. A striking difference between caste pollution in Japan and India or Polynesian mana/taboo and early modern German dishonor lies in the ideological legitimation and the effects of pollution. In India and Japan, pariah groups were described as religiously and spiritually defiled. The selection criteria according to which trades were classed as pariahs were religious in nature. Pollution presented an impediment to worship. For example, a Havik Brahman was required to perform the rite of bathing and thus enter the highest state of religious purity before prayer. In the Polynesian context, ‘‘taboo’’ was used to shore up the boundary between the sacred and the profane. Violation of a taboo resulted in 

 



See for example Else Angstmann, Der Henker in der Volksmeinung. Seine Namen und sein Vorkommen ¨ berlieferung (Halle an der Saale, ), pp. –; Franz Irsigler and Arnold in der mu¨ndlichen U Lasotta, Bettler und Gauner, Dirnen und Henker. Außenseiter in einer mittelalterlichen Stadt. Ko¨ln, – (Munich, ), p. ; Gu¨nter Voß, ‘‘Henker. Tabugestalt und Su¨ndenbock,’’ in BerndUlrich Hergemo¨ller, Randgruppen in der spa¨tmittelalterlichen Gesellschaft (Warendorf, ), p. . Adrian C. Mayer, ‘‘Caste: the Indian caste system,’’ in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol.  (), pp. –, p. . John Price, ‘‘A history of the outcast: untouchability in Japan,’’ in George De Vos and Hiroshi Wagatsuma, eds., Japan’s Invisible Race: Caste in Culture and Personality (Berkeley, ), pp. , –; Herman Ooms, Tokugawa Village Practice: Class, Status, Power, Law (Berkeley, ), p. . Gerald D. Berreman, ‘‘Structure and function of caste systems,’’ in De Vos and Wagatsuma, Japan’s  Invisible Race, p. . Douglas, Purity and Danger, p. .



Introduction cosmological pollution and brought down direct divine retribution. A violator might suffer a skin disease or might be struck down dead on the spot. In contrast, dishonor pollution had no cosmological consequences. As will become clear, no ‘‘danger’’ resulted from dishonor other than loss of social status. In this sense, dishonor is clearly distinct from witchcraft and magic. Dishonor pollution was a profane condition that did not impede communication with the supernatural. The attribution of honor and dishonor worked according to a kind of secular liturgy, which operated quite independently of and often in opposition to religion. This will be a surprising statement for historians of early modern Europe, who have long emphasized that early modern people did not experience the sacred and the profane as two distinct realms. To argue that dishonor was a secular construct, however, is not to say that early modern Germans inhabited a secularized or disenchanted universe, but rather that questions of honor and dishonor occupied a different sphere of relevance than the sacred. When it came to questions of honor and social status, early modern Germans did distinguish the religious from the political. We saw that the parents of the hapless fisherman Andreas Anhauser classified dishonor as a ‘‘mere political consideration.’’ It was the livelihood and political identity of their son that was at stake, not his soul. Early modern German Unehrlichkeit was a characteristic of urban society. Augsburg, the site of Andreas and Barbara’s ill-fated marriage, was one of Germany’s oldest and largest cities. Pollution conflicts regarding dishonor occurred almost exclusively in cities, until the mid-eighteenth century when peasants began to imitate the honor pretensions of city folk. In contrast, pariah status in India and Japan were features of rural society. The burakumin lived in endogamous village communities, and in certain regions of India untouchable subcastes made up the majority of the agricultural labor force. The urban nature of the whole complex of German dishonor flies in the face of much of the anthropological literature on both honor and caste. Anthropologists tend to study honor in rural village societies, emphasizing that stringent and exclusive honor codes flourish mostly in small face-to-face societies where actors are personally known to one another. The anonymity of the city, as J. G. Peristiany among others has suggested, would make it impossible to enforce honor prohibitions. This approach harks back to Max 





 

Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: the Caste System and its Implications (Chicago, ), p. ; Roy Wagner, ‘‘Taboo’’ in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade, vol.  (New York, ), pp. –. For a similar analysis of plebeian honor in early modern Italy, see Thomas Cohen, ‘‘The lay liturgy of affront in sixteenth-century Italy,’’ Journal of Social History  (), –: ‘‘Honor and religion were almost separate realms and, to a striking degree, contrary ethical codes’’ (p. ). On the fluid boundaries between the sacred and the profane, see Robert W. Scribner, ‘‘Elements of popular belief,’’ in Thomas A. Brady, Heiko A. Oberman, and James Tracy, eds., Handbook of European History, –, vol.  (Leiden, ), pp. –. Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, p. . J. G. Peristiany, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in J. G. Peristiany, ed., Honor and Shame: the Values of Mediterranean Society (Chicago, ), pp. –, p. ; Julian Pitt-Rivers, The Fate of the Sichem or the Politics of Sex: Essays in the Anthropology of the Sichem (Cambridge, ), p. .



Introduction Weber’s interpretation of honor as a characteristic of ‘‘traditional’’ societies. It implies that the significance of honor recedes as societies become more complex and diversified. Gerald Berreman has made a similar argument in his comparison of Indian caste with race relations in the southern United States: ‘‘Indian caste, without clear color badges of rank, can only work in a small face-to-face locality where everyone knows the background of everyone else. By contrast, racial caste can function in a large impersonal milieu.’’ This anthropological assumption does not hold true for early modern German dishonor. Much to the contrary, as we shall see, the larger the city, the more stringent the honor code. On this point, we will take issue with Mack Walker’s classic study German Home Towns. Emphasizing the cultural particularity, indeed uniqueness, of individual towns, Walker has argued that the force of honor was greatest in small to medium-sized towns of less than , inhabitants. In contrast, it will be shown here that the largest German cities served as arbiters in dishonor disputes that erupted in smaller towns, and that urban artisans developed mechanisms to enforce their honor code and pollution prohibitions far beyond their particular locality.               Until quite recently scholarship on dishonor has focused almost exclusively on identifying its first causes. The first major secondary work on the topic is Otto Beneke’s Von Unehrlichen Leuten. Cultur-Historische Studien (). He argued that the emergence of dishonor in the thirteenth century resulted from the growing influence of Roman law. The fact that the Roman carnifex (executioner) had been a pariah explained why German professional executioners became outcasts in the thirteenth century. The executioner was undoubtedly the lowest and most contaminating among the dishonorable, and so, according to Beneke, the spread of the whole complex of dishonor could somehow be traced back to him. However, this explanation begs the question: how does the infamy of the Roman carnifex explain the dishonor of the German executioner in the thirteenth century, especially when 



 



H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, ), pp. –. On Weber’s concept of honor and corporate estate, see also Klaus Schreiner and Gerd ¨ berlegungen zu einem Forschungskonzept,’’ in Klaus Schreiner and Schwerhoff, ‘‘Verletzte Ehre. U Gerd Schwerhoff, eds., Verletzte Ehre. Ehrkonflikte in Gesellschaften des Mittelalters und der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Cologne, ), pp. –, p. . For critique of this approach, see Martin Dinges, ‘‘Die Ehre als Thema der historischen Anthropologie. Bemerkungen zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte und zur Konzeptualisierung,’’ in Schreiner and  Schwerhoff, Verletzte Ehre, pp. –, pp. –. Berreman, ‘‘Structure,’’ p. . Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, – (Ithaca/ London, ). On the Roman carnifex see Heribert Aigner, ‘‘Zur gesellschaftlichen Stellung von Henkern, Gladiatoren und Berufsathleten,’’ in Ingomar Weiler, ed., Soziale Randgruppen und Außenseiter im Altertum (Graz, ), pp. –. Hans-Ju¨rgen Ganß, ‘‘Der Scharfrichter. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Rechts- und Kulturgeschichte’’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Universita¨t Ko¨ln, ), p. , makes the same argument.



Introduction there is a gap of several centuries to account for, since the office of professional executioner did not exist in Germany in the early middle ages? Furthermore, the dishonor of the executioner seems to date back to the beginning of the office in Germany in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, well before the assimilation of Roman law, which was a long-term process and initially affected only a small elite. As we shall see, early modern Germans did constantly quote Roman law to justify their discrimination against dishonorable people, but this constituted an ex post facto rationalization of what was already an established social fact. A psycho-historical approach has also been taken to explain the dishonor of the executioner. Joachim Gernhuber sees Unehrlichkeit as a phenomenon of mass psychology. The common people felt an unconscious aversion to the array of elaborate death penalties and other blood sanctions that came into more frequent use in the high middle ages. Alternatives to capital and other corporal punishments, such as imprisonment, were not available at this level of social development, and so criticism against the bloody criminal justice system could not be voiced. Unconscious revulsion against torture and execution resulted in a collective trauma that was projected onto the executioner. This psycho-historical approach, as well as theories that dishonor derived from Roman law, or from early Christian ‘‘taboo’’ have in common that they cannot be proven or disproven. Historians have been unable to find sources that shed light on the origins of the executioner’s dishonor in the late middle ages. In the absence of new evidence, this question ultimately cannot be solved. The preoccupation of most existing literature with the first causes of dishonor has distracted from the questions that lie at the heart of this study. Why did common people cling so tenaciously to their definitions of dishonor over centuries? And why did the force of dishonor grow stronger over the course of the early modern period? Any analysis of Unehrlichkeit must also take into account the significant regional variation in the definition of dishonor. Linen-weavers, for example, were dishonorable only in northern and northeastern Germany and not in the major cloth producing centers in the south. Millers were dishonorable in Nuremberg, but they were not in Augsburg. Sow-gelders were dishonorable in Hessia, Saxony, Brandenburg, Lu¨neburg, and Cologne, but not in Augsburg. The basic research on who was dishonorable where, when they became so, and how the social consequences of dishonor differed from region to region is yet to be done. Two recent works on the social history of executioners have begun to correct this situation. In her study of executioners and skinners in Osnabru¨ck, Giesela Wilbertz 

 

Joachim Gernhuber, ‘‘Strafvollzug und Unehrlichkeit,’’ Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fu¨r Rechts¨ ber die ‘‘Unehrlichgeschichte, Germanische Abteilung  (), –; see also Wolfgang Oppelt, U keit’’ des Scharfrichters. Unter bevorzugter Verwendung von Ansbacher Quellen (Lengfeld, ), pp. –. StadtAA, HWA, Schneider , June , . HH StA, Restitutiones /S, Schweinschneider Handwerk, –.



Introduction argues that the social consequences of dishonor were less severe for executioners in the north than in southern Germany. In the north, executioners did not suffer many of the legal and social consequences that ostensibly resulted from dishonor. They were not required to wear any special identifying dress. They suffered no legal disabilities; they could take oaths, make a will, inherit property, or serve as a witness or legal guardian just like any honorable citizen. Most interestingly, they seem not to have suffered the same social ostracism as they did in the south. Jutta Nowosadtko’s social history of executioners and skinners in the duchy of Bavaria confirms many of Wilbertz’s observations. Executioners did occupy a lower legal status in Bavaria than in northwestern Germany. Their legal status had little impact on social practice, however. Overt discrimination and spectacular pollution conflicts were exceptional, Nowosadtko argues. Dishonor did not shape executioners’ and skinners’ experience of daily life (Alltagsgeschichte). Nowosadtko focuses on the internal history of executioners and skinners and is not concerned with the functions of dishonor for other social groups. She argues against analyzing dishonor as a form of marginality, since this would put the social epistemology according to which honorable society labeled and stigmatized dishonorable people at the center of the study, instead of the social history of executioners themselves. Therefore, she excludes social classification within the society of orders and the role of dishonorable people within the corporate hierarchy from the scope of her study. We shall pursue a different approach here. The self-experience of dishonorable people cannot be divorced from the general social context. Accordingly, this book is as much about honor as dishonor. Our goal is to reconstruct the social and political milieu in which honor pretensions flourished and attributions of dishonor proliferated. We begin with executioners and skinners at the ideological center of dishonor, and then go beyond this core group to reconstruct the status and self-experience of other defiled trades, and relations among them. Just as various pariah castes in India were untouchable to one another, different dishonorable groups were polluting to each other. The bulk of the analysis concerns the role dishonor played in the making of honorable society. We turn now to the social group that developed the most extreme pollution anxieties vis-a`-vis dishonorable people, the honorable guildsmen.    ‘‘   -    -   ’ ’           The earliest sources on Unehrlichkeit are fourteenth-century north German guild ordinances that required honorable birth of their members and then listed all the 



Giesela Wilbertz, Scharfrichter und Abdecker im Hochstift Osnabru¨ck. Untersuchungen zur Sozialgeschichte zweier ‘‘unehrlicher’’ Berufe in nordwestdeutschen Raum vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert (Osnabru¨ck, ), pp. –. Jutta Nowosadtko, Scharfrichter und Abdecker. Der Alltag zweier ‘‘unehrlicher Berufe’’ in der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Paderborn, ), pp. –.



Introduction trades that did not meet this condition. As early as  the goldsmiths of Braunschweig excluded the children of linen-weavers and beadles from their guild. The Bremen shoemakers no longer admitted the children of linen-weavers in . In  the wealthy butchers’ guild of Hildesheim rejected the children of linenweavers, shepherds, and millers. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, guilds in Hamburg, Lu¨beck, Lu¨neburg, and other north German cities began to demand birth certificates from prospective apprentices. These documents attested to apprentices’ honorable background and to the fact that they were not of illegitimate birth, and then proceeded to list ineligible trades. These formulaic birth certificates were quite elaborate. In  the goldsmiths’ guild in Lu¨beck drew up a birth certificate for one of their fellow citizens who wanted to join the goldsmiths’ guild in Cologne. They certified that Clays Cruytzburgh, our fellow citizen, is a proper child of marriage, of father and mother, who went to church and street as is customary for righteous, honorable people to do. And we also say . . . that Clays is of good repute, that he is free and no one’s serf, and that he is not the child of a barber-surgeon, nor linen-weaver, nor minstrel, nor bathmaster . . .

It was generally the most prestigious and wealthy guilds that made these requirements first. Less prestigious guilds followed suit within a few years. In south German ordinances such requirements appeared much later. In Frankfurt, for instance, legitimate birth did not become a general requirement before the early sixteenth century, even though a few guilds demanded it in the fourteenth century. Only in the course of the sixteenth century did the Frankfurt guildsmen demand ‘‘honorable’’ birth. The standard formula in Augsburg guild rolls in the mid-sixteenth century required legitimate and free birth. However, the two words ehrlich (honorable) and ehelich (legitimate) were so similar that they were often were used as synonyms. Perhaps the requirement of eheliche Geburt in south German ordinances implied honorable birth as well. When south German ordinances required anything beyond legitimate birth, they simply stated that the candidate must be ehrlich, without the formulaic listing of excluded trades one finds in north German sources. The meaning of the word ehrlich was not fixed. Who was or was not honorable was left open to interpretation in south German guild roles, which could work both for and against dishonorable people. As will become clear, in practice south German guilds did require honorable birth, and their definition of honor was stringent, though they did not necessarily make this condition explicit in their ordinances.    

Rudolf Wissell, Des Alten Handwerks Recht und Gewohnheit, ed. Ernst Schraepler, vol.  (Berlin, ), pp. –. Heinrich von Loersch, ed., Die Ko¨lner Zunfturkunden nebst anderen Ko¨lner Gewerbeurkunden bis zum Jahre , vol.  (Bonn, ), p. . Karl Bu¨cher and Benno Schmidt, eds., Frankfurter Amts- und Zunfturkunden bis zum Jahre , vol.  (Frankfurt, ), pp. , , , for example. For example article  of the Augsburg stonemason ordinance of . StadtAA, HWA, Maurer ,  Ordnungen. ‘‘Legitimate birth.’’



Introduction German artisans defined their ethos of honor and Taubenreinheit (‘‘dove-like purity’’) mainly in opposition to dishonor. Discrimination against dishonorable people became most severe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. German social historians have interpreted the exclusiveness and extreme sexual prudery that grew out of the artisanal honor code as just another symptom of the economic decline of the German artisanate in these centuries. German artisans used their ethos of ‘‘dove-like purity’’ to justify their exclusion of the dishonorable and the illegitimate, thereby restricting guild membership and limiting competition. But any explanation that does not get beyond simple economic self-interest remains inadequate. While hard times undoubtedly contributed to the growth of this exclusive ethos, the demands German artisans placed on themselves in the name of purity and honor are without parallel in the experience of artisanal classes in other European nations. As Mack Walker writes: ‘‘The extremes and eccentricities of guild moralism remain puzzling after all reasonable explanations have been used up, and may be, like some eccentric personal behavior, a signal of the matter’s importance.’’ Journeymen were the most rabid enforcers of artisanal honor rules and pollution prohibitions. Andreas Grießinger’s study of journeymen’s strikes in the eighteenth century is one of the few works to interpret artisans’ honor code and pollution anxieties as more than a cynical attempt by guildsmen to further their economic self-interest. Population growth starting in the s precipitated a structural crisis in the German artisanate. Journeymen experienced unemployment and sinking wages, as journeymanship was transformed from a stage in the life-cycle to a permanent class status. Bewildered by these changes, journeymen were unable to identify the underlying structural causes of their declining status. Honor as a constituent factor in journeymen’s self-identity was well suited to the more ‘‘static,’’ ‘‘traditional’’ society and economy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but in the rapidly changing economy of the second half of the eighteenth century it became dysfunctional. Grießinger interprets journeymen’s strikes to enforce honor rules as ‘‘archaic’’ purification rituals. Trapped in a ‘‘primitivemagical’’ worldview, journeymen clung to traditional notions of honor that became a kind of psychic compensation for the socio-economic deprivation they had suffered. Even during the generalized economic crisis of the s, journeymen underwent no ‘‘cognitive reorientation’’ that might have enabled them to develop new strategies of resistance that were better adapted to changing economic circumstances. Fixating on honor was an ‘‘escapist’’ way of dealing with crisis. Journeymen were not cynically pursuing their economic self-interest, Grießinger argues. 



See for instance Fritz Blaich, Die Wirtschaftspolitik des Reichstages im Heiligen Ro¨mischen Reich. Ein Beitrag zur Problemgeschichte wirtschaftlichen Gestaltens (Stuttgart, ), pp. –; Roland Bettger, ¨ bergang der Stadt an das Ko¨nigreich Bayern. Sta¨dtisches Gewerbe Das Handwerk in Augsburg beim U unter dem Einfluss politischer Vera¨nderungen (Augsburg, ), p. . Walker, German Home Towns, p. .



Introduction Much to the contrary, honor led them to pursue strategies inimical to their own interests; in a word, they were the victims of ‘‘false consciousness.’’ Artisanal honor, in Grießinger’s interpretation, was an ideology for historical losers. This is not the explanation that will be offered here. While honor undoubtedly offered some psychic compensation to journeymen suffering social and economic decline, the impact of honor and dishonor on social structure and political power in early modern society was more complex and paradoxical than this interpretation implies. As Lyndal Roper has argued concerning discipline, honor, too, was ‘‘a concept around which rival political claims could be staked out.’’ Political discourse in early modern German cities made constant appeal to a few fundamental values. These included peace and unity, law and justice, the common weal, and honor. These norms gelled into a pattern, where the mention of one evoked the others. The equivalence of honor and common weal, for example, is expressed in a Nuremberg city council decree, that proclaimed ‘‘only that which is done with honor, would be beneficial to the town and the community.’’ Hans Christoph Rublack has emphasized the ideological nature of these urban norms, describing ‘‘the conscious, politically motivated invocation of norms’’ by governmental authorities ‘‘in an attempt to secure the regime by establishing a communal consensus.’’ However, opponents of the regime invoked these same norms to legitimize political resistance. Early modern German city folk of very different political persuasion or social status participated in the same discourse. What defines a ‘‘community,’’ David Sabean suggests, is not so much ‘‘shared values or common understanding as the fact that [its] members . . . are engaged in the same argument, the same raisonnement, the same Rede, the same discourse, in which alternative strategies, misunderstandings, conflicting goals and values are threshed out.’’ In this sense, urban communities in early modern Germany defined themselves by engaging in a continual conversation about honor. Urban guildsmen, masters and journeymen alike, were powerful speakers in this conversation. Artisans masterfully invoked the norms of honor and common weal in their effort to maintain areas of corporate autonomy against the encroachments of increasingly authoritarian governments. While seeming to pay obeisance to the absolutist pretensions of their patrician lords, acknowledging the patricians’ claim 

 





Andreas Grießinger, Das symbolische Kapital der Ehre. Streikbewegungen und kollektives Bewußtsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen im . Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a.M./Berlin/Vienna, ), pp. –, , . For Grießinger’s application of the Marxist concept of ‘‘false consciousness,’’ see pp. –. Roper, Oedipus, p. . On ‘‘fundamental values’’ in early modern society, see Paul Mu¨nch, ‘‘Grundwerte in der fru¨hneuzeitlichen Sta¨ndegesellschaft? Aufriß einer vernachla¨ssigten Thematik,’’ in Winfried Schulze, ed., Sta¨ndische Gesellschaft und soziale Mobilita¨t (Munich, ), pp. –. Hans Christoph Rublack, ‘‘Political and social norms in urban communities in the Holy Roman empire,’’ in Kaspar von Greyerz, ed., Religion, Politics, and Social Protest: Three Studies on Early   Modern Germany (London, ), pp. –. Quoted in ibid., p. . Ibid., pp. , . David Warren Sabean, Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, ), p. .



Introduction to sovereignty in deferential language and gestures, artisans were absolutely intransigent in questions of honor. Ritual pollution conflicts over dishonor followed a typical pattern. A person of dishonorable background tried to gain admission to a guild, or a guild member violated pollution prohibitions, thus dishonoring himself. The honorable guildsmen denied admission or expelled the dishonorable person from the guild, whereupon the dishonorable person appealed to the city government. The authorities saw dishonor as a kind of social cancer that caused the economic destruction of individuals who became defiled, and threatened to spread beyond them to swell urban welfare rolls. Accordingly, the magistracy proclaimed that the dishonorable candidate was in fact honorable, and ordered the guild to accept him. But the authorities were frequently unable to enforce their command. Dishonor conflicts dragged on for years or decades, and in most cases the dishonorable candidate never gained admission to the guild. According to David Sabean’s definition of lordship and sovereignty, ‘‘the exercise of Herrschaft takes place through its power of definition, its ability to say who the subject is and what his needs are.’’ Early modern Germans defined themselves personally, socially, economically, and politically through the idiom of honor. The authorities conceived of themselves as the fount of honor. By granting or denying honor, the magistrates attempted to determine the identity and status of their subjects. But honorable artisans did not yield this power of definition to the city government. This was one aspect of Herrschaft the state was unable to realize in practice. A leitmotif of urban discourse, honor was a contradictory and paradoxical force. Honor could function as an ideology that legitimated social and political hierarchies. It could be instrumentalized as a highly flexible instrument of social and political inclusion or exclusion. At the same time, social and political conflict and claims to status were often articulated in terms of honor. There was no consensus on what constituted honor, or on who did or did not have it. Honor was a norm with universal appeal, but the definition and distribution of honor was one of the most contested issues in early modern society.                          Regional variations in the definition of dishonor make it necessary to study Unehrlichkeit on the local level before proceeding to wider generalizations. We will understand dishonor only if we place it in its local context, if we reconstruct the social milieu in which attributions of dishonor took place. This work presents a detailed case study of dishonorable people in Augsburg, –. We will be less concerned with the sources and origins of Unehrlichkeit than with the social and cultural history of dishonor in the early modern period. Who was dishonorable in Augsburg and when? Here as everywhere in the Holy 

Ibid., p. .



Introduction Roman empire the executioner and skinner belonged to this group. The offices of executioner and skinner were linked. The skinner’s main function was to skin dead animals and to dispose of the carcasses. The skinner’s duties were clearly distinct from those of the butcher, who was an honorable artisan. The skinner was responsible for removing skins from carrion, and disposing of rotting animal carcasses. The butcher, in contrast, slaughtered healthy livestock and skinned the animals on the spot. To emphasize this distinction between the work of butchers and skinners, artisans called the skinner the ‘‘cold-slaughterer’’ (Kaltschla¨chter) since he dealt with the cold carcasses of animals that had been dead for some time. The skinner was also required to assist the executioner in torturing prisoners during interrogations and in carrying out criminal executions. Often the skinner carried out the ‘‘dishonorable’’ punishment of hanging, while the executioner reserved beheading, a more honorable form of execution, for himself. Bailiffs were more on the periphery of dishonor. Though they were regularly labeled as dishonorable by guildsmen, the bailiffs themselves adamantly denied being dishonorable. Shepherds, bathmasters, grave-diggers, and outhouse cleaners were occasionally involved in honor conflicts or were challenged by groups outside Augsburg. Linen-weavers and millers, who figured so prominently in north German lists of defiled trades, were not dishonorable in Augsburg. This work does not present any systematic analysis of illegitimacy, though it does compare a number of conflicts concerning bastards seeking admission to a guild with other dishonor conflicts. As a free imperial city, Augsburg developed extensive bureaucracies that have produced a rich archival record. The Augsburg collection of court records, specifically the Urgichtenprotokolle or interrogation records, is probably unmatched in any other German archive. The collection begins in the late fifteenth century and continues through the late seventeenth century, though the collection becomes dense only in the late sixteenth century and thins out considerably towards the end of the seventeenth century. These records provide word for word testimony of prisoners as they were being questioned by patrician city council members, frequently under torture. The interrogations are complemented by a complete set of ‘‘punishment books,’’ which run from the late fifteenth through the seventeenth century, though these were kept most thoroughly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. The ‘‘punishment books’’’ give a short description of the offense and record the punishment. These two sources recorded serious crimes. Lesser offenses, such as drinking, gambling, or fighting were noted in the ‘‘discipline books.’’ Depending on the circumstances, sexual offenses might be recorded   

Carsten Maehnert, ‘‘Metzger,’’ in Reinhold Reith, ed., Lexikon des alten Handwerks. Vom Spa¨tmittelalter bis ins . Jahrhundert (Munich, ), pp. –. See the entry ‘‘Kaltschla¨chter,’’ in Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wo¨rterbuch, vol.   (Leipzig, ), p. . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, –. StadtAA, Strafamt, Strafbu¨cher, –.



Introduction either in the ‘‘punishment books’’ or the ‘‘discipline books.’’ In the sixteenth and early seventeenth century the entries in the discipline books are very cryptic, listing only names and fines. But in the later seventeenth and eighteenth century they give extensive descriptions of the offense and punishment. Augsburg’s extensive collection of guild papers is equally valuable for our purposes. They reveal the attitudes and policies of honorable artisans, the group that most adamantly insisted on keeping dishonorable people in their place. Unfortunately this collection starts only around . Historians have Emperor Charles V to thank for the destruction of what must have been a fantastic collection of guild treasures. When Charles abolished the city’s guild constitution in  he ordered the documents of Augsburg’s guilds to be burned! The guild papers from after  contain mainly correspondence between private individuals or guilds and the city council, in which all sorts of conflicts were hashed out. Since the guilds were no longer autonomous corporations after , the conflicting parties addressed petitions to the city council. Depending on the circumstances, the council then launched its own investigation, made inquiries with the magistrates of other cities, or asked for a legal opinion. Finally, after all parties had been heard and all aspects of the case considered, the council handed down its judgment, which might then be appealed. Sometimes this could take years. This long-winded and tedious procedure has provided some of the most valuable sources for an investigation of dishonor. The conflicts often involved the children of dishonorable people who were trying to be admitted to a guild, or guildsmen who married a dishonorable person or otherwise transgressed the rules of artisanal honor. The tragic case of the marriage between the fisherman Andreas Anhauser and the skinner’s daughter Barbara Leichnam was preserved in these records. These qualitative sources are complemented by a variety of serial sources. We shall follow dishonorable people through tax records, marriage protocols, guardianship records, and militia lists. This combination of sources makes it possible to reconstruct the concrete social relationships of the dishonorable and to show how the boundary of honor actually worked. Since the core group of defiled trades was relatively small, it is possible to follow them over the long time period from  to .  

  

StadtAA, Strafamt, Zucht- und Strafamtsprotokolle, –. The documents were burned in  after an unsuccessful attempt to restore the guild government. See Rudolf Feile, ‘‘Die Gewerbegerichtsbarkeit der Freien Reichsstadt Augsburg’’ (Ph.D. disserta tion, Universita¨t des Saarlandes, ), p. . StadtAA, HWA. StadtAA, Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher. See also Claus-Peter Clasen, Die Augsburger Steuerbu¨cher um  (Augsburg, ). StadtAA, HAP, –; Oberpflegamt, Kleine Pflegschaftsbu¨cher – and Pflegschaftsbu¨cher, –; Musterungsbu¨cher , , . This study is based on the analysis of  dishonor conflicts that could be identified in Augsburg guild records between  and . The distribution of cases was as follows: – =  cases; – =  cases; – =  cases.



MMMM

P AR T I

The meaning of dishonor in early modern society

MMMM



Medieval versus early modern dishonor

We begin with a brief discussion of the legal history of dishonor in the empire in the high and late middle ages. Prescriptive legal sources will serve as a foil against which to project the social history of dishonorable people in the early modern period. Medieval Germanic conceptions of dishonor were recorded in high medieval Germanic law books, such as the Mirror of the Saxons (Sachsenspiegel), written around , or the Mirror of the Swabians (Schwabenspiegel), written around  in Augsburg. These law books were unofficial private compilations, which claimed to record old law and custom rather than to create new law. The mirrors listed the Wergeld to which members of the different social orders were entitled in cases of accidental death and thus reflected and codified the social hierarchy. At the same time, they defined which groups fell outside of this social order. Both mirrors listed a variety of groups who were dishonorable to differing degrees. Wandering minstrels and professional fighters, who performed for an audience or represented the old, the disabled, or women in trial by combat, were considered contemptible due to their profession. They were described as taking goods for honor, indeed as giving up their personhood for money (spilleuten und allen den die gut fur ere nemen und die sich zu eigen haben gegeben). The dishonor of professional fighters (Kempen) extended to their children. Classed together with those who had committed theft or robbery and suffered a demeaning corporal punishment, and with those of illegitimate birth, they were defined as rechtlose lewte or ‘‘outlaws.’’ The term applied at once to criminals who had broken the law and to those whose birth or professional status placed them outside the protection of the law. Outlaws were denied a variety of personal rights and suffered various legal disabilities. They were not admissible as witnesses, jurors, or judges. Their inheritance rights were curtailed, they could not serve as guardians, nor could they receive 





F. Ebel, ‘Sachsenspiegel,’’ in Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, eds., Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, vol.  (Berlin, ), pp. –, and W. Trusen, ‘‘Schwabenspiegel,’’ in ibid., pp. –. ‘‘Minstrels and all those who take goods for honor and who let themselves be owned.’’ Schwabenspiegel, Landrecht   §, in Karl August Eckhardt, ed., Schwabenspiegel. Langform M. Bibliotheca Rerum Historicarum, Studia  (Aalen, ), p. . Sachsenspiegel, Landrecht   § and   § in Karl August Eckhardt, ed., Sachsenspiegel, Land- und Lehnrecht (Hanover, ), pp. , .



The meaning of dishonor a feudal fief. Such disabilities were certainly of greater practical consequence to those of illegitimate birth than to transient minstrels and fighters. In any case, these disabilities clearly demonstrated the low status of these groups. Their dishonor was expressed symbolically in the list of blood money (Wergeld) which each estate was accorded. After listing the blood money for nobles on down to day-laborers, the mirrors describe the retribution outlaws were entitled to in case of injury or death: priests’ bastards and other illegitimates or their families were to receive as much hay as a two-year-old oxen could pull. Minstrels could take revenge only on a man’s shadow; their opponents were made to stand up against a wall so that the sun cast a shadow, which the minstrel could strike. Hired fighters were entitled to the reflection of the sun on a shield. Such illusory retribution ridiculed and dishonored the outlaws more than those who had wronged them and clearly demonstrated that they were entitled to no legal redress. Wandering minstrels and performers were strongly vilified in ecclesiastical literature as well. From the church fathers through the church councils and synods of the early and high middle ages the official position of the Catholic church had been that musicians and actors lived in a state of sin and led others into sin as well. Naked and lewd, they incited passions and encouraged debauchery in their audience. Merely by watching their performances and giving them money, their audiences participated in their sin. The performers spread flattery or evil rumor. The devil spoke through them. Their mobile lifestyle was seen as sinful and threatening. Both religious and secular authorities were hostile towards transients who were not under the authority of any lord. As ‘‘masterless men’’ they could not readily be integrated into feudal society for they lacked the social identity that only a fixed position in the social hierarchy conferred. Medieval penance books estimated their chances for salvation as very low. Some theologians went so far as to define them as monsters without virtue, outside of the human species, and denied them a place within the divine order. This universal condemnation led to severe discrimination. St. Augustine wanted to exclude performers along with prostitutes from Holy Communion, and he recommended that they be excluded from citizenship and public office. Synods quoted in the Decretum Gratiani denied them the right to bring suit in a court of law. The church did not modify its position until St. Thomas Aquinas and other scholastics began to define a legitimate role for performers and to see entertainment within limits as permissible. So we find that wandering minstrels and actors faced 

   

Andreas Heusler, Institutionen des deutschen Privatrechts, vol.  (Leipzig, ), p. . Eckhardt, Sachsenspiegel, Landrecht   §, p. ; Eckhardt, Schwabenspiegel, Landrecht   §, p. . Wolfgang Hartung, Die Spielleute. Eine Randgruppe in der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters (Wiesbaden, ), pp. –. Theodor Hampe, Die Fahrenden Leute in der deutschen Vergangenheit (Jena, ), pp. –. The condemnation of wandering actors and musicians was a European phenomenon. See Bronislaw Geremek, The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris (Cambridge, ), pp. –.



Medieval versus early modern dishonor severe condemnation by both church and state. Indeed, secular and religious authorities mutually reinforced and drew on each other to justify their discrimination of the minstrels. In the later thirteenth century the mendicant preacher Berthold of Regensburg denounced ‘‘all those who take goods for honor,’’ using the same expression as had been used in the Mirror of the Saxons and would again be used in the Mirror of the Swabians. Such comprehensive condemnation by secular and religious authorities seems to have had little impact on social practice, however. Minstrels and actors were indispensable in courtly society and often enough clerics were in their audiences, as the many decrees forbidding clergy to attend performances attest. While associating with them might have been sinful, it was not polluting in the way that contact with dishonorable people became in the early modern period. The sin apparently had no damaging consequences in social life. What continuities existed between these outlaws, the minstrels, performers, and professional fighters of the high middle ages, and the dishonorable people of the early modern period? Professional fighters as a group disappeared when trial by combat was no longer practiced. Wandering actors and musicians continued to be defined as dishonorable and suffered severe repression at the hands of secular authorities, but this was due to their vagrancy and not to their profession as such. Musicians who settled in the cities suffered no legal disabilities and were often employed by the city government and accepted as honorable citizens, at least by the authorities. Dishonor in the early modern period still derived from profession, from tainted birth, or from crime and punishment, but there was little continuity in the groups that were defined as dishonorable. The executioner, the central figure in the early modern complex of dishonor, does not appear in the medieval sources. The office of a professional executioner did not yet exist. The late middle ages saw the development of new judicial procedures and more elaborate corporal punishments that were to shape criminal justice through the early modern period. Paradoxically, the new criminal procedure and increasingly bloody corporal punishments resulted from the attempt by public authorities to pacify society at large and to monopolize the legitimate use of violence in the hands of government. The creation of the office of the professional executioner was a consequence of these developments. In the early and high middle ages the authorities played a relatively passive role in criminal law. Criminal courts only took action once the victim made an accusation. Then judge and jury evaluated the evidence presented to them by the contending parties without investigating the crime themselves. The court basically arbitrated a private settlement between the victim and the offender in which the victim or his family received a compensation that corresponded to the victim’s social status. In this way, many death penalties and other corporal punishments could be converted into money  

 Hartung, Spielleute, p. . Ibid., pp. –. Hermann Conrad, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte. Vol. : Fru¨hzeit und Mittelalter (Karlsruhe, ), pp. –.



The meaning of dishonor 

payments. When executions did occur, they were carried out by a variety of people, all of whom were amateurs: by the accuser himself, by a member of the court, sometimes the youngest judge or juryman, or by the beadle (Fronbote). The Mirror of the Saxons describes the beadle as a servant of the court who upheld order in the court, summoned litigants and witnesses, delivered messages, confiscated property – and executed criminals, though it is not clear whether he did this personally or merely supervised the execution. In the later middle ages governmental authorities began to become more actively involved in criminal proceedings. Imperial proclamations of public peace could not lead to their intended result of limiting noble blood feuds and other violent crime, if public authorities did not provide an alternative to private justice and revenge. Public authorities came to see crime and punishment as affecting the public interest and common good. No longer content to treat criminal prosecution as a private matter, public authorities developed a new legal procedure in which they did not wait for the victim to make an accusation; instead they initiated proceedings and arrested suspects. No longer relying on medieval formalistic evidence such as cleansing oaths or trial by ordeal, the authorities now carefully investigated the crime and questioned the suspect to secure a confession. It is at this point that torture became an integral part of the system. This ‘‘inquisitorial’’ procedure and the use of judicial torture in criminal investigations had become prevalent in Germany even before the reception of Roman law that did not have major impact before the late fifteenth century. The use of torture in Germany became widespread in the thirteenth century. It is first attested in Augsburg in . It became more difficult to convert corporal punishments into money payments, so that death penalties and other bloody punishments to the body became frequent in the later middle ages. At the same time, a greater variety of execution methods were developed. Though hanging and beheading remained the most frequent, other common forms were breaking the body on the wheel, burning or burying alive, or drowning. These punishments could be made more severe by subjecting the convict to additional torture before or on the way to execution, such as whippings, brandings, amputations, or ripping the flesh with red-hot tongs. Such ‘‘qualified’’ punishments required a specialist – the professional executioner, expert at torture and able to carry out the ever more elaborate executions and other blood sanctions, became indispensable. By the sixteenth century, the executioner, a skilled trades 

  

Eberhard Schmidt, Einfu¨hrung in die Geschichte der deutschen Strafrechtspflege (Go¨ttingen, ), pp. –. Albrecht Keller, Der Scharfrichter in der deutschen Kulturgeschichte (Bonn/Leipzig, ), pp. –, –, –; Giesela Wilbertz, Scharfrichter und Abdecker im Hochstift Osnabru¨ck. Untersuchungen zur Sozialgeschichte zweier ‘‘unehrlicher’’ Berufe in nordwestdeutschen Raum vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert (Osnabru¨ck, ), pp. –. Schmidt, Einfu¨hrung, pp. –; Conrad, Rechtsgeschichte, pp. –. Schmidt, Einfu¨hrung, pp. –. Richard van Du¨lmen, Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, ), or Schmidt, Einfu¨hrung, pp. –.



Medieval versus early modern dishonor man who had received years of training and was retained and paid by the public authorities, had acquired a monopoly in carrying out death sentences. The new criminal justice system first took root in the cities. Maintaining the peace within the city walls was an urgent task in the densely populated towns, and the urban governments with their well-developed bureaucracies were better able to administer new criminal procedures than the incipient territorial states in the empire. Death penalties were used extensively, to punish lesser crimes than murder such as theft, robbery, forgery, blasphemy, or even adultery. And so it is not surprising that the first German source on the office of the professional executioner is an urban law code: the Augsburg Stadtrecht (civic code) of . The code presents a compilation of the common law practiced in the city at the time. The civic code describes the executioner as a municipal employee with clearly defined rights and duties. First his monopoly on executing death sentences and corporal punishments was clearly established: ‘‘The hangman has the right to carry out all punishments to the body.’’ For beheadings and hangings he was to receive five shillings. In addition he was given everything the convict wore below the belt. This became a customary right that the executioner would claim over the next centuries. Secondly, he was to supervise public prostitutes. They were called the varnden freulin, literally the ‘‘wandering girls’’ which clearly describes their status as strangers, and places them on the same level as the disreputable vagrant population, though Augsburg’s public prostitutes were not vagrants themselves. The executioner was to ‘‘care’’ for the prostitutes and to arbitrate any conflicts that might arise between them and citizens. They were to pay him two Pfennig every Saturday for his attentions, but he was ‘‘not to demand more.’’ Strangely, he was also required to guard grain stored in the marketplace, for which he received a measure of corn, and to judge the quality of milk sold at market. At the same time, he was responsible for cleaning the public outhouses, a function that he filled through the eighteenth century. Finally, he was to drive lepers out of town, for which he was paid five shillings every time a tax was levied, and to expel prostitutes, presumably foreign or disobedient prostitutes who did not conform to the local rules of the trade. The carrying out of death penalties remained the executioner’s main function, and the one that defined his position. But from the beginning, executing criminals was associated with this peculiar accumulation of dirty and demeaning tasks, which clearly demonstrate the low esteem in which the executioner was held. Nowhere, however, was the executioner explicitly defined as dishonorable and the civic code     

Keller, Scharfrichter, pp. –. Schmidt, Einfu¨hrung, p. . Christian Meyer, ed., Das Stadtbuch von Augsburg, insbesondere das Stadtrecht von  (Augsburg, ), article , pp. –. Eugen Liedl, Gerichtsverfassung und Zivilprozeß der freien Reichsstadt Augsburg (Augsburg, ), pp. –, and Schmidt, Einfu¨hrung, pp. –. Mayer, Stadtrecht, article , §–, pp. –.



The meaning of dishonor mentions no legal disabilities or official discrimination against him. This contrasts with the treatment of the outlaws in the Mirrors of the Saxons and the Swabians, who, as we saw, suffered severe discrimination by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities. About a century later the denigration of the executioner was expressed more clearly. In a copy of the civic code dating from  the executioner was called ‘‘the whore’s son, the hangman’’ (der Hurensun der Henker), but again no legal consequences seemed to have derived from his low status. We must look to legal sources from outside Augsburg, police ordinances from other cities or of the empire, to find legal restrictions placed on executioners as a result of their dishonor. An early example is a Strasbourg ordinance from  that detailed the duties and regulated the conduct of the executioner. It imposed severe restrictions, making the executioner’s dishonorable status quite clear. He was ordered to behave modestly, make way for honorable people in the streets, and to refrain from touching any food in the market place unless he was prepared to buy it. He was required to stand in a separate place in church and he was forbidden to approach citizens and honorable people in taverns or to try to eat or drink with them. These rules made it the executioner’s responsibility to carefully avoid any contact with honorable people that might offend or pollute them. According to the Bamberg criminal code of , the Constitutio Criminalis Bambergensis, the executioner might be subjected to much more severe discrimination. The executioner was a prominent figure in this code. It gave a sample oath that the executioner was required to swear to local government. It described his role in the elaborate ritual of the ‘‘final day of justice’’ (endliche Rechtstag), when the judgment the court had arrived at during the private inquisitorial procedure was proclaimed in a public ceremony, immediately followed by the execution of the condemned. What concerns us here, however, is the article discussing the mode of payment of the executioner, which describes a very severe form of discrimination. We saw in the Strasbourg police ordinance that the executioner was required to stand separately in church. The Bambergensis, however, went much further, indicating that he might be denied the means of gaining salvation altogether. The article ‘‘On the common payment of executioners’’ stated that all executioners who received separate payments for each act of torture or each execution they performed would be excluded from Holy Communion – not because carrying out sentences was in itself sinful, but because the system of individual payments would induce in executioners an ‘‘evil turbulent lust for spilling human blood.’’ Therefore, the article decreed, the executioner would henceforth receive a fixed yearly salary in order to avoid placing him in a state of damnation, and to ensure that he could   

Keller, Scharfrichter, p. , and p. , fn. . J. Brucker, ed., Strassburger Zunft- und Polizeiordnungen des . und . Jahrhunderts (Strasbourg, ), pp. –. Constitutio Criminalis Bambergensis, articles  and –, in H. Zoepfl, ed., Die Peinliche Gerichtsordnung Kaiser Karls V nebst der Bamberger und Brandenburger Halsgerichtsordnung (Leipzig, ), pp. , . On the endliche Rechtstag, see van Du¨lmen, Theatre, pp. –.



Medieval versus early modern dishonor practice his trade with a good conscience. The Bamberg criminal code acquired significance far beyond the local level. It was adopted by both cities and territorial states and became the law of the empire when it served as a model for the imperial criminal code, the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina enacted by emperor Charles V in . The Carolina described the executioner’s role in the ‘‘final day of justice’’ in the same terms as the Bamberg code, but the executioner’s oath and the article discussing his exclusion from Holy Communion were dropped. However, the Carolina condemned various abuses concerning the executioner and his dishonor that we will discuss below. Also on the imperial level, the police ordinance of  listed executioners together with prostitutes and Jews, prescribing special clothing for them so that they could be clearly identified. ‘‘Common and dishonorable women’’ were forbidden to wear expensive dresses or jewelry of gold and silver since otherwise it would be impossible to differentiate honorable and dishonorable women. Executioners were to wear distinct clothes so they might be set apart from other people, and Jews were required to attach a yellow circle to their clothing or cap, so they might be publicly recognized. Although this imperial police ordinance provided local authorities with a loophole allowing them to adjust the provisions of the law according to local customs and circumstances, many governments followed the imperial lead. The Frankfurt magistrate, for instance, issued a decree in  that forbade the executioner to wear elegant and expensive clothes which he was not ‘‘entitled to.’’ The splendor of his clothing surpassed that of many honorable people, and locals as well as foreigners were mistakenly showing him respect. To avoid such confusion in the future and to ensure that the executioner might be known and differentiated from honorable people, he and his assistants were ordered to attach red, white and green stripes to their clothing. Such legislation, as we shall see, became more frequent and was repeatedly enacted by governments of both towns and territorial states in the course of the early modern period. In Augsburg, however, we find no ordinances prescribing any distinguishing clothing for the executioner. It is unclear whether the magistrate never enacted such legislation or whether the source simply has not been preserved. We do have sources, however, on the discrimination against Jews and prostitutes. From at least  on, Jews in Augsburg were required to wear a yellow ring on their clothing. Around the same time Jews were expelled from the city and settled in nearby  

 

Bambergensis, article b in Zoepfl, Gerichtsordnung, pp. –. On the impact of the Bambergensis, see Schmidt, Einfu¨hrung, p. . Articles  and  of the Carolina in Zoepfl, Gerichtsordnung, pp. – describe ‘‘abuses’’ which will be discussed in chapter . Ordnung und Reformation guter Policei im Heyligen Ro¨mischen Reich, , in StadtAA, Literalien . Achilles Augustus Lersner, Der weit-beru¨hmten freyen reichs- wahl- und handels-stadt Frankfurt am Mayn Chronica, oder ordentliche Beschreibung der Stadt Frankfurt, vol.  (Frankfurt a.M., ), pp. –.



The meaning of dishonor villages. There were no more Jews living within the city walls and they had to present a special pass in order to be allowed to enter the city. The city government also issued decrees restricting the luxurious clothing of prostitutes. In  prostitutes were forbidden to wear the clothing of honorable women. Such decrees were repeated in the course of the century, always with the goal of differentiating between prostitutes and ‘‘pious and honorable women.’’ By the sixteenth century they were required to wear a distinguishing broad green stripe on their clothing and were forbidden to wear silk cloth or rosaries. Before the early Reformation they were even forbidden to go to church. Such restrictions and their historic association with the hangman left them in what the historian Lyndal Roper calls a ‘‘symbolic position . . . of clearly defined marginality.’’ The same symbolic association of executioner, prostitutes, and Jews, which we saw in the imperial police ordinance of  was made in police ordinances of various towns and territorial states over the next centuries, as will be shown in the next chapter. But what relationship actually existed between executioners and prostitutes at the beginning of our period? It is unclear for how long the executioner was actually responsible for supervising prostitutes in Augsburg. Augsburg’s civic code remained officially in force until the early sixteenth century and additions were made to it until then, but not all of its provisions were enforced. But the executioner seems to have filled this function at least through the fourteenth century, and it even appears that prostitutes lived or at least practiced their trade in his house. The late medieval Achtbuch, a record of criminal judgments and banishments, describes the punishment of a Jew who slept with a Christian prostitute in the house of the executioner in . The relationship between executioners and prostitutes was not unique to Augsburg. It belonged to the common duties of executioners in late medieval German cities to oversee and control the prostitutes of the town. In the Bavarian city of Landsberg the executioner exercised this duty until , when he was fired because he joined the public prostitutes in beating up an unlicensed competitor. In Munich he held this job until  when the dukes of Bavaria demanded that the prostitutes be moved from the house of the executioner, which resulted in the construction of the municipal brothel in . In Strasbourg the executioner’s income from overseeing gambling and prostitution was replaced by a weekly salary paid by the city government in . In Memmingen, where the council employed a brothel-keeper by the early fifteenth century, it was customary  

 

Bernd Roeck, Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden. Studien zur Geschichte der Reichsstadt Augsburg zwischen Kalenderstreit und Parita¨t, vol.  (Go¨ttingen, ), pp. –. Marcus Welser and Achill Pirmin Gasser, Chronica der weitberuempten Keyserlichen Freyen und deß Heiligen Reichs Statt Augspurg in Schwaben (Frankfurt a.M., ), p. , from ; StadtAA, Scha¨tze , fo.  from . Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, ), pp. – and p. . Adolf Buff, ‘‘Verbrechen und Verbrecher in Augsburg in der zweiten Ha¨lfte des . Jahrhunderts,’’ ZHVS  (), –, –.



Medieval versus early modern dishonor for the brothel-keeper to make regular payments to the executioner. When the executioner lost this source of income in Augsburg is not clear, as is the case for most cities. As early as the fourteenth century the executioner was not alone in exercising control over the prostitutes. In  the Augsburg Achtbuch names the female brothel-keeper Rudolfin, and by the late fifteenth century a male brothelkeeper, essentially a municipal employee, ran the brothel with the consent of the city government. In Regensburg the executioner supervised prostitutes in the brothel next to his house as late as , but generally the sources for this connection disappear by the early sixteenth century. Augsburg’s municipal brothel was closed in  with the introduction of the Reformation. With the end of legalized prostitution the clandestine prostitute replaced the clearly identified, publicly known prostitute. No longer in a position of ‘‘clearly defined marginality,’’ she merged with the growing population of the disreputable vagrant poor. The imperial police ordinance of  did not contain sumptuary legislation directed at prostitutes, executioners, and Jews. For the first time, the imperial ordinance sought to rehabilitate various trades on the periphery of dishonor. The executioner was not mentioned at all. Instead, the ordinance cited the exclusion of other dishonorable people by artisanal guilds as an abuse, and ordered guilds to stop discriminating against linen-weavers, barber-surgeons, shepherds, millers, customs officers, musicians, and bathmasters or their children, since, so the ordinance proclaimed, all these groups were of honorable origin. This legislation did not constitute a reversal in policy towards executioners. Stigmatizing clothing requirements were reintroduced in the imperial police ordinance of . The fact that the ordinance attempted to rehabilitate other defiled trades does not mean that the dishonor of the executioner was in question. Instead, the ordinance reflects what would become official policy over the next centuries: containing dishonor within the dishonorable core group, while preventing it from affecting other trades. As we shall see, this policy met with limited success. Political authorities sometimes massively reinforced the construct of dishonor by placing dishonorable people under severe restrictions, marking them visibly, and placing the responsibility for avoiding potentially disruptive contact with honorable people on them. In other cases, governments took no action and dishonorable people suffered no discrimination at the hands of the authorities. The imperial 

 

On Landshut see K. Th. Heigel, ‘‘Einleitung,’’ in Chroniken der deutschen Sta¨dte vom . bis ins . Jahrhundert, vol.  (Leipzig, ), p. ; on Munich see Michael Schattenhofer, ‘‘Hexen, Huren, und Henker,’’ Oberbayerisches Archiv  (), –, ; on Strasbourg see Brucker, Polizeiordnungen, p. . In Cologne the executioner received regular payments from public prostitutes at least until . See Franz Irsigler and Arnold Lasotta, Bettler und Gauner, Dirnen und Henker. Außenseiter in einer mittelalterlichen Stadt. Ko¨ln, – (Munich, ), pp. –. On Memmingen see Helmut Schuhmann, Der Scharfrichter. Seine Gestalt – Seine Funktion (Kempten, ),  p.  and fn. , p. . StadtAA, Scha¨tze , Achtbuch, p. d, June , . Roper, Holy Household, pp. –. Hans Proesler, ed., Das gesamtdeutsche Handwerk im Spiegel der Reichsgesetzgebung von –  (Berlin, ), pp. –. Ibid., p. .



The meaning of dishonor police ordinance of  presented a new departure. This mandate is the first in a long series of decrees on both the imperial and local level that attempted to rehabilitate defiled trades on the periphery of dishonor. Often enough the policies of the various governments toward dishonorable people appear vacillating and contradictory, so that for the moment we will postpone making any generalizations about the attitudes of imperial or state authorities towards dishonor. Instead we turn now to our study of honor and dishonor in early modern Augsburg.





Honor, status, and pollution Augsburg was one of the empire’s major cities with a population of around , in . Augsburg’s status as a free imperial city had been firmly established since the early fourteenth century. As a sovereign state within the empire, Augsburg had developed an elaborate network of government bureaucracies that regulated life in the city. A brief consideration of Augsburg’s constitutional and social structure will help place Unehrlichkeit in context. Augsburg’s Stadtrecht, the civic code of , mandated that the city council should include only the ‘‘best and wisest,’’ in other words councilors were to be of patrician estate. An exclusive caste of old families which had grown wealthy in long-distance trade, the patricians formed an urban nobility that jealously guarded its social and political privileges against rising artisanal classes and merchants who had grown rich more recently. The strict code of conduct that Augsburg patricians developed for themselves did not forbid them to engage in long-distance trade, as was the case in some other cities. But by the late middle ages they were for the most part living off income from country estates and were surpassed in economic vigor by new merchants. From the beginning, the patrician city council tried to block attempts by non-patricians to gain political representation by forbidding artisans to form sworn corporations. The civic code explicitly forbade the bakers to form guilds. Merchants and wealthy artisans gained political power commensurate with their new economic standing in the guild revolt of . Armed artisans stormed the town hall, demanding that the patrician councilors hand over the civic code and the  

 





Barbara Rajkay, ‘‘Die Bevo¨lkerungsentwicklung von  bis ,’’ in Gunther Gottlieb et al., Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart, ), p. . Eugen Liedl, Gerichtsverfassung und Zivilprozeß der freien Reichsstadt Augsburg (Augsburg, ), pp. –; Rolf Schmidt, ‘‘Zum Augsburger Stadtbuch von ,’’ ZHVS  (), –;  Jahre Augsburger Stadtrecht. Ausstellungskatalog (Augsburg, ), p. . Christian Meyer, ed., Das Stadtbuch von Augsburg, insbesondere das Stadtrecht von  (Augsburg, ). Eugen Liedl, Gerichtsverfassung und Zivilprozeß der freien Reichsstadt Augsburg (Augsburg, ), pp. –; Rolf Schmidt, ‘‘Zum Augsburger Stadtbuch von ,’’ ZHVS  (), –;  Jahre Augsburger Stadtrecht. Ausstellungskatalog, ed. Stadtarchiv Augsburg (Augsburg, ), p. . Katarina Sieh-Burens, ‘‘Die Augsburger Stadtverfassung um ,’’ ZHVS  (), . Albrecht Rieber, ‘‘Das Patriziat von Ulm, Augsburg, Ravensburg, Memmingen und Biberach,’’ in Helmuth Ro¨ssler, ed., Deutsches Patriziat, – (Limburg, ), pp. –. Wolfram Baer, ‘‘Die Entwicklung der Stadtverfassung, –,’’ in Gottlieb et al., Geschichte, p. .



. Bird’s eye view of Augsburg in the sixteenth century

Honor, status, and pollution keys to the city gates, the symbols of sovereignty and independence of the city. The patricians offered no resistance, so the change of regime was unbloody. Nonpatrician merchants and artisans developed a ‘‘guild constitution’’ which determined the structure of the new government. Guilds were now seen as the basic model of social organization that ideally was to incorporate all citizens. The artisanal crafts formed seventeen political guilds which were each entitled to a representative on the ‘‘small council,’’ the highest authority in the city. Ten of these, the largest and most honorable guilds, each sent two members to the council. These were the guilds of the merchants, weavers, retailers, salt-traders, bakers, butchers, shoemakers, tailors, brewers, and leather-workers. The economic elites of these politically privileged guilds were more involved in the trading than in the production of their commodity. Several smaller trades were unified into one political guild. The guilds were at once political corporations and economic associations that regulated the production and distribution of a commodity. The guild revolt did not, however, lead to a total exclusion of the patricians from political power. To the contrary, even under the guild constitution patricians were still over-represented in government. The twenty-nine representatives of the artisanal guilds selected fifteen patricians to sit with them on the small council. The guildsmen then selected one of their own and one patrician to serve as Bu¨rgermeister and filled all other important posts in this manner as well, effectively establishing a parity in government between patricians and guildsmen. Although the merchants and artisans who mounted the guild revolt in  certainly held all the power in their hands at that moment, they did not wish to suppress patrician influence entirely. They seem to have shared the belief that the patricians were indeed the ‘‘best and wisest’’ and were entitled to a predominant role in government. In spite of their political defeat, the patricians still enjoyed the highest honor. At the peak of the social hierarchy, it was they who determined the criteria of honor in the competition of the various corporate groups for prestige and precedence within the commune. In  the patricians founded a socially exclusive private society, the Herren und Bu¨rgerstube (Lords’ and Citizens’ Hall), in part in order to compensate for their partial loss of political power. By founding this society, the patricians intended to determine once and for all which families belonged to the patriciate. Only Augsburg patricians or honorable citizens who were closely related to them, landed nobility and patricians from other free imperial cities were allowed to join in the    

Rolf Kießling, ‘‘Augsburgs Wirtschaft im . und . Jahrhundert,’’ in Gottlieb et al., Geschichte, p. . Jo¨rg Rogge, Fu¨r den Gemeinen Nutzen. Politisches Handeln und Politikversta¨ndnis von Rat und Bu¨rgerschaft in Augsburg im Spa¨tmittelalter (Tu¨bingen, ), p. . Joachim Jahn, ‘‘Die Augsburger Sozialstruktur im. . Jahrhundert,’’ in Gottlieb et al., Geschichte, p. . Friedrich Blendinger, ‘‘Die Zunfterhebung von ,’’ in Gottlieb et al., Geschichte, pp. –; Wolfgang Zorn, Augsburg. Geschichte einer deutschen Stadt (Augsburg, ), pp. –.



The meaning of dishonor dances and tournaments of this exclusive society. However, the Augsburg patricians did not become an entirely closed caste. They continued to intermarry with the non-patrician mercantile elite. By the early sixteenth century they founded a second private society, the Mehrer der Gesellschaft (Improvers of Society), which incorporated those members of Augsburg’s economic elite who had married into patrician families. Mehrer were allowed to join in the patrician sociability of the Herrenstube, they were socii patriciorum (companions of the patricians). The purpose of this society was to let the relatives of patricians partake of the social prestige of the patrician estate without fully accepting them into the patriciate. At this point, this society only conferred social prestige, and the Mehrer did not yet play any institutional role in government. In these years Augsburg entered on its golden age, so to speak. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the city reached the peak of its economic and political power in the empire. The city’s favorable geographic location along the trade routes from Italy to northern Europe made it possible for Augsburg to surpass Nuremberg as the economic and financial capital in south Germany by the s. In this age of economic expansion Augsburg’s merchants, above all the famous Fugger and Welser families, accumulated vast fortunes. The Welser were an old patrician family, but the Fugger represent one of the most spectacular examples of social mobility of the age. Descended from a rural weaver who immigrated to the city in , the Fugger family diversified from weaving to organizing a puttingout system for textile production, to international trade of almost any commodity, to banking and mining. By  the Fugger were the bankers of the Habsburg and had financed the election of Emperor Charles V. The patricians tried to tap into the new fortunes of the non-patrician mercantile elite through sociability and intermarriage. But in spite of such connections with Augsburg’s economic elite, the social exclusiveness of the patriciate caused it to shrink down to eight families in , too few to fill the governmental offices they were entitled to according to the guild constitution. In  thirty-eight of the leading merchant families were accepted into the patriciate, a measure which brought the prestige and economic hierarchies at the top end of the social scale back into balance. It was at this date that the Fuggers joined the patriciate. Those merchant families that were not elevated into the patriciate at this point then formed their own private society, the Kaufleutestube (Society of Merchants) and   



Rieber, ‘‘Patriziat,’’ p. . Olaf Mo¨rke and Katarina Sieh, ‘‘Gesellschaftliche Fu¨hrungsgruppen,’’ in Gottlieb et al., Geschichte, pp. –. On Augsburg’s economy see Hermann Kellenbenz, ‘‘Wirtschaftsleben der Blu¨tezeit,’’ in Gottlieb et al., Geschichte, pp. –; on the Fugger, see Go¨tz Freiherr von Po¨lnitz, Die Fugger (Frankfurt a.M., ) and Olaf Mo¨rke, ‘‘Die Fugger im . Jahrhundert. Sta¨dtische Elite oder Sonderstruktur?’’ Archiv fu¨r Reformationsgeschichte  (), –. Bernd Roeck, Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden. Studien zur Geschichte der Reichsstadt Augsburg zwischen Kalenderstreit und Parita¨t, vol.  (Go¨ttingen, ), pp. –.



Honor, status, and pollution sought to enhance their social prestige by imitating the exclusiveness of the patrician Herrenstube in their own society. The reception of the Reformation in Augsburg followed class lines. The overwhelming majority of the artisans sympathized with the evangelical movement by the mid-s. The expulsion of a popular preacher in  sparked a riot, and Augsburg experienced iconoclastic unrest. Fearing for Augsburg’s trade relations and political connections with the Habsburgs, the majority of patricians, most notably the Fuggers, remained loyal to the Catholic church. Finally, the government bowed to popular pressure and introduced the Reformation in a series of steps between  and . Seven years later, in , Emperor Charles V abolished the guild constitution. Charles was punishing the guild regime for introducing the Reformation in Augsburg and for joining the Protestant Schmalkaldic League that fought against imperial forces. Because the patricians had resisted the introduction of the Reformation as long as possible, Charles held the guildsmen responsible for what he considered insurrection and bad government. This ‘‘disorderly government,’’ he argued, was due to the fact that many members of the city council in Augsburg were ‘‘from the community, elected by and taken from the handicrafts and guildsmen, who for the most part are simple uneducated people, not qualified to govern, and are of that condition, that they better understand their handicraft and earning their daily bread, than governing for the common good.’’ So Charles returned the patricians to the position of political authority which he considered their birthright. The Caroline reform set up a new constitution which gave the patricians an absolute majority on the council. The patricians received thirty-one seats, their associates, the Mehrer, received three, and ‘‘the community’’ (Gemeinde) which included all commoners, both merchants and artisans, received seven. In a slight alteration in , the merchants were defined as a political estate distinct from the rest of the ‘‘commoners.’’ They received four seats on the council. Councilmen were appointed for life. All important government posts were reserved for patricians, who were at the same time members of the city council. The seventeen political guilds that had sent representatives to the council were abolished. The guildhouses were confiscated and sold, their documents burned. When we speak of artisanal guilds in the period after , this refers to the economic and social organizations of individual trades. Crafts did form corporate groups, but they were no longer political guilds. The authoritarian patrician regime encroached on the autonomy of the crafts, restricting their rights to manage their own affairs. The heads of the new guilds were no longer elected by their fellow  



Mo¨rke and Sieh, ‘‘Fu¨hrungsgruppen,’’ p. . Philip Broadhead, ‘‘Popular pressure for reform in Augsburg, –,’’ in Wolfgang J. Mommsen et al., eds., Stadtbu¨rgertum und Adel in der Reformation (Stuttgart, ), pp. –, and ‘‘Politics and expedience in the Augsburg Reformation,’’ in P. N. Brooks, ed., Reformation Principle and Practice: Essays in Honor of A. G. Dickens (London, ), pp. –. Quoted in Ingrid Batori, Die Reichsstadt Augsburg im . Jahrhundert. Verfassung, Finanzen, Reform versuche (Go¨ttingen, ), p. . Ibid., pp. –.



The meaning of dishonor craftsmen but appointed by new supervisory agencies set up by the patrician council. Artisanal ordinances after  took the form of governmental decrees. Patricians remained the ruling caste in the city until Augsburg’s status as a free imperial city ended in . But while the guilds were politically powerless after , they still had tremendous social power, which caused their patrician lords considerable discomfort, as we shall see in the next chapters. As a result of the Caroline constitutional reform, a small minority of Catholic patrician families governed over a predominantly Protestant population. In the second half of the sixteenth century three-fourths of the population adhered to the Protestant confession. The patrician council did not attempt to recatholicize the city, but instead governed with discretion and did everything in its power to minimize confessional tensions. With the exception of religious unrest associated with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in , Catholics and Protestants managed to coexist peacefully until the early years of the Thirty Years’ War. Confessional allegiance did not yet play a significant role in social life, as is evidenced by the fact the official documents did not mention citizens’ confession until . The Thirty Years’ War had a devastating effect on the city. Sieges and occupations, first by the Bavarians, then by the Swedes, then again by the Bavarians, and the famines and pestilence which accompanied them reduced Augsburg’s population from , at the onset of the war to around , in . During the rest of its history as a free imperial city, Augsburg never regained its pre-war population. During the war, political power was in the hands of ultra-Catholics or militant Protestants, depending on the larger political constellation beyond the city walls. The patriciate was enlarged once more during the Thirty Years’ War. Emperor Ferdinand II forced thirteen Catholic families on the patriciate in , in order to tip the confessional balance in the city government in favor of the Catholics. After this date there were no major additions to the patriciate. Despite these upheavals, Augsburg’s constitutional structure was not changed. The introduction of confessional ‘‘parity’’ in the Augsburg city government after the Peace of Westphalia in  caused an increase in government posts to accommodate both Catholic and Protestant office-holders, but brought no change in the power relations between patricians and commoners. Since the confessional division went through all estates, no estate was identified with a particular confession, so that confessional tensions did not have political impact. Augburg experienced a ‘‘confessionalization’’ of social life and culture, however. Catholics and Protestants dressed differently, established separate schools, and developed distinctive demographic patterns. Cross-confessional marriages had been perfectly   

Rudolf Feile, ‘‘Die Gewerbegerichtsbarkeit der Freien Reichsstadt Augsburg’’ (Ph.D. dissertation,  Universita¨t des Saarlandes, ), pp. –, . Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , pp. –. Zorn, Augsburg, pp. –; Rajkay, ‘‘Bevo¨lkerungsentwicklung,’’ p. . Batori, Augsburg, p. .



Honor, status, and pollution acceptable in the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, but they were all but unheard of after . This hardening of confessional boundaries had very little impact upon dishonorable people, however, as we shall see below. After the Thirty Years’ War the city did regain a solid prosperity. Augsburg’s population had grown to around , by  and increased to around , in . Artistic crafts, such as the gold- and silversmiths, flourished in this period, as did a new breed of entrepreneurs who set up textile manufactures in the city. Augsburg, after Frankfurt, was the second center of banking and finance in southern Germany. But in spite of these favorable economic circumstances, Augsburg was now a provincial city that never again acquired the political and economic significance it had during its golden age in the late fifteenth and sixteenth century. In the eighteenth century the socially exclusive patriciate grew smaller, just as it had before . Around  there were only twenty-seven or twenty-eight patrician families left, which shared the thirty-one council seats reserved for patricians. By the late eighteenth century only twenty-two families can be identified. The constitution of  had tried to forestall nepotism by forbidding two members of the same family to hold a seat in the council at once, but with such a small patriciate this rule could not be enforced. Considering that council members held their seat for life and that they filled at least one other government post at the same time, it is clear that this situation would result in a considerable accumulation of offices within a few families. A renewal of the patriciate as had occurred in  would seem to have been the obvious solution, but this was not even suggested. The more rigidly stratified society of the eighteenth century did not allow for the social mobility of the more open society of the early sixteenth century. The patricians saw themselves as the estate that was born to govern. They were also financially dependent on the highly remunerated government posts since few of them were still active in commerce. When government offices were filled, patrician status counted more than competence, so that the last decades of patrician rule were characterized by corruption and mismanagement, which precipitated a financial crisis so severe that it would have brought down the government, had not the Napoleonic war resolved the crisis another way. In  Augsburg lost its independence. The government was dissolved and the city was incorporated into the Bavarian territorial state. So far in our discussion of Augsburg’s constitution and politics, and of the relationship between patricians and commoners, we have considered only a privileged minority of Augsburg’s population: patricians, merchants, and master guildsmen were citizens. Citizens only made up about one-fifth of Augsburg’s total 



Rieber, ‘‘Patriziat,’’ pp. –; Batori, Augsburg, p. ; Etienne Franc¸ois, ‘‘Das System der Parita¨t,’’ in Gottlieb et al., Geschichte, pp. –; Etienne Franc¸ois, Die unsichtbare Grenze. Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg, – (Sigmaringen, ), p. . Batori, Augsburg, p. ; Peter Fassl, ‘‘Wirtschaft, Handel und Sozialstruktur,’’ in Gottlieb et al.,   Geschichte, pp. –. Batori, Augsburg, p. . Ibid., pp. –, –.



The meaning of dishonor population in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Citizenship (Bu¨rgerrecht) was not easy to obtain. It could be acquired by inheritance or marriage, or it could be bought. Citizenship entailed being a head of household, paying city taxes, and doing military service. Citizens swore a yearly oath of obedience to the city government. Only citizens were entitled to political representation and could sit on the city council. Female citizens were eligible for welfare, and they could confer citizenship on their husbands if they married a non-citizen. However, they did not participate in the public political manifestations of citizenship. When the storm bell rang to summon male citizens to assemble at the city hall, women were required to stay indoors. After  the council introduced a property requirement for prospective citizens, in order to ensure that the new citizens would not become a burden on the urban welfare system. In  the council decreed that foreigners who wanted to marry and settle in Augsburg had to prove that they were personally free and of legitimate birth. Non-citizens were required to apply for residency (Beisitz), which they received for the payment of a yearly fee. It was up to the council’s discretion whether to renew the residence permit, to which residents had no legal claim. Residents had no political rights and were not entitled to guild membership. The right to acquire guild membership gave citizens a significant economic advantage over residents, but it did not necessarily protect them from poverty. Economic equality was a guild ideal. Guild regulations limiting the size of the shops and the amount that might be produced were supposed to ensure a basic economic parity between guild members. In reality, however, guilds were far from socially homogeneous. While wealthy masters could not expand production in their own shops, they could trade their commodity and hire poorer masters in a put-out system. The weavers, who formed the largest and one of the oldest of Augsburg’s guilds, provide an extreme example of the economic disparities that could exist within a trade. Around  the guild had about , members, of whom , were classified as ‘‘have-nots’’ (habnits), as owning no taxable property, in the tax records of that year. More than half of the guild membership was living in poverty. While the number of weavers varied greatly in the late middle ages and the early modern era, throughout the entire period a large proportion of the guild membership consisted of chronically underemployed impoverished weaver masters, who posed a constant threat of social unrest and conflict within the city. These poor weavers were totally dependent on the put-out work they received from a minority of wealthy weavers-turned-merchants who formed the economic elite     

Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, p. . Lyndal Roper, ‘‘‘The common man’, ‘the common good’, ‘common women’: gender and meaning in the German Reformation commune,’’ Social History  (), –, –. ‘Statut und gesetz der Heiraten halb,’’ of October , , in StadtAA, Ratserlasse –. Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, pp. –; Batori, Augsburg, pp. –. Claus-Peter Clasen, Die Augsburger Weber. Leistungen und Krisen des Textilgewerbes um  (Augsburg, ), pp. –.



Honor, status, and pollution within the guild. On the other hand, the legendary rise of the Fugger family also took place within this guild. Extreme social polarization within the guilds and within the city as a whole went hand in hand with the accumulation of vast fortunes by the merchant elite during the golden age. There were plenty of poor citizens, then, but residents were even more likely to be poor. Rural immigrants, unskilled workers, servants, and maids provided cheap labor and were given residence permits for as long as they held a position, but then were ordered to move on. These ‘‘foreigners’’ were not entitled to urban welfare. If they could not subsist on their low wages, they turned to begging. As non-citizens they would not receive official permission to beg and unlicensed begging was punished with expulsion. Repeat offenders were whipped or even branded before they were expelled again. They were then in danger of sinking permanently into the growing population of the vagrant poor. According to one estimate, , vagrant beggars lived in and just outside Augsburg in , subsisting on alms and constantly threatened by starvation or the heavy-handed system of criminal justice. Citizens who became impoverished were less likely to be criminalized than foreign beggars. They could apply for urban welfare and the permission to beg. However, they too were visibly stigmatized. Welfare recipients and licensed beggars were required to wear the Stadtpir, Augsburg’s red, white, and green civic emblem, visibly on their clothing. Ostensibly this symbol served to distinguish the ‘‘honorable’’ deserving poor who had fallen into poverty through no fault of their own from the foreign able-bodied beggar who was unwilling to work. But in a society obsessed with outward symbols of social status, wearing the Stadtpir could only be a badge of dishonor. The sumptuary legislation enacted in the city illustrates the importance attached to external symbols of social status in this society. The patrician government enacted clothing ordinances designed to codify and fix the political hierarchy as it was laid down in the Caroline reform and the social hierarchy on which it was based. This legislation was supposed to ensure that a person’s outward appearance matched his social estate as it was legally defined in the society of orders. The clothing ordinance of  condemned extravagant clothing, ‘‘especially among artisans and common people, and their journeymen and servants’’ which was so excessive ‘‘that one can no longer distinguish one estate from another.’’ Such a 





Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, p. . On urban poverty see also Max Bisle, Die o¨ffentliche Armenpflege der Reichsstadt Augsburg mit Beru¨cksichtigung der einschla¨gigen Verha¨ltnisse in anderen Reichssta¨dten Su¨ddeutschlands (Paderborn, ) and Claus-Peter Clasen, ‘‘Armenfu¨rsorge in Augsburg vor dem  dreißigja¨hrigen Krieg,’’ ZHVS  (), –. Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, p. . Ibid., pp. –. Roeck cites the case of an impoverished watchmaker who received welfare. He was arrested for refusing to wear the Stadtpir. When asked why, he answered that wearing the symbol would hurt his reputation in his trade and cause him to lose customers (p. –). On sumptuary legislation in early modern Germany see Veronika Baur, Kleiderordnungen in Bayern vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert (Munich, ) and Liselotte Constanze Eisenbart, Kleiderordnungen der deutschen Sta¨dte zwischen  und . Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte des deutschen Bu¨rgertums  (Go¨ttingen, ). Ernewerte . . . Kleyder-Ordnung of  in StadtAA, Ratserla¨sse, –.



The meaning of dishonor state of confusion could not be tolerated since ‘‘God himself instituted a difference among the estates which is upheld in all well-governed republics,’’ as the magistrate explained in the renewed clothing ordinance of . In the ordinance of  the city council distinguished between three estates and legislated the amount of money each estate might spend on clothing. Patricians, members of the Herrenstube, formed the first estate. The Mehrer were listed together with the patricians, though their clothing was to be slightly less luxurious. Respected merchants who were incorporated in the society of merchants made up the second estate. The third estate finally included everyone else, members of the community, both merchants and artisans, who were not incorporated in the two elite societies, the Herrenstube or the society of merchants. This third estate was then broken down into three groups. Lesser merchants and the respected and artistic trades made up the first group, followed by the middling trades. Common and lowly trades, journeymen and servants formed the last group. The clothing ordinance of  was more elaborate than the preceding one. It distinguished between five estates or ‘‘classes’’ instead of three. The three groups listed under the heading of ‘‘the community’’ in  were now defined as separate estates. The ordinance also spelled out more clearly who belonged in these last three estates. Lesser merchants, notaries, and artistic trades such as goldsmiths, printers, and clock-makers made up the first order of commoners. Beer-brewers, bakers, butchers, dyers, and ‘‘others of their estate’’ were defined as middling trades which comprised the fourth class. The third order among commoners, finally, included the common and lowly trades – which the ordinance does not list specifically – along with common journeymen, servants and maids, carriers, and day-laborers. The renewed clothing ordinance of  followed the same model. The dynamic between the social hierarchy as it was reflected in sumptuary legislation and the political and economic hierarchies within the city was complex and changing. The guild revolt of  and the establishment of a guild constitution corrected a disparity between the political and economic hierarchies in the city by giving political power to rich new merchants and successful artisans who often surpassed the old patriciate in wealth, though not in social prestige. A growing imbalance between social rank and economic potency was corrected in  when the most successful merchant families were elevated to patrician status to rejuvenate a patriciate that was just about bled dry. The next centuries saw no further realignments of this kind, which resulted in a growing divergence between the social and political elite on the one hand and the economic elite on the other. The new gold and silver merchants, textile manufacturers and bankers who formed the economic elite after the Thirty Years’ War were much more wealthy than the shrinking patriciate, which was considered impoverished in the eighteenth century.  

Ernewerte . . . Kleyder-Ordnung of  in StadtAA, Ratserla¨sse, –.   Kleyder-Ordnung of . Kleyder-Ordnung of . Batori, Augsburg, p. .



Honor, status, and pollution Surprisingly, this discrepancy did not lead to conflicts between patricians and rich commoners. Wealthy merchants did not question the social hierarchy and the criteria of honor as they were set by the patriciate; rather they tried to gain greater social prestige through sociability, or better yet, intermarriage with the patriciate. This mercantile elite remained politically quiescent, content to leave government in the hands of the patricians, who for the most part governed in the merchants’ interests. Only in the late eighteenth century, when the patrician mismanagement of city finances threatened business, did the government come under fire by the economic elite. Before this crisis was resolved, the problem was solved from the outside when Augsburg was integrated into Bavaria. This was the social, political and economic context within which Unehrliche Leute lived in early modern Augsburg. We now turn to the place of dishonorable people within this corporate society, and their interaction with honorable estates. How did the boundary that separated the dishonorable from honorable society function in practice?

               ‘‘Just as certain parts of the human body, which modesty forbids to mention, dispose of feces, so the hangmen are the lowest members of the body politic and are most effective in cleansing and maintaining the state . . .’’ This remarkable organic metaphor was offered by a legal scholar in , in his contribution to a longstanding debate among early modern jurists on the legal status of executioners and skinners. Jurists had different viewpoints on the executioner’s dishonor. Some pointed to the infamy of the Roman carnifex, who was denied citizenship and lived in an isolated place outside the city: ‘‘He is considered infamous in both secular and religious law, and . . . like a wild animal, he is excluded from the community of honorable people.’’ The German executioner, these jurists argued, was affected by the same legal disabilities. The majority opinion, however, was that the executioner’s office was not infamous in and of itself, but was useful, indeed indispensable. According to Roman law, legal infamy (infamia juris) resulted from the commission of a serious crime and the criminal punishment that followed. This type of infamy did not apply to the executioner. He did not commit a crime when 





Eylenbergk, De Jure Carneficium (Leipzig, ), C b, quoted in Albrecht Keller, Der Scharfrichter in der deutschen Kulturgeschichte (Bonn/Leipzig, ), p. . Eylenberg’s bodily metaphor brings to mind Mary Douglas’s theoretical observation that ‘‘symbols based on the human body are used to express’’ social structure and social relations. See her Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York, ), p. vii. Tommaso Garzoni, ‘‘Discurs. ’’ in Piazza Universali, quoted in Paul Do¨pler, Theatrum Poenarum, Supplicorum, et Executionum Criminalium, der Schauplatz der Leib und Lebensstrafen (Sonderhausen,  ), p. . Do¨pler, Theatrum, pp. –. F. Merzbacher, ‘‘Infamie,’’ in Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, eds., Handwo¨rterbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, vol.  (Berlin, ), pp. –.



The meaning of dishonor he killed, but carried out the just judgments of God and legitimate government. But however justified and necessary, the work of executioners and skinners consisted of ‘‘sordid’’ and ‘‘cruel’’ tasks, cleaning latrines, skinning dead animals and disposing of carrion, torturing prisoners and performing criminal executions, so that a certain moral turpitude attached to these ‘‘contemptible and gross’’ offices. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century jurists did not hesitate to express their contempt: the executioner’s job was a ‘‘vile and sordid office, which honorable people greatly abhor.’’ Executioners themselves were ‘‘hated and cursed.’’ Such disdain was institutionalized in the legal concept of levis notae macula or ‘‘disreputability.’’ This concept was derived from Roman law and entailed a lesser degree of dishonor than infamia proper. This ‘‘light taint’’ resulted in certain legal disabilities, though there was little consensus on what these were. Various jurists summarized the effects of levis notae macula: executioners and skinners were required to wear special identifying clothes. They had to live outside the city walls away from honorable people. They had to stand separately in church and were excluded from weddings and public meetings. If an honorable person named an executioner in his will, the testament could be contested. They could not give valid testimony in court. They were barred from all honorific offices, dignities and fiefs and they could not be legal guardians. They were not eligible for citizenship and, of course, they were excluded from honorable guilds. Jurists rationalized the legal dishonor of the executioner by distinguishing between the office of the executioner and the individual person who exercised the office. While the office of executioner was not dishonorable, the dishonor of executioners as a social fact was justified in practice by their dissolute lifestyle and bad morals. According to the jurists, executioners were often robbers and murderers who had escaped their own execution by accepting this post. Executioners were described as bloodthirsty tyrants who treated the condemned with deliberate cruelty and exercised their office ‘‘more out of . . . hatred and enmity, than out of eagerness and love for justice.’’ A similar argument was used to explain why the legal dishonor of executioners, skinners, and beadles extended to their children. The jurist Do¨pler conceded that theoretically a child should not be penalized for the faults of his parents, in other words the child of a dishonorable person should not be considered dishonorable. However, ‘‘daily experience teaches’’ that such children tend to follow the dissolute ways of their parents: Mali corvi malum ovum (a bad raven lays a bad egg). But to what extent does sixteenth- and seventeenth-century judicial theory reflect social practice? The next sections present ‘‘close readings’’ of a number of     

Do¨pler, Theatrum, pp. –. Richard Messerich, Die Levis Notae Macula der deutschen Scharfrichter (Greifswald, ), pp. –. Johann Christian Quistorp, Kleinere juristische Schriften. Erste Sammlung (Weimar, ), p. . Carl Georg von Zangen, Abhandlung von der Zunftfa¨higkeit der Scha¨fer (Gießen/Marburg, ),  pp. –; Messerich, Scharfrichter, pp. –. Do¨pler, Theatrum, p. . Ibid., p. .



Honor, status, and pollution dishonor conflicts. How did different social estates interact with dishonorable people? How great was the threat of dishonor pollution in daily life? The following cases all involve executioners and skinners, because casual contact with other defiled trades that were dishonorable to a lesser degree – bailiffs, barber-surgeons, grave-diggers, etc. – posed less of a threat of pollution.                 Pollution anxieties were reflected in a peculiar linguistic practice, a stylistic convention of writing. Simply writing the words ‘‘skinner’’ or ‘‘executioner’’ could pose a threat to the writer’s honor. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth century, scribes felt it necessary to insert certain formulaic expressions in the text as a precaution, a kind of verbal ‘‘countermagic,’’ against pollution before writing an ‘‘unclean’’ word. A variety of expressions were used for this purpose. When three rope-makers entered the skinner’s house in , artisans who reported this incident used the phrase mit Zu¨chten zu melden: ‘‘these three, to report with discipline, were in the skinner’s house.’’ When some journeyman bakers engaged in fisticuffs with the executioner in , the bakers’ guild informed the council in these words: ‘‘. . . to report with honor [mit Eeren zumelden] the executioner approached together with the skinner.’’ Other expressions were mit Gebu¨r zu melden (‘‘to report with delicacy’’), mit Reverentz zu melden or reverendo (‘‘to report with reverence’’), salvo honore (‘‘saving honor’’) or salva venia (‘‘saving your permission).’’ These last three formulas were used most frequently and were often abbreviated as rdo., s.h., or s.v. These expressions were used in official documents issued by the city government as well as in petitions by artisans through the eighteenth century. In  the weavers discussed the case of a peasant woman who had unwittingly slept with a ‘‘redo. skinner’s son.’’ In  the bookbinders petitioned the council to exclude an ‘‘s.v. beadle’’ from their guild and in  the stonemasons declared that ‘‘s.v. whores’ children’’ could not be accepted into the guild. Such formulas were also used when writing about unclean things, such as latrines, feces, carrion, open wounds, infection, or bad smells. In  the tanners corresponded with the council about the ‘‘severe epidemic salvo honore’’ that had broken out among the cattle. In  the grave-diggers complained to the council about the ‘‘reverendo very great stench’’ they were exposed to in their work. A skinner’s employment contract from  stipulated that he had to empty the ‘‘s.v. secret chambers,’’ while a contract from  ordered him to bury ‘‘s.v. dead    

Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , p. . See also Karl-Sigismund Kramer, Grundriß einer rechtlichen Volkskunde (Go¨ttingen, ), pp. –. David Warren Sabean, ‘‘Soziale Distanzierungen. Ritualisierte Gestik in deutscher bu¨rokratischer Prosa der fru¨hen Neuzeit,’’ Historische Anthropologie  (), –. StadtAA, HWA, Seiler , April , ; Ba¨cker , September , . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , for November , ; Buchbinder , May , ; Maurer , April , .



The meaning of dishonor 

animals’’ during epidemics. Interestingly, skinners and executioners themselves used these expressions. In  the skinner Johann Jacob Scheller wrote about the ‘‘s.h. infected sheep’’ he personally had skinned. In this case, the formula seems to have been pure stylistic convention – or could the skinner have feared to name the things he touched daily? The tanners took such verbal protection to the greatest extreme. They refused to use questionable words at all. According to the seventeenth-century jurist Adrian Beier, the tanners were ‘‘so honorable and touchy’’ that they refused even to speak the word ‘‘skinner.’’ Instead they called him ‘‘the unnamed man’’ (der ungenannte Mann). Other artisans felt similar inhibitions to name the skinner. ‘‘The good people do not want to pollute their mouth with such an unclean word,’’ so they preferred the more neutral words Entdecker (someone who uncovers) or Feldmeister (field-master) to the specific word Schinder (skinner). Beier implies that artisans used apotropaic verbal formulae in speech as well as writing, though it is unclear if this was the general practice. It is also unclear if the use of such formulae was merely conventional, or whether these expressions reveal genuine emotion and fear of contamination.         How did pollution anxieties structure personal interactions – on the street, in the tavern, or in the home? In  three master rope-makers visited the skinner’s house outside the city walls to question the skinner’s wife about a dispute she had witnessed. They were careful, as they later claimed, not to eat or drink with the woman or any member of the skinner’s household. They stated their business and left. And yet, this brief encounter was enough to leave a taint on the masters’ honor. It was not customary for honorable masters to go to such places, the journeymen rope-makers claimed. They demanded that the masters be fined for their transgression of the artisanal code of honor, a demand they backed up with a strike against the entire rope-makers’ guild. In  journeyman bakers pelted the executioner and skinner with stones as they were passing by. When the executioner grabbed one of the journeymen to force him to divulge the names of the stonethrowers, this incident became a matter of serious concern for both the bakers’ guild and city government. The executioner’s polluting touch might have left a 

 



StadtAA, HWA, Gerber , November , ; Stadt AA, Bestand Gottesa¨cker, September , ; StaatsAA, Lehen und Adel c (Herrschaft Babenhausen), June , ; StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadbed. /, December , . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, December , . Adrain Beier, articles ‘‘Gru¨ne Roßhaut,’’ ‘‘Entdecker,’’ ‘‘Feldmeister,’’ and ‘‘Abdeckerleder,’’ in his Allgemeines Handlungs-, Kunst-, Berg- und Handwerks Lexicon (Jena, ), pp. , , , . The expression ‘‘the unnamed man’’ does not appear in the records of the Augsburg tanners, however. Instead they used the regular protection formulas reverendo, salvo honore, etc. StadtAA, HWA, Seiler , April , ; StadtAA, RP , –, fo. v and v.



Honor, status, and pollution mark on the journeyman’s honor. This potential dishonor had to be contained. The executioner was arrested and fired and the city government made an official proclamation to restore the journeyman’s honor in its integrity. In , Thomas Biberer, a master stonemason, had his shop closed down by his fellow guildsmen for socializing with the skinner. At the guild’s request, the stonemason was arrested and questioned by the authorities: why was ‘‘he hanging around with the skinner, . . . even eating and drinking with him, which is improper behavior for a stonemason and guildsman and brings great shame to the entire craft?’’ During the Thirty Years’ War a dishonor conflict almost provoked a diplomatic incident. In , during the Swedish occupation of Augsburg, a military chaplain was quartered in the home of a retail merchant, Georg Schmidt. One evening, Barbara Metz, wife of executioner Dietrich Metz, visited Schmidt’s home, where she joined Schmidt’s wife and several other women in a sewing circle. Soon Schmidt himself joined the women, and when the chaplain came home, they invited him to join them too. Unaware of Barbara Metz’s identity, the preacher drank ‘‘three or four glasses of wine’’ in this company. Afterwards, he was dismayed to learn whom he had been drinking with. When news of this incident reached his regiment ‘‘the chaplain was held in ridicule, and his commanding officer refused to tolerate him in the regiment.’’ Georg Schmidt was arrested and imprisoned. Not only the preacher himself, but his entire regiment had been insulted in this affair. Schmidt was sharply admonished: if he wanted to drink with the executioner’s wife, he should have done so alone. ‘‘He should not have burdened others, particularly a clergyman, with such company and conversation.’’ Why had he not invited a Catholic priest? Here heightened confessional tension during this period of military occupation come to the fore. Georg Schmidt was Catholic, and the Protestant city government interpreted this incident as a deliberate slur against a Protestant clergyman. Georg Schmidt was punished severely. He was exposed at the pillory – a serious honor punishment which left a mark of infamy on the delinquent – and banished from the city. Another illustrative case involved the burial of the executioner’s servant Hans Georg Reiser in . When Reiser died after serving the executioner Marx Philipp Hartmann for twenty-three years, two journeyman stonemasons, the brothers Hans Georg and Franz Mozart helped to carry the body to the grave. The Mozarts’ fellow journeymen saw this as a serious transgression: it was not appropriate for honorable journeymen to bury ‘‘such a disreputable person.’’ For the sake of ‘‘filthy money’’ – the journeymen claimed the Mozarts had taken payment for carrying the body – the brothers had deviated widely from the ‘‘path of honor’’ (via honestatis).   

StadtAA, HWA, Ba¨cker , September , . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgicht, Thomas Biberer , , . See also Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. ,  p. . See below, chapter . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Georg Schmidt, , , . See also Roeck, Stadt in  Krieg, vol. , p. . Incidentally, this was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s great-grandfather.



The meaning of dishonor The journeymen organized a boycott against the Mozarts. Any master who continued to employ the two brothers would have his shop shut down. At first sight, then, social practice seems to conform to the picture of dishonor presented in early modern legal theory: executioners and skinners appear as pariahs. But in fact the situation was more complex. A closer look at individual cases reveals that the social exclusion of executioners and skinners was not complete or consistent. The line that separated dishonorable people from honorable society was often blurred. The case involving the military preacher’s unwitting sociability with the executioner’s wife in  makes this clear. In the course of the investigation, Barbara Metz, the executioner’s wife, was asked what she was doing in the Schmidt household. She answered ‘‘she has been known in the Schmidt household since her youth . . . She has often eaten there, and since she is so well known, Schmidt’s wife invites her often.’’ Schmidt’s wife and Barbara Metz employed the same sewing woman. When asked whether Schmidt had brought her together with the preacher as a deliberate insult to him, she answered that no insult had been intended: ‘‘Many elegant gentlemen drink with her husband. There are honorable artisans here who sometimes do it. She is surprised that this affair has caused such conflict, especially since she is only a woman . . .’’ When Schmidt was asked why he allowed the preacher and the executioner’s wife to drink together, he answered ‘‘if he had foreseen that it would mean anything, he would have prevented it.’’ When the serving maid was asked why she did not tell the preacher who Barbara Metz was, she answered she had not thought of it. All parties – with the exception of the preacher – seemed bewildered that this incident caused such dissension. Obviously none of the members of the Schmidt household considered this sociability with the executioner’s wife, which occurred in the private space of their own home, particularly polluting. As a retail merchant, Schmidt was not a member of an artisanal guild and was not bound by the strict artisanal code of honor. In normal times this incident would most likely have passed unnoticed. In the tense political atmosphere engendered by military occupation and confessional strife, however, this incident was misinterpreted by the government as a deliberate confessional slur and punished as such. The marriage of the young fisherman Andreas Anhauser and the skinner’s daughter Barbara Leichnam in , discussed in the introduction, raises the question of how he met her in the first place. It turns out that the fishermen regularly took refuge in the skinner’s residence near the water when a storm came up and drank beer with him. As Anhauser put it, the fishermen frequented the skinner’s house ‘‘like a tavern and did not hesitate to eat and drink there.’’ They had not realized that this association was so problematic, the fishermen responded, and ‘‘even if one or the other among us ate or drank with the skinner, this taint can   

StadtAA, HWA, Maurer , June–December, . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Georg Schmidt, , , . See above, Introduction pp. –.



Honor, status, and pollution be removed . . . [by not doing it anymore] and will be forgotten with the passage of time.’’ By contrast, the skinner’s dishonor would live on in the offspring of Anhauser and Barbara Leichnam for generations. Casual sociability had been acceptable to the fishermen, but they drew the line at marriage. But this line only became visible because it had been transgressed. To what extent had the fishermen been conscious of the skinner’s dishonor as they ate and drank with him? Now they no longer frequented the skinner’s house and fined those who had done so. They petitioned the city council to insert a new article in their ordinance that stated explicitly that only persons of honorable background could enter their guild. In the course of this conflict, the boundary that separated the fishermen from dishonorable people had been redrawn with greater clarity and greater exclusiveness. The Mozart brothers’ conflict with the stonemasons’ guild in  illustrates once again that the boundary of honor was not clearly drawn. The Mozarts pointed out some inconsistencies in the position of their guild. How could the guild exclude them for carrying the executioner’s assistant to his grave – an act of Christian charity, after all – and at the same time accept two journeymen in their guild who lived in the same house as the executioner? The ‘‘night-king,’’ the chief latrinecleaner who shared the executioner’s residence, had two sons living with him who worked as journeyman stonemasons. These two journeymen had even signed a petition directed against the Mozarts. The stonemasons never explained why they classified the Mozarts’ behavior as dishonorable, but did not reject the two journeymen who came in daily contact with the executioner within their home. Instead, they accused the Mozarts of stalling by presenting irrelevant examples. Interaction between executioners and skinners and honorable artisans seems to have been characterized more by ambivalence than outright hostility. There were plenty of cases where honorable artisans came into personal contact and even socialized with the executioner or skinner without any adverse social consequences. Generally, negative social sanctions seem to have been invoked when the association of an artisan with executioner or skinner was particularly public. The stonemason Thomas Biberer rode on the public street on the same skinner’s cart that was used to transport both carrion and condemned criminals in public procession to the gallows. Andreas Anhauser’s marriage with the skinner’s daughter was notorious. The Mozart brothers had carried the body of the executioner’s servant in a public ceremony. Conversely, the stonemasons might have been willing to accept the journeymen who shared the executioner’s residence because their contact with the executioner took place in the private space of their home, shielded from the public eye. Moreover, it appears that cases of personal association that might have passed unchallenged in normal times resulted in dishonor conflicts in time of high political tension. This was certainly the case with the unfortunate retailer Georg Schmidt who was banished from the city during the Thirty Years’  

StadtAA, HWA, Fischer , August , , October , , June  and July , . StadtAA, HWA, Maurer , –, for June  and August , .



The meaning of dishonor War. But in the end it is impossible to know what personal factors or unknown variables made one case of personal association between an artisan and the executioner or skinner perfectly harmless and acceptable, while another case which appears very similar had disastrous social consequences for the individual artisan and his guild. There was no hard-and-fast rule concerning the social exclusion of the executioner and skinner in practice. Individuals and guilds developed different sensibilities and different levels of tolerance towards dishonorable people. Honorable artisans behaved inconsistently (from our perspective) and there appears to have been little consensus on how polluting the dishonor of executioner and skinner actually was. How did different estates and social classes feel and act towards dishonorable people? Sources from which one might glean the feelings and opinions of members of the social class beneath the guildsmen, the unskilled day-laborers, rural immigrants, and servants who were granted residency in Augsburg for as long as their employment lasted, are difficult to come by. According to the guildsmen, these groups were less sensitive to pollution by dishonor. Casual laborers were not incorporated in guilds. They acted as individuals and were not bound by the collective strictures of a corporate code of honor – and thus, in the eyes of the guildsmen, they had little honor to lose. In their dispute with the Mozart brothers, the stonemasons asked why the journeymen had stooped to the dishonoring task of carrying an executioner’s servant to his grave, when there was an abundance of day-laborers and ‘‘other persons who are not admissible to guilds’’ who could have carried the body, without doing damage to their honor. But were the urban poor that indifferent to questions of honor? When the journeyman weavers went on strike in  to expel from their guild various groups they defined as dishonorable, among them grave-diggers, city officials urged the council not to let the journeymen get away with this. If the weavers were successful in labeling grave-diggers as dishonorable, the city government would be unable to hire enough grave-diggers in times of epidemic. Even Augsburg’s day-laborers dreamed of social advancement into the artisanate and they would not, the city officials argued, risk disqualifying their children for entry into an honorable guild for the low wages of a grave-digger.               An Augsburg chronicle tells of a misadventure that befell a group of patricians from the free imperial city of No¨rdlingen, among them a doctor of law, as they returned home from a journey by night. The event allegedly occurred in . Overtaken by 



On the urban working poor, see Erich Maschke, ‘‘Die Unterschichten der mittelalterlichen Sta¨dte Deutschlands,’’ in Erich Maschke and Ju¨rgen Sydow, eds., Gesellschaftliche Unterschichten in Su¨dwestdeutschen Sta¨dten (Stuttgart, ), p. . See also Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , pp. –.  StadtAA, HWA, Maurer , December , . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , June , .



Honor, status, and pollution a terrible storm and frightened by the appearance of a fiery figure, they lost control of their carriage, which rolled down a slope. Stranded, the travelers cried out for help. A stranger appeared who guided them to a nearby inn. When the innkeeper’s wife served dinner, the travelers invited their unknown rescuer to join them. But the innkeeper’s wife insisted on serving him at a separate table. When the doctor of law protested, the woman informed him that the stranger was the local skinner. ‘‘Whoever he may be, he helped us greatly,’’ the doctor of law exclaimed, and gave the skinner a generous tip. The travelers did not go so far as to invite the skinner to join them, but they did not seem shocked at his identity and revealed a higher level of tolerance towards the skinner than we might have expected from honorable artisans. Is the relatively humane behavior towards a skinner an indication that elites regarded the marginalization of dishonorable people with skepticism? Another case gives the opposite impression. In  a notary was imprisoned for making subversive comments against the government because an executioner from one of the military regiments occupying the city had been quartered in his home. During the notary’s interrogation his questioners, patrician city council members, expressed sympathy with his reaction. One said he would not set foot in the notary’s house, because of the executioner’s presence. Another said that executioners should be lodged with their equals, or at least in empty, abandoned buildings. These fragmentary stories are our only evidence on personal reactions of elites towards dishonorable people. Statements of public policy are, not surprisingly, more frequent. Legislation about dishonor on the imperial and local level is abundant. The imperial police ordinance of  prescribed special identifying clothing for the executioner, as for prostitutes and Jews. The subsequent police ordinance of  made no mention of the executioner at all, but decreed that various other defiled trades were to be considered honorable. This was the first time groups on the periphery of dishonor were mentioned in imperial legislation. The next imperial ordinance to address the issue of dishonor was the police ordinance of . The article on ‘‘Town-dwellers, peasants, and other subjects’’ criticized excessively luxurious clothing of commoners as detrimental to the common good. In this context, the ordinance made the same association as had the ordinance of : it laid down that ‘‘prostitutes, executioners, and Jews dress in such a way that honor is obscured and a person’s condition and estate cannot be recognized.’’ To counter such disorder, territorial and city governments were ordered to produce an effective local clothing ordinance within the year. This same ordinance, however, set out to rehabilitate other dishonorable groups. Linen   

SStBA, ° cod S , Ko¨lderer Chronik, fo. –. See also Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , pp. –. StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Hans Endriß, , , . Abschied des Reichs-Tags zu Augsburg of  in Hans Proesler, ed., Das gesamtdeutsche Handwerk im Spiegel der Reichsgesetzgebung von – (Berlin, ), p. . Der Ro¨mischen Kayserl. Majesta¨t reformierte . . . Policey-Ordnung . . . of , in Proesler, Handwerk, p. .



The meaning of dishonor weavers, barber-surgeons, shepherds, millers, customs officers, musicians, and bathmasters and their children were pronounced honorable and artisanal guilds were forbidden to exclude them. These were the same trades that had been declared honorable in the previous ordinance of , apparently without much effect. In  the imperial diet produced a proposal for an imperial police ordinance. The proposal complained that previous police ordinances of , , and  against artisanal ‘‘abuses’’ had not been enforced. It set out to limit the autonomy of guilds and journeymen’s organizations and called for greater cooperation between territorial governments. It reconfirmed earlier ordinances, in particular the article which decreed that ‘‘the children of certain persons may not be excluded from the guilds . . .’’ It condemned such exclusion as ‘‘unreasonable’’ and added several groups to this list of trades to be rehabilitated. In addition to the trades which were declared honorable in the ordinances of  and , the proposal declared that ‘‘bailiffs . . . who do not lay hands on the malefactors or carry out criminal executions . . ., city guards, foresters . . ., grave diggers and others of this kind’’ were not to be barred from honorable guilds. No mention was made of any special clothing requirements for executioners or skinners. This proposal was not enacted at this time due to disputes over jurisdiction and competencies between imperial, territorial, and city governments. The proposal was taken off the shelf some sixty years later, when the Augsburg journeyman shoemakers’ strike of  made the ineffectiveness of previous ordinances and the persistence of artisanal ‘‘abuses’’ glaringly obvious. This strike was not the result of a dishonor conflict, but was triggered by the attempt of the Augsburg city government to limit the autonomy of the journeymen’s association. The Augsburg conflict was part of a super-regional journeymen’s boycott which spread from Wu¨rzburg, Augsburg, Stuttgart, and Munich through southern Germany and Austria and lasted for more than two years. This wave of strikes clearly demonstrated the impotence of local governments in conflicts with super-regional journeymen’s organizations. The imperial and local governments responded to the strike with the imperial police ordinance of  which set out to break the power of journeymen’s organizations once and for all by coordinating governmental measures of different territorial states and cities. The ordinance presented an up-dated version of the proposal of . It described artisans’ fear of pollution by dishonor as ‘‘madness’’ (ein falscher Wahn). It reconfirmed that those groups listed in the ordinances of  and  were honorable, and extended the list to include beadles, bailiffs, city guards, foresters, grave-diggers, nightwatchmen, beggar   

Ibid., p. . Project, was in den ku¨nfftigen Reichs-Abschied/ wegen deren bey den Handwerkern eingerissenen Mißbra¨uchen zu bringen seyn mo¨chte of , in Proesler, Handwerk, p. . Andreas Grießinger, Das symbolische Kapital der Ehre. Streikbewegungen und kollektives Bewußtsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen im . Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/Berlin/Vienna, ), p. . Ibid, pp. –.



Honor, status, and pollution wardens, street-cleaners, shepherds, ‘‘and the like . . .’’ The law of  went further than the proposal of . The proposal had pronounced only those bailiffs honorable who did not deal with ‘‘malefactors’’ and who were not involved in the execution process, but the police ordinance of  did not make this distinction. In fact, implicitly, the executioner himself was declared honorable in this ordinance. It decreed that ‘‘no profession and craft’’ could be considered dishonorable, ‘‘except the skinners alone, until their second generation, under the condition that the first generation chooses a different honorable condition and remains in that condition for at least thirty years . . .’’ In other words, the grandson of a skinner should be considered honorable, if his father had not worked as a skinner for at least thirty years. This clearly illustrates the difference in the status of executioners and skinners. While the rehabilitation of the executioner was implied in the ordinance, even the imperial government did not tackle the skinner’s dishonor at this time. That it attempted to cleanse the grandchildren of skinners of their dishonor was already very daring. Finally, in  an imperial decree addressed the dishonor of the skinner. While the decree described the work of the skinner as ‘‘reprehensible’’ (verwerflich) and did not rehabilitate the skinner himself, it declared that ‘‘the children of such people, who have not yet done this reprehensible work themselves, and do not want to’’ were honorable. The sons could be apprenticed to honorable guilds and the daughters could marry artisans. The decree specifically stated that it was not concerned with executioners, since their sons were already admitted to guilds. Whether or not this decree was in touch with reality on this point will be discussed in chapter . This was the framework of imperial law within which territorial and city governments were – theoretically – supposed to legislate. Various local authorities did order executioners to wear special clothing. Following the imperial examples of  and , the city of Trier prescribed special dress for the executioner in its clothing ordinance of . After legislating what clothing the three estates – nobles, members of the city council, and commoners – were entitled to wear, the ordinance discussed the clothing of ‘‘segregated people.’’ Once again we find the association of Jews and executioners. ‘‘So that the difference among segregated people is maintained and they are recognized,’’ Jews were required to wear yellow rings on their clothing and the executioner and his family were ordered ‘‘to dress entirely in yellow, yellow coats and trousers and not use any other color . . .’’ As late as , four years before the imperial police ordinance of , the Prussian government ordered executioners and skinners to wear dark gray clothes and forbade them to wear a sword. The king had been displeased to hear that   

Gutachten des Reichtages of , in Proesler, Handwerk, p. . Kayserliches Commissions Decret . . . of , in Proesler, Handwerk, p. . F. Rudolf, ed., Quellen zur Rechts- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Rheinischen Sta¨dte. Kurtrierische Sta¨dte. Vol. , Trier (Bonn, ), pp. –.



The meaning of dishonor executioners and skinners were wearing discarded blue uniforms of the Prussian army. In  this order was renewed but now only applied to skinners, since executioners were considered honorable in imperial law after . Skinners were ordered to wear gray cloaks with gray buttons and red pointed hats and forbidden to wear a dagger. Such special clothing was required because, as the ordinance claimed, ‘‘when innocent honorable people unwittingly and accidentally came in contact with them, several skinners failed to identify themselves out of malice and evil intent, so that these people had great difficulties within their guilds.’’ The gray cloak and red hat would ensure that such skinners would be recognized straight away. Such ordinances are, of course, prescriptive sources, and we cannot know to what extent they were enforced. A similar intention to make a person’s appearance reflect social ‘‘reality,’’ to make a person immediately recognizable for what he was, is evident in Augsburg’s sumptuary legislation – we saw that Augsburg’s clothing ordinances deplored ‘‘that one can no longer distinguish one estate from the other.’’ But this impulse to distinguish and classify did not result in the prescription of special dress for executioners in Augsburg. In fact, no such ordinance has been preserved anywhere in Swabia. Augsburg’s Swabian neighbors did, however, pass various measures to prevent contact and sociability with the executioner, reminiscent of the restrictive Strasbourg executioner’s ordinance of . In  the city of Memmingen forbade citizens to eat and drink with the executioner. In  the government of the small ecclesiastical territory of Kempten decreed that only the executioner’s family, relatives, and servants were allowed to eat with him. The Kempten government justified this measure by pointing out that when artisans socialized with the executioner, this resulted in disturbances within the guilds. In  Memmingen fined its executioner for holding a public dance at his residence and also fined those citizens who had attended. In  the executioner in the small Fugger territory of Babenhausen had to swear ‘‘not to touch anyone, man or woman, in the taverns or on the street, and not to bother them by drinking with them or other presumption. If I want to drink for my money I must do this alone and separately and not intrude or mix with others.’’ In  the skinner of Babenhausen was ordered not ‘‘to molest anyone in taverns or anywhere else.’’ In  the town of Kaufbeuren went even further and forbade the executioner to 

   

‘‘Ordre, an alle Scharfrichter und Abdecker in den Ko¨niglichen Landen, daß sie . . . keine andere als dunckel-graue Kleidung und keine Degen tragen sollen,’’ July , , and ‘‘Ordre, an alle Abdecker- und Schinder-Knechte, daß sie . . . kein Seiten-gewehr, sondern dunckel-graue Ro¨cke mit solchen Kno¨pfen und rothe Hu¨the, so oben spitz zugemacht, tragen sollen,’’ June , , in Christian Otto Mylius, ed., Corpus Constitutionum Marchicarum, oder Ko¨niglich Preußische und Churfu¨rstlich Brandenburgische . . . Ordnungen . . ., vol.  (Berlin, –), pp. –, –. Ernewerte . . . Kleyder-Ordnung of  in StadtAA, Ratserla¨sse, –. Helmut Schuhmann, Der Scharfrichter. Seine Gestalt – Seine Funktion (Kempten, ), p. . J. Brucker, ed., Strassburger Zunft- und Polizeiordnungen des . und . Jahrhunderts (Strasbourg,  ), pp. –. Schuhmann, Scharfrichter, p. , and p. , fn. –. StaatsAA, Lehen und Adel c (Herrschaft Babenhausen), January , , August , .



Honor, status, and pollution frequent taverns at all. In  Kaufbeuren also forbade citizens to invite the executioner or his wife to local weddings. Augsburg never enacted such restrictive legislation. Much to the contrary, Augsburg magistrates passed measures designed to protect the executioner against discrimination. In  Augsburg’s bathmasters apparently refused to serve him, for in that year the city council decreed that the executioner should be allowed to frequent public baths. In  the council issued a somewhat ambivalent decree, on the occasion of the executioner Hans Deibler’s wedding. ‘‘Hans Deibler should be informed that an honorable council will leave it to each individual’s discretion, whether he wants to attend Deibler’s wedding or not.’’ This was hardly an enthusiastic endorsement, but the council did not forbid the executioner to invite honorable citizens to his wedding. The case of the stonemason Thomas Biberer who was arrested in  for socializing with the skinner at first sight seems to run counter to these examples. The magistrates seemed to share the same view as honorable artisans towards dishonorable people. Biberer’s patrician interrogators admonished him that such an association ‘‘was improper behavior . . . brought great shame to the entire craft.’’ But perhaps their irritation was due to the dissension that resulted when individual craftsmen disregarded artisanal honor rules, and the inconvenience government faced in arbitrating the resulting dishonor conflicts, rather than any deeply felt disdain for the skinner on the part of the patricians. The entry in the punishment book on this case supports this interpretation: ‘‘Thomas Biberer, a stonemason, acted disrespectfully towards the foremen . . . of his trade . . . That is why he was imprisoned, but he was released today . . .’’ No mention was made of his inappropriate sociability with the skinner, since there was no law against such socializing. Biberer was fined for disrespect towards senior guild members. In comparison with other Swabian municipal and territorial governments, the Augsburg magistrate developed relatively liberal policies towards executioners and skinners. Many of the effects of dishonor described by early modern jurists did not apply in Augsburg. Here executioners and skinners were not required to wear special clothing. In Augsburg, executioners and skinners faced no disabilities in court; they testified in criminal investigations and civil disputes and served as legal guardians. The legal prescription that executioners and skinners should be    

Schuhmann, Scharfrichter, p. , and p. , fn. .  StadtAA, RP , fo. r for June , . StadtAA, RP , fo. v, for May , . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Thomas Biberer , , . See also Roeck, Stadt in Krieg,  StadtAA, Strafamt, Strafbuch, –, fo. , for August , . vol. , p. . Some examples: the executioner Johann Georg Trenkler testified under oath in a criminal investigation in . StadtAA, RP , , pp. , , . The skinner Johann Jakob Scheller gave valid testimony in a civil dispute in . CM in genere, –, fasz. , for August , . Matheus ¨ ttingen respectively, served as Fux and Georg Scheppelin, executioners in Memmingen and O guardians for the skinner’s widow Susanna Scheppelin in . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Pflegschaftsbuch –, fo. , for August , .



The meaning of dishonor excluded from honorific offices, dignities, and fiefs was of little practical consequence. Two legal disabilities which, according to the lawyers, resulted from dishonor did affect executioners and skinners in Augsburg, however. Unquestionably, they were excluded from honorable guilds, and they were denied citizenship and thus full membership in the commune. As we saw above, applicants for citizenship had to fulfill certain legal and financial requirements. A decree of  ordered prospective citizens to supply proof of their legitimate (ehelich) and free birth. These requirements were reconfirmed at regular intervals through the eighteenth century. Sometimes the decrees used the term ‘‘honorable’’ (ehrlich) instead of ‘‘legitimate’’ when specifying who was eligible for citizenship. Even applicants for temporary residence permits were supposed to be ‘‘ehrlich’’: a decree of  required residents to show certificates proving that they were ‘‘of honorable background and respectable behavior.’’ A decree of  specified that ‘‘only those of honorable background and conduct and who own sufficient property’’ would be granted citizenship or residency. It is not always clear how the use of the term ehrlich in governmental decrees should be interpreted. Was ehrlich simply used as a synonym for ehelich or did it have a broader meaning? The decree of  contrasted ‘‘honorable’’ candidates with ‘‘the poor, the unemployed, those burdened with many children, those who lead a dishonorable life, those who do not have a trade or profession by which to earn their bread.’’ In contradistinction to ‘‘honorable’’ citizens, all these groups were by implication somehow dishonorable, which makes the label unehrlich a broad fluid term in which moral, legal, and financial characteristics merged and can hardly be disentangled. Did the authors of these decrees also have the specific meaning of legal infamy in mind when they used the term unehrlich in this context? The exclusion from citizenship and the exclusion from honorable guilds went hand in hand. Political and social identity in the city was conferred by a double membership, first in the civic corporation as a whole and then in one of the various corporate groups within the city which collectively constituted the commune. Since  new citizens were required to join either an artisanal guild or a patrician or merchant corporation. This requirement was reconfirmed in a decree of . Urban society was structured along corporate lines and executioners and skinners were not incorporated either in artisanal guilds or in the civic commune. 

 

‘‘Statut und Gesetz der Heiraten halb,’’ October , , in StadtAA, Ratserla¨sse, –. For similar decrees see Marcus Welser and Achill Pirmin Gasser, Chronica Der Weitberuempten Keyserlichen Freyen und deß Heiligen Reichs Statt Augspurg in Schwaben (Frankfurt a.M., ), Book , p. , for a decree of . See Paul von Stetten, Geschichte der Heiligen Ro¨mischen Reichs Freyen Stadt Augspurg. Aus bewa¨hrten Jahrbu¨chern und tu¨chtigen Urkunden gezogen, vol.  (Augsburg, ), p. , for a decree of . See also StadtAA, RP , fo. v, March , , and Ratserla¨sse –, for December , . SStBA, ° cod Aug –, Ratsdekrete, p. , January , ; StadtAA, Ratserla¨sse –,  December , . StadtAA, Ratserla¨sse –, December , . Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , p. . Decree of October , , in SStBA, ° cod Aug .



Honor, status, and pollution After the mid-sixteenth century the names of executioners and skinners listed in tax records were consistently marked with a circle or a cross to indicate that they were ‘‘foreigners,’’ i.e., non-citizens. This was the same symbol which usually marked the names of foreign ‘‘residents.’’ But executioners and skinners were not residents in a legal sense. A legal brief of  described the traditional practice: ‘‘the executioner, skinner, and dungeon guards are neither citizens nor residents . . . they are exempt from taxes, contributions, and guard duty . . .’’ Executioners, skinners, and dungeon guards occupied this indeterminate legal position through the eighteenth century. When the parish register recorded the marriages of an executioner and of a dungeon guard in , the scribe noted ‘‘neither executioner nor dungeon guard are treated as citizens.’’ In contrast to these eighteenthcentury sources, earlier records do not make the legal status of executioners and skinners explicit. However, negative evidence – the fact that executioners and skinners do not appear in any lists of citizens or residents – makes it likely that they inhabited this same legal limbo in the second half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Officially, they had no legal status in the commune at all. How is this legal ‘‘non-status’’ of executioners and skinners to be interpreted? The policy of excluding executioners and skinners from citizenship and residency expressed symbolically the commune’s unwillingness to incorporate dishonorable elements. However, the reasoning behind this legal principle was never explained and it is not clear what practical implications this policy held for the authorities or for the executioners and skinners themselves. There was little uniformity, then, in the policies of the different city and territorial governments towards the executioner and skinner. While executioners and skinners were generally excluded from citizenship in Swabia, many of Augsburg’s smaller neighbors went much further and sought actively to reinforce the social exclusion of executioners and skinners as a precaution against dishonor conflicts in the guilds. In contrast, the Augsburg city government was less sympathetic to the concerns of honorable guildsmen and did not enforce or even allow the complete social exclusion of executioner or skinner. In all cases, however, the policies of local governments were reactive. They did not initiate dishonor conflicts. Instead, they responded when such conflicts occurred among honorable artisans. Perhaps Augsburg’s comparatively liberal policies towards the executioner and skinner indicate that a greater mental distance separated Augsburg’s patrician magistrates from the honorable artisans they governed than was the case in the smaller towns like Memmingen or Kaufbeuren. Certainly, various expressions of exasperation by Augsburg’s political elite about artisans’ behavior in dishonor   

On symbols used in the tax records see Claus-Peter Clasen, Die Augsburger Steuerbu¨cher um  (Augsburg, ), p. . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, November , . Archiv des Bistums Augsburg, Matrikelamt, Trauungsregister Dompfarrei , p.  and p. , for February  and July , .



The meaning of dishonor conflicts give this impression. The magistrates complained that artisans did not adopt ‘‘a reasonable position, but judge everything according to their fantasy,’’ and deplored their ‘‘capriciousness and prejudice.’’ Apparently Augsburg’s magistrates, governors of a large and cosmopolitan city, treated the polluting power of dishonor with greater skepticism than neighboring city governments, magistrates of the small and provincial free imperial cities, and territorial towns which dotted the Swabian countryside.

              After examining the legal position of dishonorable people, we now turn to the executioner’s spiritual state. What position did Catholic and Protestant churches take towards capital punishment and towards the executioner? The provision of the Strasbourg executioner’s ordinance ordering executioners to stand in a separate space in church, and the statement in the Bamberg criminal code that executioners might be excluded from Holy Communion indicate that executioners suffered severe religious disabilities. However, both the Strasbourg ordinance and the Bambergensis were secular codes that did not have authority to legislate in spiritual affairs, and in this instance the Bamberg code reads more like a description of actual practice than a decree. What was religious practice? Secular ordinances and urban chronicles of the fifteenth century described the office of executioner as intrinsically sinful. A Frankfurt chronicle told of an executioner who resigned his position in  because of ‘‘the great sins he had committed due to his office . . .’’ He ‘‘prayed that God might mercifully forgive him.’’ When executioners resigned in order to escape their sinful state, they often turned to high religious authorities to receive absolution, as did the Ulm executioner Hans Maurer in the mid-fifteenth century. He was given a penance by the bishop of Wu¨rzburg and then set out on a pilgrimage to see the pope in Rome. Urban authorities often supported their executioners who resigned for reasons of conscience, giving them references and documents which allowed them to beg to support themselves on their way to a pilgrimage shrine, as did the magistrate of Eger in , encouraging believers to give charitably. In fact, executioners on pilgrimage became such familiar figures by the late fifteenth century that this became a common disguise for fraudulent beggars. Executioners pretended to repent in order to receive permission to beg, and common beggars claimed to be executioners who had given up their post. A Basel ordinance of the  



StadtAA, HWA, Weber , for March ,  and StadtAA, Markgraftschaft Burgau, Akten, No. , for January , . Mack Walker argues that magistrates of smaller imperial cities governed according to norms and values they shared with the citizenry. German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate,  – (Ithaca/London, ), pp. –. Keller, Scharfrichter, p. . Ibid., p. .



Honor, status, and pollution early fifteenth century cataloguing deceptions and disguises used by beggars to elicit alms, described this practice: ‘‘Many were hangmen and then leave it for a year or two and say they want to turn away from sin, and want to do penance . . ., and they fraudulently receive many goods. When they have done this for a while and cheated the people, they become hangmen again.’’ The Liber Vagatorum or Book of Vagabonds, a famous piece of rogue literature first published around , used the Basel ordinance as a model and described the deception in similar terms. Such practices indicate that executioners who stayed in office were seen as hardhearted and bloodstained sinners. Indeed, discrimination against executioners in church, denying executioners communion altogether, or requiring them to take it last, and to sit or stand separately during services, were relatively frequent in the late middle ages and continued to a lesser degree in the early modern period. As late as  the executioner of Worms required papal dispensation before he was allowed to take communion once a year. In northern Germany it was common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for executioners to celebrate marriages and baptisms in their own homes rather than in church. To what extent did these practices reflect official doctrine? The medieval church had some difficulty developing a consistent policy. The early church opposed capital punishment explicitly and forbade Christians to hold offices that might involve them in the execution of a death sentence, but by the time Christianity became a state religion the church endorsed capital punishment. St. Augustine argued that representatives of public authority were justified in punishing criminals with death. He compared soldiers, judges, and executioners. They killed enemies or criminals, and therefore they did not sin when they killed, nor could they be called murderers. But in spite of this theoretical support for capital punishment, the medieval church did not want its clergy involved personally. Synods of the sixth and seventh centuries forbade clerics from participating in any judicial proceedings that might lead to a death sentence, and they could not attend executions. By the high middle ages the church developed a clearer position on capital punishment. In  Pope Innocent III decreed that the executioner could carry 

 



Friedrich Christian Benedict Ave´-Lallement, Das deutsche Gaunertum in seiner sozialpolitischen, literarischen und linguistischen Ausbildung zu seinem heutigen Bestande, Max Bauer, ed., vol.  (Munich/Berlin, ), p. . Ave´-Lallement reprints both the Basel ordinance and the Liber vagatorum in full. Keller, Scharfrichter, p. ; Johann Glenzdorf and Fritz Treichel, Henker, Schinder, und arme Su¨nder (Bad Mu¨nder am Deister, ), vol. , pp. –. Francesco Compagnoni, ‘‘Capital punishment and torture in the tradition of the Roman Catholic church,’’ in Franz Bo¨ckle and Jacques Pohier, The Death Penalty and Torture (New York, ), pp. –. The synod of Maˆcon in  forbade clerics to be present at the condemnation or execution of criminals. The General Synod of Toledo in  decreed that any clergyman who participated in a trial that resulted in bloodshed was to be expelled from clerical office. Carl Josef Hefele, Conciliengeschichte. Nach den Quellen bearbeitet, vol.  (Freiburg, ), pp. , .



The meaning of dishonor out death sentences without committing mortal sin, if he was not motivated by private hatred, but wanted to execute a judgment in the interest of justice. This was not a statement of new doctrine. Innocent III was defending what by then was the traditional position of the church against the Waldensians’ rejection of capital punishment. In the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas justified capital punishment as necessary to preserve the common good. He reiterated St. Augustine’s position that judges who condemned to death, and by implication those who carried out the sentence, were not in a state of sin. The motivations and intentions of the executioner in carrying out the sentence, rather than the act itself, determined his spiritual state. In the Bamberg code it was also the motives of the executioner that determined whether or not he was to be admitted to Holy Communion. The executioner was excluded only if the system of individual payments induced in him an ‘‘evil turbulent lust for spilling human blood.’’ At the same time, rules against clerics being involved in any judicial proceedings that might result in a death sentence were relaxed. Indeed, church investigations led to death penalties against heretics, though clerics were forbidden to administer torture personally during the interrogation. The church continued to delegate the actual sentencing and the execution of the sentence to secular authorities in accordance with the principle Ecclesia non sitit sanguinem (the church does not thirst for blood). According to canon law, the executioner was ‘‘irregular,’’ that is he lacked the qualities considered necessary in a clergyman and was thus unable to receive the sacrament of ordination. He was considered irregular ex defectu perfectae lenitatis (lacking mildness of heart), a defect that affected everyone involved in the trial or sentencing, judge, jurors, prosecutors, and even witnesses of the prosecution. This defect also attached to those who had spilled blood in war, regardless of whether it was a just war or not. However, irregularity remained a construct of church law, and had little impact on social life and status in secular society. Judges were highly placed honorable persons, and military valor conferred the highest honor in medieval and early modern society. Conversely, executioners’ dishonor did not derive from irregularity, though it might have been compounded by it. Irregularity was of little practical consequence to professional executioners, since it is unlikely that many sought to be ordained as priests. This was the only religious disability that derived from the office of executioner according to late medieval and early modern Catholic doctrine.    

Paul Althaus, ‘‘Die Todesstrafe als Problem der christlichen Ethik,’’ Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Munich, ), p. . Ibid., p. ; Gu¨nter Voß, ‘‘Henker, Tabugestalt und Su¨ndenbock’’ in Bernd-Ulrich Hergemo¨ller, Randgruppen der Spa¨tmittelalterlichen Gesellschaft (Warendorf, ), p. . Constitutio Criminalis Bambergensis, article b, in H. Zoepfl, ed., Die Peinliche Gerichtsordnung Kaiser Karls V nebst der Bamberger und Brandenburger Halsgerichtsordnung (Leipzig, ), pp. –. Paul Hinschius, System des Katholischen Kirchenrechts mit besonderer Ru¨cksicht auf Deutschland, vol.  (Graz, ), pp. –.



Honor, status, and pollution By the late middle ages, then, there was no official doctrinal justification for the indignities executioners faced in practice. It appears that secular authorities interfered in the affairs of local churches to impose these discriminatory practices. This was certainly the case with the Strasbourg executioner’s ordinance. And yet when the bishop of Wu¨rzburg imposed a penance on the executioner from Ulm, and when the pope granted dispensation allowing the executioner from Worms to take communion, this indicates that in their eyes the executioners had been in a state of sin. Thus, even high church officials did not always follow doctrine. In the late middle ages and at the beginning of the early modern period, the church seemed unsure of its attitude towards the executioner. The churches of the early modern period developed a more consistent policy. Mainstream Protestant churches wholeheartedly endorsed capital punishment. Martin Luther’s full-blooded support for the death penalty is well known. Distinguishing sharply between the godly and worldly realm, Luther argued that true Christians living under the spiritual authority of Christ had no need of temporal authority or the law. The majority of unregenerate mankind, however, would only keep peace under the external constraint of the sword. Luther did not really consider capital punishment as a problem separate from temporal punishment in general. It was only its most extreme example. Following St. Augustine, Luther compared soldiers and executioners and claimed that the ‘‘the sword’’ was a ‘‘Godly estate,’’ a profession which Christians might exercise without sin. Constables, hangmen, jurists, and lawyers could also be ‘‘Christians and in a state of salvation’’ since they provided a ‘‘divine service.’’ If they performed their duties with the intention of upholding the law, they might ‘‘use their office like anybody else would use his trade, as a means of livelihood.’’ Luther went even further, exhorting Christians to take up the temporal sword personally if need be: ‘‘. . . if you see that there is a lack of hangmen, constables, judges, lords, or princes, and you find that you are qualified, you should offer your services and seek the position, that the essential governmental authority may not be despised or become enfeebled . . . The world cannot and dare not dispense with it.’’ Calvin took a very similar position, though he more specifically considered the question of how execution of death sentences by secular authorities could be reconciled with the commandment ‘‘Thou shalt not kill.’’ In executing a death sentence the secular authorities were not acting on their own accord, he argued, but merely as God’s  

Althaus, ‘‘Todesstrafe,’’ p. . Martin Luther, ‘‘Temporal Authority: To what Extent it should be Obeyed?’’ in Luther’s Works, vol. , ed. Walther I. Brandt (Philadelphia, ), pp. , . Although it was a rhetorical device, Luther’s demand that if necessary Christians exercise the office of executioner was quite provocative, considering the dishonorable status of executioners in his society, of which Luther was well aware. In his ‘‘Lectures on Deuteronomy,’’ :, ‘‘You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns,’’ Luther wrote about executioners, ‘‘At one time the most upright and the worthiest men were chosen for this, but now even the most despised and lowest hold this office.’’ Luther’s Works, vol. , ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis, ), p. .



The meaning of dishonor 

representatives on earth. Just as the executioner was absolved of personal responsibility for the death he caused, because he was carrying out the judgment of just authorities, so government itself was acting on God’s commandments. This remained the official position of the Lutheran and Reformed churches for the next centuries. Protestant funeral sermons for executioners, of which several examples from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries have been preserved, make the same argument. By the early modern period the Catholic and Protestant churches had abandoned any squeamishness about clergymen attending executions. Indeed, clergymen of all confessions played highly visible roles in the theater of public execution, accompanying the condemned in the procession to the gallows, giving spiritual solace or exhorting the ‘‘poor sinner’’ to repent, climbing the scaffold with the delinquent, holding an execution sermon after the sentence had been carried out. Their spiritual office seems to have insulated them from the dishonor that polluted any other honorable person who became so intimately involved in the execution process or came into actual contact with the condemned and the tools of punishment. The doctrinal support of Catholic and Protestant churches for capital punishment was unequivocal in the early modern period. Catholic and Protestant authorities agreed that the executioner did not sin when he carried out a death sentence. He was not in a damned state. Since Protestants abandoned the concept of irregularity, the executioner suffered no religious disability at all in Protestant theology. Even in secular sources, expressions of the intrinsic sinfulness of the executioner, which we saw in urban ordinances and chronicles of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century, are extremely rare in the early modern period. This change was reflected in social practice. Executioners on pilgrimage, such familiar figures in the fifteenth century, disappeared from the early modern landscape. This deemphasis of the executioner’s sin did not translate into an improvement in his social status, however. In fact the contrary is true. As Ernst Schubert has pointed out, the spiritual stain of sin could be removed by acts of religious penance. But religious exercises had no effect on the social stain of early modern dishonor. How were executioners and skinners treated in Augsburg’s churches? In the early sixteenth century executioner Caspar Behem was encouraged by ‘‘several honorable gentlemen . . . who no doubt had the good of my soul at heart . . . to abstain from the office of executioner for ever.’’ They convinced him to resign his  





Althaus, ‘‘Todesstrafe,’’ pp. –. See, for example, Johann Benedict Carpzov, Ertheilter Untericht von den Scharfrichtern, in einer dem ehrsamen und mannhaften Meister Christoph Heintzen, in der Stadt Leipzig lange Zeit gewesenen Nachrichters, an desselben Begra¨bnis, . Feb.,  (Leipzig, ). See below, chapter . Uwe Danker, Ra¨uberbanden im alten Reich um . Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte von Herrschaft und Kriminalita¨t in der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M., ), pp. – and  –. See below, chapter . Ernst Schubert, ‘‘Randgruppen in der Schwankliteratur des . Jahrhunderts,’’ in Bernhard Kirchga¨ssner and Fritz Reuter, eds., Sta¨dtische Randgruppen und Minderheiten (Sigmaringen, ), p. .



Honor, status, and pollution post and henceforth earn his living ‘‘piously and honorably’’ as a medical practitioner. Obviously these ‘‘gentlemen’’ and probably Behem himself were of the conviction that the executioner’s office was sinful. However, this is the only statement on the sinfulness of the executioner that I have found in Augsburg sources, and it dates from the first years of the sixteenth century. But even in the sixteenth century such beliefs did not result in discriminatory practices against the executioner and skinner in Augsburg’s churches. They were not excluded from church services; in fact, they were positively required to attend. In  the skinner’s son, Hans Gaisser the Younger, was fined for going for walks during Sunday church services. Marriages, births, and deaths of executioners and skinners were routinely noted in the parish records. There is no indication that they suffered any discrimination. Executioners regularly married and had their children baptized in the cathedral, while skinners attended the chapel of St. Sebastian outside the city walls which was close to their residence. Executioners and skinners did not lack pastoral care. When the skinner’s wife Susanna Hartmann lay on her deathbed in , the midwife summoned a Protestant preacher. The preacher and his sexton drove out to the skinner’s residence and ministered to the dying woman. The preacher treated the skinner himself with the utmost politeness, ‘‘taking off his hat and speaking to him in a friendly manner.’’ In a society that placed much emphasis on external gestures of respect and deference, it was a significant act for a preacher to doff his hat to a skinner. The problems the Mozart brothers encountered in  when they carried the executioner’s servant Hans Georg Reiser to his grave are indicative of the difficulties that sometimes accompanied the burial of executioners, skinners, and their families. But these were secular concerns involving the practical problem of how to transport the body in a dignified manner and who would risk dishonor by publicly bearing it. There was never any question of denying executioners a Christian burial in consecrated earth – once the body was in the graveyard. The only mention that was ever made of such problems in Augsburg’s parish records involved the Mozart brothers’ conflict. The parish record emphasized that the executioner’s servant had received an honorable burial: ‘‘sepultis fuit honestis vir Joannes Georgius Reiser, . . . carnifex in servitiis Marci Hartmann, carnificis Augustani.’’ Sometimes the parish records noted special circumstances surrounding a death, as with the   

 

StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /. The petition is not dated but is most likely from . It mentions the firing of an executioner ‘‘Master Peter’’ which occurred in that year. StadtAA, Strafamt, Zucht- u. Strafamtsprotokolle. –, p. , June , . See, for instance, the marriage of executioner Dietrich Metz and Barbara Deibler in the cathedral on June , . Archiv des Bistums Augsburg, Matrikelamt, Trauungsregister Dompfarrei , p. , or the baptism of Maria Ann, child of the skinner Johann Jacob Scheller in the sacello St. Stephan on January , . St. Stephan, Bd. , p. . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Johann Jacob Scheller, , , . ‘‘Johannes Georg Reiser, an executioner in the service of Markus Hartmann, executioner of Augsburg, received an honorable burial.’’ Archiv des Bistums Augsburg, Matrikelamt, Sterbebu¨cher Dompfarrei , –, p. , for March , .



The meaning of dishonor accidental drowning of the skinner Johann Jacob Scheller’s eight-year-old son Ferdinand Scheller in . The scribe expressed regret at this ‘‘unfortunate case’’ and noted that the boy was buried in the cemetery. When the skinner Stephan Trenkler died in , the parish records noted that last rites were provided on the day of his death, so that ‘‘he died piously.’’ There is some indication that the offspring of dishonorable people, whom artisans attempted to bar from their guilds, were not excluded from spiritual office. When the master weaver Johann Georg Vogel was expelled from the weavers’ guild for marrying the daughter of a bailiff in , he pointed out that both her brothers held positions in the Catholic church. One was a priest, the other was a deacon. What was acceptable to the church should be acceptable to the weavers’ guild, and to say otherwise was to show disrespect to the clerical estate. The weavers’ guild was unimpressed with this argument, however, for they knew that the churches did not discriminate against many of the groups whom artisans defined as dishonorable. Artisans involved in dishonor conflicts did not couch the dispute in religious terms. Protestant artisans could certainly not draw on the teachings of their church to justify their exclusion of dishonorable people, since Luther had repeatedly emphasized that all trades were honorable in the eyes of the Lord, as long as they did not violate religious morality. Indeed, artisans readily acknowledged that dishonor did not result in any impurity of the soul, but then, spiritual equality had no effect on inequality in this world. In their conflict with the fisherman Andreas Anhauser who had married the skinner’s daughter in , his guild argued that nothing could cleanse her of infamy in the material world: ‘‘his bride brought infamy into the world with her birth and . . . no act can elevate her to honors, but she must stay with her own kind until the end, until [she enters] spiritual life.’’ Infamy was seen as a material quality that permeated the physical being of a person – much like nobility ran in the blood – and determined a person’s condition in this world, but would have no effect in the spiritual world. In  the bookbinders’ guild was involved in a dishonor conflict concerning the apprenticeship of a beadle’s son. The bookbinders quoted the beadle as saying ‘‘In this world I am not an honorable man, . . . but in heaven we are all equal.’’ Clearly, even the artisans did not deny dishonorable people spiritual equality. But conversely, their spiritual equality had no impact on their dishonor in the material world.

    

 Archiv des Bistums Augsburg, Matrikelamt, St. Stephan, Bd. , p. . Ibid., Bd. , p. . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , May , . See also Weber  and , for correspondence –. Engelhardt Freiherr von Weichs, Studien zum Handwerkerrecht des ausgehenden . Jahrhunderts unter besonderer Beru¨cksichtigung der Schriften von Adrian Beier (Stuttgart, ), p. . StadtAA, HWA, Fischer , October , . StadtAA, HWA, Buchbinder , for May , .



Honor, status, and pollution    :              This chapter has set out to survey the opinions, feelings, and actions of different social groups – artisans, the urban poor, social and political elites, and religious authorities – towards executioners and skinners. Generally we can conclude that executioners and skinners were not absolute social pariahs. There was little consensus among different estates and classes on the implications of dishonor. Even honorable guildsmen, the social group to whom dishonor seems to have posed the greatest threat and who initiated most dishonor conflicts, did not agree on where the boundary of honor should be drawn. Indeed, this line was at times blurred or invisible, while at other times it was rigidly clear. Would a patrician have felt tainted or dishonored by social or accidental contact with the executioner or skinner? The evidence is inconclusive. Too few sources reveal the personal emotions of Augsburg’s elites. Governmental proclamations by authorities do indicate, however, that a considerable mental gap separated Augsburg’s patrician governors from their artisanal subjects, and that they regarded the concept of dishonor pollution and the social exclusion of dishonorable people with some skepticism. The relatively liberal policies of Augsburg’s city government towards executioners and skinners, and the fact that they suffered no discrimination in Augsburg’s churches, meant that the legal construct of dishonor was of little practical consequence for executioners and skinners in Augsburg. Of the bundle of legal disabilities that resulted from dishonor according to legal theory, Augsburg’s executioners and skinners suffered only two in practice, exclusion from honorable guilds and citizenship. The examination of the position of churches towards dishonorable people has shown that by the early modern period dishonor constituted a thoroughly secular phenomenon that operated without sanction in theology or religious practice. Dishonor was not the creation of either political or religious authorities. Instead, we must look to social structure, to the social characteristics of dishonorable people and of the groups who excluded them, and to the social dynamic between them, in order to explain the phenomenon of dishonor.



The meaning of dishonor VVVVVV



P AR T I I

The dishonorable milieu

MMMM



The status of executioners and skinners, – Who were Augsburg’s dishonorable people? In the previous chapter we have considered under what circumstances contact between executioners and skinners and honorable citizens resulted in dishonor conflicts and under what circumstances they remained unproblematic. This entailed looking at the boundary of honor through the eyes of honorable society. We now change perspective to get an inside view. How did executioners and skinners experience dishonor? How did dishonor affect their legal, social, and economic status in Augsburg? We shall piece together the lives of individual executioners and skinners in the greatest possible detail, in order to reconstruct their social milieu. By the early seventeenth century executioners and skinners had established a hereditary professional caste. One defining feature of this caste was a high degree of social endogamy. This endogamous marriage pattern has been well documented by the folklorists and historians who have studied dishonor. In contrast to artisans and other commoners who tended to marry locally, executioners and skinners often looked beyond their own locality to find marriage partners. Since there were usually only a small number of executioners’ and skinners’ children living in one city, they formed geographically extensive marriage networks. This peculiar marriage pattern has led one historian to compare the genealogical structure of executioners’ dynasties with that of the aristocracy. It is commonplace in the literature on dishonor to interpret this marriage pattern as a result of the social exclusion which executioners and skinners suffered at the hands of honorable society. The social fact of dishonor made it all but impossible for an executioner’s daughter to choose a marriage partner from outside the dishonorable milieu or for a son to leave his father’s profession. This is certainly 

 

See, for example, Johann Glenzdorf and Fritz Treichel, Henker, Schinder, und arme Su¨nder,  vols. (Bad Mu¨nder am Deister, ). This work reconstructs executioner and skinner genealogies. Giesela Wilbertz, Scharfrichter und Abdecker im Hochstift Osnabru¨ck. Untersuchungen zur Sozialgeschichte zweier ‘‘unehrlicher’’ Berufe im nordwestdeutschen Raum vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert (Osnabru¨ck, ) reconstructs north German regional marriage networks. See especially pp. –. Glenzdorf and Treichel, Henker, p. . See for instance Helmut Schuhmann, Der Scharfrichter. Seine Gestalt – seine Funktion (Kempten, ), pp. –.



The dishonorable milieu correct. The marriage of the young fisherman Andreas Anhauser with the skinner’s daughter clearly illustrates the social disaster that would befall an artisan who married across the boundary of honor. It is misleading, however, to attribute executioners’ and skinners’ endogamous marriage pattern and the transfer of executioners’ and skinners’ positions by inheritance only to external coercion. In addition to the constraints placed on executioners and skinners by honorable society there were strong pressures from within executioners’ castes that encouraged endogamy. Moreover, honorable society provided executioners and skinners with various perquisites that partly compensated for their low social status and made their position bearable, indeed advantageous. Coercive measures were accompanied by social incentives that could induce executioners’ and skinners’ children to choose to remain within the profession. The boundary of honor was not maintained for over two centuries by force alone. When did Augsburg’s executioners and skinners form a professional caste? How far back in time can their distinctive marriage pattern be traced? The boundary of honor was not fixed and unchanging in  and dishonorable people did not form a static social entity. The importance of external constraints, internal pressures, and social incentives in the formation and maintenance of the dishonorable milieu varied over the centuries. In this chapter, we will follow Augsburg’s executioners, skinners, and their families and servants over two centuries to show when dishonor became significant as a social distinction and when the dishonorable social milieu became consolidated. Before the s only fragmentary evidence is available on Augsburg’s executioners and skinners. In isolated sources from the fourteenth and the early sixteenth centuries executioners appear violent and disorderly. In  ‘‘Master Hans from No¨rdlingen who was executioner here and his wife Ruehin’’ were banished from the city because they had violently attacked ‘‘Hans from Kolmar who is now executioner here’’ and robbed him of two gulden. Executioners were also victims of violence. In  a man was banished for wounding the executioner within the city, and in  two men pursued the executioner with the intention of beating him to death, until the executioner fled to safety on the property of a city council member. In  Augsburg’s executioner lodged a mercenary soldier, a sick beggar, and a foreign executioner in his home. When the foreign executioner began a brawl with the soldier, Augsburg’s executioner intervened and slit the throat of the foreign executioner. The city council decided that he had acted in self-defense and ordered him to bury the body of the foreign executioner beneath the gallows. Tax records and other scattered sources reveal a high turnover of skinners and   

See above, introduction, pp. –. For a similar argument, see Giesela Wilbertz, Scharfrichter, pp. –. Wilbertz argues that the formation of executioners’ clans in north Germany was the result of self-recruitment and choice. StadtAA, Scha¨tze , Achtbuch, –, fo. a, fo. b, fo. a; Wilhelm Rem, ‘‘Chronica newer Geschichten,’’ in Die Chroniken der deutschen Sta¨dte vom . bis ins . Jahrhundert, ed. Historische Commission bei der ko¨niglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol.  (Leipzig, ), pp. –.



Executioners and skinners executioners in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. In  a skinner was fired for disobedience. He was replaced by Simprecht Scheifelhut, who is listed in the tax records between  and . The skinner’s residence lay in the tax district Undern Vischern (‘‘among the fishermen’’) immediately outside the city walls. In  Scheifelhut’s immediate neighbor was a Margaretha Scheifelhut who moved into the skinner’s household the following year, and in , Wolf Scheifelhut, a fisherman, lived three houses away. It is possible that Simprecht and Wolf were related; indeed this appears likely because the skinner, like the fisherman, was listed as a citizen, an indication that he was from a local family. Several members of the Scheifelhut family were represented among Augsburg’s fishermen for the next centuries. If the skinner Scheifelhut was recruited from this local fishermen’s clan, this would suggest that the boundary separating skinners from lowly commoners was still permeable. Perhaps it was still possible at this time to move in and out of a skinner’s post and not be permanently stigmatized. In the tax records of , Hans Bair appeared as skinner along with his servant Hans Kopp. A year later Bair was succeeded by another member of the Scheifelhut family. The tax records list Hans Scheifelhut and the servant Hans Kopp until , when Kopp took over the position. Hans Kopp was employed until , when he was replaced by Christoph Mair, who held the position for two years. In  Mair employed a Marx Scheifelhut as a servant. Clas Preining who succeeded Mair in  was employed for only one year. In  the tax records list a Christoph Gassner as skinner together with his servant Hans Gaisser. Hans Gaisser took over the position in . The turnover among executioners was equally rapid. In  the city council protocols record that ‘‘Symon, executioner’’ from Jungersheim, a Swabian village, was hired ‘‘on a trial basis.’’ Valentin Scholz served as executioner sometime before . In an undated petition Scholz pleaded with the magistrate not to fire him for attempting to sell his post to a foreign applicant for ten gulden. In  the city council ordered an executioner Franz Wagner to be careful when he emptied the latrines and not spill the contents in the streets. It is not clear how long Wagner had been employed before this date since the tax records of the early sixteenth century only list ‘‘the house of the executioner.’’ In  the tax records listed the executioner by name for the first time. ‘‘Master Franz’’ was listed from  until . In  Master Franz was replaced by Peter Ramer. Master Peter was employed for only three years. He was hired from the neighboring free imperial city  



StadtAA, RP , fo. , for Montag vigilia Magdalena, . Simprecht paid the basic citizen’s head tax of  Kreuzer, and his name was not marked with a circle, the symbol that preceded the name of ‘‘foreigners,’’ i.e. non-citizens. StadtAA, Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. d; , fo. c; , fo. d. On symbols used in the tax records, see Claus-Peter Clasen, Die Augsburger Steuerbu¨cher um  (Augsburg, ), p. . On the Scheifelhut fishermen’s family see for instance HWA, Fischer , list of fishermen from . StadtAA, Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. c; , fo. c; , fo. c; , fo d; , fo. d; , fo. d; , fo. d; , fo. b.



The dishonorable milieu of No¨rdlingen in  and was fired in . In that year Caspar Behem, an executioner who had been employed by Augsburg before , reapplied for the position. In  the council turned him down and hired Veit Stolz as master executioner instead. Most of these executioners were ‘‘foreigners,’’ that is they were not citizens of Augsburg. Symon was from the Swabian village of Jungersheim. Valentin Scholz was apparently a stranger in Augsburg, since he excused misbehavior by saying that he was not familiar with local customs. Caspar Behem was from Aichstet, a small Swabian town, and had served previously in the neighboring free imperial city of Kaufbeuren. Meister Peter Ramer was hired from Kaufbeuren as well. Two of the skinners, Simprecht Scheifelhut and Hans Scheifelhut, were probably members of the local Scheifelhut fishermen’s family. The evidence points to a rapid turnover rate in these two dishonorable professions. From  to , Augsburg employed at least seven skinners. On average the skinner’s position changed hands almost every five years. Since the tax records do not name the skinner between  and , it is unclear how many others were employed in these years. These skinners were casual labor who filled the post for a while and then were fired or quit to do some other job. In the case of the three Scheifelhuts, two skinners and one servant, it appears that local fishermen were hired to fill the post. Similarly, from  to  at least six executioners were employed in Augsburg. The sources do not show how many more were employed before  when the tax records listed only ‘‘the house of the executioner.’’ In this period the executioner’s post changed hands at least every six years. At least two of the incumbents were fired and one resigned. Such ‘‘unprofessional’’ behavior and the rapid turnover in the early sixteenth century is an indication that a skinners’ and executioners’ caste had not yet established itself. The executioners of these years were not committed ‘‘professionals,’’ as their successors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would become. The instability of these early years contrasts with the long tenures of executioners and skinners in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when individual skinners and executioners often held the position for twenty or thirty years, as we shall see below. Hans Gaisser was the first skinner who was employed for a significant period of time. He served as skinner for thirteen years, from  until . His tenure was not free of disturbances, however. He was arrested frequently for drunkenness, barroom brawls, and debt. He died in  and his son, Hans Gaisser the Younger, 



On Symon, see StadtAA, Oberpflegamt, Pflegschaftsbu¨cher –, eingeschobene Ratsdekrete, fo. r. On Valentin Scholz and Caspar Behem, see StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /. Scholz’s and Behem’s petitions are undated. On Franz Wagner, see StadtAA, RP , –, fo. r and Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. d; , fo. c; ; fo. c. On Peter Ramer, see StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. / for  and Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. d; , fo. d; , fo. d. On Veit Stolz, see Steueramt Steuerbu¨cher , fo. a. StadtAA, Oberpflegamt, Pflegschaftsbu¨cher –, eingeschobene Ratsdekrete, fo. r; StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /.



Executioners and skinners 

succeeded him as skinner. It appears that the younger Gaisser accepted the skinner’s position only as a last resort, after efforts to choose another profession had failed. In  one of the skinner’s sons, probably Hans Gaisser the Younger, became involved in a dishonor conflict so serious that it almost provoked a riot. A chronicle entry from that year recorded that a master weaver had accepted the skinner’s son as an apprentice: But when the journeymen heard of this they did not want to tolerate it and banded together in gangs in the upper and lower city. My lords the mayors and an honorable council spoke of this in great earnestness, and they unanimously decided that the honorable weavers’ guild should not be burdened with the skinner’s son, but he should be excluded once and for all.

This outcome is not surprising. What is surprising is that he tried to join a guild at all. No further such attempt by a skinner’s or executioner’s son was made to enter an honorable guild before the eighteenth century. In the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all dishonor conflicts caused by dishonorable people trying to enter honorable guilds involved shepherds, beadles, and others who were dishonorable to a lesser degree, but not skinners and executioners at the center of dishonor. In these centuries, skinners’ and executioners’ sons usually succeeded their fathers in office or, failing that, joined the growing ranks of the vagrant poor. They did not join honorable guilds. The boundary of honor that separated dishonorable people from honorable society was not yet clearly established in , but it fast was becoming so. The attempt of the skinner’s son to change his status and his profession shows that the Gaisser family did not yet see itself as part of a professional caste, nor did the younger Gaisser or the master who employed him understand the social force the stigma of dishonor had acquired by this time. In , after he had been employed for ten years, Gaisser was again confronted with the contagious power of his dishonor, when three master rope-makers were boycotted by their guild because they had entered the skinner’s home. Hans Gaisser the Younger was employed as skinner for thirteen years, until . His conduct was just as disorderly as his father’s. He was arrested on numerous occasions for drunkenness and violence. Finally, in , after being arrested for beating his wife and threatening to set the house on fire, Hans Gaisser escaped from prison and fled Augsburg, whereupon the city hired Hans’s brother, 



  

StadtAA,Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. b. For an example of his numerous arrests, see StadtAA, GRP , –, fo. r. In  Hans Gaisser senior no longer appeared in the tax records. Only Hans Gaisser the Younger was listed. Steuerbu¨cher , fo. d; , fo. c. StadtAA, RP , fo. , for August , . See also Paul von Stetten, Geschichte der Heiligen Ro¨mischen Reichs Freyen Stadt Augspurg. Aus bewa¨hrten Jahrbu¨chern und tu¨chtigen Urkunden gezogen,  vol.  (Augsburg, ), p. . See below, chapter . On the fate of the hapless younger sons and daughters of executioners and skinners, see chapter . See above, chapter , p. . For examples of his arrests see StadtAA, RP , fo. , June , . RP , fo. r, July , . Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung Hans Gaisser, , , .



The dishonorable milieu Barthlme Gaisser, as skinner. Barthlme was employed until . In  Barthlme was involved in an affair with his serving maid. The city council was unwilling to tolerate this adulterous affair and ordered that ‘‘he should no longer live in dishonor, as he had been, but he should live honorably.’’ In other words, the council expected ‘‘honorable,’’ i.e., morally respectable behavior from their legally dishonorable servant. In the council’s view, Barthlme’s legal infamy did not release him from normal moral precepts. In that same year Barthlme was fired for pulling a knife on city guards. Although by this time the Gaissers had filled the skinner’s post for thirty-seven years, after this incident the council was fed up with the unruly clan. Barthlme and his wife were banished from the city. In  Veit Stolz was hired as executioner. With Master Veit a measure of stability set in. Stolz was morally respectable and professionally responsible, serving as executioner for twenty-eight years. He represented a new kind of executioner typical of the later period. In the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Augsburg’s executioners and skinners were a remarkably orderly and law-abiding group. The stereotype of the ‘‘hanged hangman’’ one finds in the secondary literature on dishonorable people does not reflect social reality in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Augsburg. From the late sixteenth century on executioners and skinners rarely appear in Augsburg’s criminal records. Accordingly, Master Veit is mentioned only in less colorful sources, the city council protocols and guardianship records. However, these guardianship records are the first sources that make it possible to reconstruct the familial relationships of an executioner. Stolz died in . The guardianship records of that year detail the property settlements following his death. When Stolz died, his wife Margaretha made up a will of her own. The will shows that Margaretha had a sister, Barbara Kimicher, who had been married to a weaver, Endres Kel. Stolz had apparently married a woman from a local artisanal family, rather than marrying an executioner’s daughter from another city, as seventeenth-century executioners invariably did. That Stolz was enmeshed in a social network with local artisans is further illustrated by his wife’s testament. Margaretha left her property to her and Veit’s adopted daughter, Elizabeth Truckenmu¨ller. Casper Bez, a barber-surgeon, Hans Ludwig, a goldsmith, and Conrad Ettlin, a glazier, were appointed as executors of the testament. The goldsmith and the glazier were members of prestigious guilds. These artisans were perhaps acquaintances and friends of the Kimichers, Margaretha’s family of origin. Though Margaretha married an executioner she was not cut off from the normal familial and artisanal support    

StadtAA, RP , fo. v, July , . StadtAA, RP , fo. v, for October , ; Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Barthlme Gaisser, , , , ; RP , –, part , fo. r and r. See, for example, Hans von Hentig, ‘‘Der geha¨ngte Henker. Eine kriminalhistorische Studie,’’ Schweizerische Zeitschrift fu¨r Strafrecht  (), –. On the use of guardianship records to reconstruct social relationships that would otherwise remain invisible, see Bernd Roeck, Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden. Studien zur Geschichte der Reichsstadt Augsburg zwischen Kalenderstreit und Parita¨t (Go¨ttingen, ), vol. , pp. –.



Executioners and skinners 

networks. So Veit Stolz’s familial and social relationships do not yet exhibit the characteristics typical of professional executioners’ castes in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When the council hired the executioner Hans Deibler in  and the skinner Martin Leichnam in , a new pattern emerged. Deibler and Leichnam were members of established executioners’ and skinners’ clans. Hans Deibler served as executioner for  to , when he was succeeded by his son Michael who filled the executioner’s post until . The Deiblers were members of a large south German executioners’ clan. While Hans Deibler was employed as executioner in Augsburg, another Hans Deibler served as executioner in Memmingen in  and was succeeded by Jacob Deibler in . During the tenure of Michael Deibler, Hans’s son, other members of the Deibler clan were employed as executioners in Memmingen, Donauwo¨rth, Landshut and Rothenburg ob der Tauber. At this time, however, the Deiblers did not yet practice an absolute social endogamy. Michael Deibler was twenty years old when he succeeded his father Hans in . He married that same year. The property settlements made after Michael Deibler’s death in  shed light on his familial and social relationships. His widow was Sabina Scheibenhart and her guardians were Hans Scheibenhart, a stonemason, and Melchior Mayr, a weaver. In  one of Sabina Scheibenhart’s relatives, the widow of a Jacob Scheibenhart, shared the executioner’s house. Like Veit Stolz, Michael Deibler was enmeshed in a social network with local artisans. By the time Michael Deibler resigned in  after thirty years of service, the endogamous marriage pattern was more clearly established. Deibler’s successor acquired the executioner’s post by marriage, just as a journeyman might acquire a master’s workshop by marrying a master’s daughter in the artisanal milieu. In  Deibler petitioned the council to hire an assistant for him, since he was too old to do the job alone. Deibler requested that the council hire his ‘‘cousin’’ Dietrich Metz from Weißenhorn, a small town near Ulm. Deibler described Metz as ‘‘my sister’s son,’’ so Metz was in fact Deibler’s nephew, but by the seventeenth century executioners generally referred to each other as ‘‘cousins’’ regardless of the degree to which they were actually related, or even if they happened to be unrelated. In  





StadtAA, Oberpflegamt, Pflegschaftsbuch , p. , for January , . Kleines Pflegschaftsbuch , p. , for December , . StadtAA, Steueramt Steuerbu¨cher , fo. d; , fo. d. RP , fo. v, for May , . Hans Deibler’s testament from  reveals that he had been married to a Barbara Hartna¨glin. Her background could not be determined. He had appointed two bailiffs as guardians for his children. Oberpflegamt, Pflegschaftsbuch –, fo. v, for December , . His son Michael Deibler resigned in . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, petition from . Bartholoma¨us Deubler served as executioner in Memmingen from  to . Marx Deubler was executioner in Donauwo¨rth in . Another Marx Deubler, presumably his son, was executioner there from  to , when he resigned his post. See Glenzdorf and Treichel, Henker, vol. , p. . On the younger Marx Deubler see Lore Grohsmann, Geschichte der Stadt Donauwo¨rth. Vol. : Von  bis zur Gegenwart (Donauwo¨rth, ), p.  and fn.  on pp. –. Dietrich Metz’s relatives continued to fill the executioner’s post in Weißenhorn. An executioner Metz was employed in Weißenhorn from  to . Glenzdorf and Treichel, Henker, vol. , p. .



The dishonorable milieu  Metz married Deibler’s daughter Barbara. So Dietrich Metz really did marry his cousin, an illustration of how intertwined executioners’ clans had become by the early seventeenth century. In  Metz officially succeeded his father-in-law. The social network of executioners is revealed not only in their choice of marriage partners, but also in who served as ‘‘guarantors’’ for these marriages. Since  the city government required couples who intended to marry to have guarantors who vouched for the financial viability of the marriage and guaranteed that the couple would not apply for welfare for several years following the marriage. If the couple did go on welfare, the guarantors were liable for the payments. To examine who served as guarantor for whom helps make social support networks visible which would otherwise remain undetectable to the historian. At the marriage of Dietrich Metz and Barbara Deibler the guarantors were Michael Deibler, her father, and a Balthasar Geiger. The marriage protocols list Balthasar Geiger as a weaver, but by this date Geiger served as ‘‘night-king,’’ i.e. the chief latrine-cleaner, and shared the executioner’s residence for three years, as had Georg Geiger (his father?) before him. It is not clear whether Balthasar Geiger was still working as a weaver during his tenure as ‘‘night-king.’’ In any case, Geiger was not a typical artisan. The relationship between Geiger and the executioner’s family was based on professional cooperation and neighborly relations. When the retired executioner Michael Deibler died in , his widow Sabina Scheibenhart remarried. One year after her husband’s death, she married Georg Leichnam, one of the sons of the late skinner Martin Leichnam. Georg Leichnam was now a widower and executioner in the neighboring free imperial city of No¨rdlingen. A decree concerning this marriage raises the question of the relationship between dishonor and illegitimacy. In order to receive permission to marry, Georg Leichnam had to present witnesses who could confirm that he was of legitimate birth. These witnesses would be questioned under oath and then the authorities would provide Leichnam with an official document that certified his legitimacy. This was regular bureaucratic procedure that all couples who planned to marry had to undergo. Those born locally usually presented witnesses who had been present at their parents’ wedding. These witnesses had attended the parents’ wedding procession and could confirm that they had gone publicly ‘‘to church and street’’ before the birth of their child. If the bride wore a traditional wreath in the wedding procession, this was an affirmation of her virginity at the time of marriage.    



StadtAA, HAP –, fo. , June , ; StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, June or July, . Lyndal Roper, ‘‘‘Going to church and street:’ weddings in Reformation Augsburg,’’ Past and Present  (), –, . On this methodology see Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , pp. –, –. StadtAA, HAP, –, fo. , June , . Georg Geiger was listed in the tax records as a resident in the executioner’s house from  to . Balthasar Geiger was first listed as a resident in the executioner’s house in . He served as ‘‘night-worker’’ at least until . After this date he is no longer listed. Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. b; , fo. a; , fo. a; , fo. a. StadtAA, RP , fo. , August , .



Executioners and skinners Out-of-towners presented official birth certificates issued by their local authorities. In Georg Leichnam’s case the certificate of his legitimate birth was preserved. We can assume that most other members of Augsburg’s executioner and skinner families underwent the same procedure. There is no indication that the authorities varied the bureaucratic procedure in any way when they were dealing with dishonorable people. This would not have been necessary because all of the children born in Augsburg’s executioners and skinners families appear to have been legitimate. I have not found a single case of illegitimacy among Augsburg’s executioners and skinners in three centuries. There was little correlation between dishonor (Unehrlichkeit) and illegitimacy (Unehelichkeit). Dishonorable people and bastards were socially distinct groups. Though artisans tended to associate legal dishonor and illegitimacy, and indeed often used the term unehrlich as a synonym for unehelich, the artisans’ perception bore little relation to social reality. Augsburg’s executioners and skinners were subject to and practiced the same precepts of sexual morality as honorable citizens. After Georg Leichnam received his decree of legitimacy his wedding with Sabina Scheibenhart could proceed. Their guarantors were her relative Hans Scheibenhart, a weaver, and Michael Leichnam, Georg’s brother, who was the current skinner in Augsburg. Sabina Scheibenhart, though she was of artisanal background herself, married into another executioners’ clan instead of remarrying within the artisanal milieu. When Michael Deibler and Sabina Scheibenhart married in  it was still possible for an executioner to marry a woman from an artisanal family. By  it would have been unthinkable for an artisan to marry an executioner’s widow. Sabina Scheibenhart had become fully absorbed into the dishonorable milieu. Likewise, other members of the Scheibenhart family remained associated with Augsburg’s executioners. In  a Hans Scheibenhart was hired as ‘‘night-king’’ and moved into the executioner’s residence. Hans Scheibenhart was listed as ‘‘night-king’’ in the executioner’s house until . The Leichnam clan occupied the Augsburg skinner’s post for two generations. Martin Leichnam served as skinner for almost fifty years from  until his death   

 

On the significance of the wedding procession as a proof of legitimacy, see Roper, ‘‘Weddings,’’ , . Artisans’ association of sexual immorality and legal dishonor is discussed below, chapter , pp. – . I have found five cases of fornication by Augsburg’s executioners and skinners in three centuries: skinner Hans Gaisser committed adultery with Maria Schlairweggin in : StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Hans Gaisser, , , . Skinner Barthlme Gaisser committed adultery with his serving maid in : RP , fo. , , July , . The skinner’s daughter Barbara Leichnam and the fisherman Andreas Anhauser allegedly committed fornication before their marriage: StadtAA, HWA, Fischer , for –. The skinner’s daughter Josepha Trenkler committed fornication with the young miller Joseph Klugheimer in : StadtAA, Strafamt, Ledigenstrafbuch, –, p. . Executioner Johann Georg Trenkler was accused of adultery in : StadtAA, RP , , March , pp. –. None of these cases resulted in illegitimate births. StadtAA, HAP –, fo. , June , . StadtAA, Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. b; , c.



The dishonorable milieu in , when he was replaced by his son Michael Leichnam. The Leichnams were clearly part of the professional caste of executioners and skinners. Here nomen est omen: as we saw earlier the German word Leichnam translates as ‘‘corpse.’’ The name derived from the materials with which this family worked, an indication that by the late sixteenth century skinners formed a hereditary professional group. In  one of the Leichnam sons married the daughter of Hans Stadler, who became executioner in Munich in . In  a Christoph Leichnam was employed as skinner in Munich, in  a Hans Leichnam was executioner in the neighboring imperial city of Kaufbeuren, and in  a Dietrich Leichnam was employed as executioner in the Bavarian city of Landshut. Michael Leichnam was eighteen when he succeeded his father in . That same year he married Maria Bab, an executioner’s daughter from Munich. Michael Deibler, the retired executioner, served as their guarantor. And, as we saw above, Michael’s brother Georg married the executioner Michael Deibler’s widow, Sabina Scheibenhart, in . The disastrous marriage of Michael Leichnam’s daughter Barbara to the young fisherman Andreas Anhauser in  illustrates to what extent the social endogamy of skinners was enforced by negative social sanctions by the mid-seventeenth century – from within and without. The fishermen expelled Andreas from their guild, and the skinner Michael Leichnam turned his daughter out of the house and had her imprisoned. He was not present at the wedding. If the fishermen were unwilling to accept Barbara Leichnam into their guild after the marriage, Augsburg’s skinner Michael Leichnam and executioner Dietrich Metz were no less unwilling to accept Andreas Anhauser within their craft. Andreas, so the fishermen claimed, approached Master Dietrich and asked for a certificate, ‘‘so that he would be accepted among executioners, and could do an apprenticeship of three years in another place,’’ but Master Dietrich refused because ‘‘the executioners and skinners do not want to take him in.’’ Regardless of whether the fishermen’s claim was true or whether it was libel intended to discredit Anhauser even further, the slur reflected the reality that executioners formed a skilled trade which required professional training. Upon completing their training, apprentice executioners did a ‘‘master piece,’’ a beheading with the sword. If the execution went well, the young executioner was addressed as ‘‘Master.’’ No unskilled individual who became dishonorable by chance or choice could easily be integrated into this professional    



StadtAA, Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. d and , fo. c. See also Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , p. . Glenzdorf and Treichel, Henker, vol. , pp. , ,  and vol. , p. . StadtAA, HAP –, fo. , June , . Maria Bab was most likely the daughter of Georg Peb, who is listed as executioner in Munich in . A Michael Peeb appears as Munich executioner in . See Volker Liedke, ‘‘Scharfrichter in Bayern,’’ Bla¨tter des Bayerischen Vereins fu¨r Familienkunde  (), .  StadtAA, HWA, Fischer , June –, .  Ibid., October , . On the professional training of executioners, see Albrecht Keller, Der Scharfrichter in der deutschen Kulturgeschichte (Bonn/Leipzig, ), p. . On the title Meister (master) for executioners and sometimes for skinners, see Else Angstmann, Der Henker in der Volksmeinung. Seine Namen und sein ¨ berlieferung (Halle an der Salle, ), pp. –. Vorkommen in der mu¨ndlichen U



Executioners and skinners group. Paradoxical as it may seem, by the mid-seventeenth century this core group among the dishonorable formed a socially exclusive caste. Marx Philipp Hartmann, a skinner’s son from Ulm, became executioner in Augsburg in . Like his predecessor Dietrich Metz, Hartmann acquired the position by marriage. Hartmann married Master Dietrich’s daughter Maria in . Master Dietrich and the skinner Michael Leichnam served as guarantors. Johannes Scheibenhart, the ‘‘night-king,’’ was one of the witnesses at the wedding ceremony in the cathedral. When Metz retired after serving as executioner for thirty-one years, Hartmann succeeded him as master executioner. During Hartmann’s tenure as executioner in Augsburg, other members of the Hartmann clan were employed as skinners in the Swabian villages of Langenau and Geislingen and as executioner in Weißenhorn. When the skinner Michael Leichnam died in , Michael’s oldest son Martin expected to succeed his father in the skinner’s post. Ten weeks before his father’s death, Martin had successfully completed his master piece with the sword, so that he would be better qualified to assist Master Marx in criminal executions. But at this juncture the city government decided to apply the principle of confessional parity to the positions of executioner and skinner as to all other public positions. The principle of parity between Catholics and Protestants in all public offices had been introduced with the Peace of Westphalia in , when Augsburg’s constitution had been reformed to guarantee confessional balance in government and administration. In  the council decreed that the skinner’s post should alternate between Catholics and Protestants. Since the Leichnam family was Catholic, they were ordered to vacate the skinner’s post. The Leichnam sons protested and were supported by Catholic administrators who pointed out that when parity had been introduced the offices of executioner and skinner as ‘‘dishonorable trades’’ had been left unchanged. But the council was determined to apply the principle of parity systematically. According to the agreement worked out between Catholic and Protestant administrators, the executioner would always be Catholic, the ‘‘nightking’’ who shared his residence would always be Protestant, and the skinner’s post would alternate between Catholics and Protestants. In , the Catholic Leichnam family had to go and the Protestant skinner Johann Scheppelin from Memmingen was hired. The Leichnam brothers managed to find employment as skinners in the neighboring Habsburg territory of the margravate of Burgau. 





A Leonhard Hartmann was skinner in Ulm in . Marx Philipp was most likely a member of this skinner’s family. Glenzdorf and Treichel, Henker, vol. , p. . Archiv des Bistums Augsburg, Matrikelamt, Trauungsreg. Dompfarrei , p. , October . StadtAA, HAP –, fo. , September , ; StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, June , ; Archiv des Bistums Augsburg, Matrikelamt, Trauungsreg; Dompfarrei , p. , October . Michael Hartmann was skinner in Langenau in . Georg Hartmann was skinner in Geislingen in . Johann Hartmann was executioner in Weißenhorn in . Glenzdorf and Treichel, Henker, vol. , p. , and vol. , p. . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, March , April, and November , . On the ‘‘night-king’’ see StadtAA, Senatsdekrete Nr. , Excerpta aus den Bauamtsprotokollen, –.



The dishonorable milieu This rigorous application of parity meant that a single family could no longer fill the skinner’s post for more than a generation, contrary to the pattern which had emerged with the Gaisser family and was clearly established during the tenure of the Leichnams. By  the Leichnam family had served as Augsburg skinners for sixty-nine years and they considered the post a possession of their family. They were sorely disappointed when they lost the position and were ordered to vacate the premises within fourteen days. By contrast, the executioner’s post still could be handed down within the same family, since executioners remained consistently Catholic. The Protestant skinner, Johann Scheppelin, whom the council hired to replace the Leichnams, was the son of Master Georg Scheppelin who had served as executioner in Memmingen for the past seventeen years. Scheppelin emphasized in his job application that he had done his ‘‘master piece with the sword’’ and so could assist at executions if need be. He was trained by his father in Memmingen and also wandered ‘‘in the empire.’’ So it appears that executioners, like artisans, completed a period of ‘‘journeymanship.’’ Shortly after Scheppelin was hired, he married Master Marx’s sister, Susanna Hartmann. This is remarkable, because Hartmann had been hostile towards Scheppelin from the beginning. Hartmann had a long-standing relationship with the Leichnam family. When the Leichnam brothers were being ousted from the skinner’s position, Hartmann petitioned the council on their behalf and opposed Scheppelin’s hiring. But regardless of any personal animosities between Hartmann and Scheppelin, the wedding between Scheppelin and Hartmann’s sister took place. For the unmarried skinner to marry the executioner’s unmarried sister was an obvious match. Perhaps such a marriage had long been planned between Susanna and the young Martin Leichnam for the time when he succeeded his father Michael in the skinner’s post. If this was so, Scheppelin took Martin Leichnam’s place when the Leichnams were ousted – as skinner and as bridegroom. There was an obstacle to this wedding, however. The Hartmann family was Catholic, and Scheppelin, as we have seen, was Protestant. In the second half of the sixteenth century and until the early years of the Thirty Years’ War mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants were not unusual, but this had changed by the s. Confessional boundaries hardened under the influence of political events like the Catholic ‘‘Restitution’’ of  or the Swedish occupation in –, when Catholics and Protestants respectively subjected the opposing group to severe discrimination. Though confessional conflicts on the political level  



 StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, May , . Ibid., April , . Ibid., undated petition from some time after November , . Here Scheppelin referred to Hartmann as his brother-in-law. In the property settlement after Scheppelin’s death it becomes clear that his wife was Susanna Hartmann. StadtAA, Oberpflegamt, Pflegschaftsbuch, –, fo. , August , . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, petition by Marx Philipp Hartmann from March , .



Executioners and skinners ended with the introduction of the constitutional system of parity, the ‘‘confessionalization’’ of society and culture continued through the seventeenth century, so that Catholics and Protestants formed two separate camps within the city. In this environment ‘‘mixed marriages’’ between Catholics and Protestants, while officially permitted, were frowned upon. Confessional intermarriage in the later seventeenth and the eighteenth century was extremely rare. According to Etienne Franc¸ois, who has studied Augsburg’s system of parity and the process of ‘‘confessionalization’’ in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ‘‘the complete rejection of mixed marriages was internalized and formed a taboo which could not be transgressed,’’ in Augsburg even more so than in the rest of Germany. In the case of a marriage between a skinner and an executioner’s sister, however, social pressures to marry within their own milieu were more compelling than cultural prohibitions to transgress the confessional boundary. The couple did ‘‘normalize’’ their ‘‘unequal marriage,’’ as contemporaries called interconfessional marriages, by religious conversion. Since the skinner was required to be Protestant, Susanna Hartmann converted and joined her husband in the Confessio Augustana. That social pressure to marry within one’s own confession was secondary to the pressure for executioners’ and skinners’ clans to intermarry is further illustrated in Susanna Hartmann’s own tragic fate. Susanna’s marriage with Johann Scheppelin lasted for twelve years, until his death in . During their marriage, they had at least five children, whom they raised as Protestants. After Scheppelin’s death, the city council set out to hire a new skinner, strictly applying the rule of parity. After the Protestant Scheppelin the position had to be filled by a Catholic. The magistrate hired Johann Jacob Scheller, a twenty-three-year-old skinner from the neighboring village of Ziemetshausen and a Catholic. Later that same year Susanna married the new skinner. Again, the skinner’s post seems to have been transferred through marriage, much as a young journeyman could acquire an artisanal workshop by marrying the widow of an artisan. In this way the older widow and her children would be cared for; at least this was the intention. In order to ‘‘normalize’’ this mixed marriage, Susanna converted a second time and returned to her original Catholic faith. Susanna had grown accustomed to the Protestant confession during her twelveyear marriage with Scheppelin, however. When she became pregnant within a year of her marriage with Scheller, complications developed and it became clear that she was dying. On her deathbed, Susanna preferred the solace of Lutheranism and   

Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , pp. –. Etienne Franc¸ois, Die Unsichtbare Grenze. Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg, – (Sigmaringen, ), p. . When mixed marriages did occur, the couple generally tried to conform to social and religious norms through the conversion of one partner. Franc¸ois, Unsichtbare Grenze, p. . That Susanna converted to Protestantism during her marriage with Johann Scheppelin becomes clear in the interrogation record of her second husband Johann Jacob Scheller. StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Johann Jacob Scheller, , , .



The dishonorable milieu asked the attending midwife to fetch a Lutheran minister. But the skinner forbade it, fearing for his post should Susanna leave the Catholic faith. As his wife lay dying, Scheller went to town to request instructions from the Catholic mayor, who ordered him to bring a Franciscan friar to console his wife and to convince her to remain Catholic. In the meantime, the midwife informed the Protestant mayor of the situation, who ordered a bailiff to escort a Lutheran minister, his sexton, and the midwife back out to the skinner’s residence. Scheller returned home alone – no Franciscans were available – only to find the Protestant clergyman ministering to his wife. After the clerics, the midwife, and the bailiff left, Scheller vented his rage on his wife, saying ‘‘if he did not want to spare the child in her belly, he would stab her to death.’’ Shortly thereafter Susanna died. Close kinship relations among both skinners and executioners continued in the following generation. Marx Philipp Hartmann was employed as executioner until . In that year, after twenty-nine years of service, he resigned his position and was succeeded by his brother, Mathes Hartmann. Mathes had served as executioner in the neighboring city of Donauwo¨rth at least since . Mathes was employed in Augsburg for only six years, from  to , when he contracted a hernia while swinging the sword during the beheading of three witches and was no longer capable of carrying out the executioner’s duties. Mathes’s son Johann Adam Hartmann, who had also been serving as executioner in Donauwo¨rth, replaced his father in the executioner’s post in . When Johann Adam resigned in , the skinner Johann Jacob Scheller petitioned the council on behalf of his twenty-one-year-old son, Johann Scheller the Younger, asking that the magistrate consider the skinner’s thirty years of service and hire his son as executioner. Johann was well qualified, as his ‘‘master letter’’ attested. He had trained with his ‘‘cousin’’ Johann Michel Fahner, executioner in Pfaffenhoven in Bavaria. As his masterpiece, he had ‘‘beheaded a malefactor before a large audience with one manly and masterly stroke of the sword.’’ The authorities were satisfied and hired young Scheller. While the rule of parity precluded that a skinner’s son would inherit the skinner’s post from his father, a Catholic skinner’s son could fill the executioner’s post, as happened in this case. For the first time the same family filled both the skinner’s and the executioner’s post. These biographical sketches have illustrated the formation of a professional executioners’ and skinners’ caste. Executioners and skinners continued to intermarry through the eighteenth century. In Augsburg this endogamous marriage  

 

Ibid. StadtAA, Bu¨rgeraufnahmen. a, Nr. , September , , on Marx Philipp Hartmann’s resignation. On Mathes Hartmann see StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, March , , and SStBA Aug, ° cod Aug HV , Maleficantenliste, November , . On Johann Adam Hartmann see Stadtbed. /, March , . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, for . The younger Johannes Scheller was born May , . Archiv des Bistums Augsburg, Matrikelamt,  St. Stephan , p. . See below, chapter , p. .



Executioners and skinners pattern emerged in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. The consolidation of the dishonorable milieu and the hardening of the boundary of honor were two sides of the same coin. Social restraints and pressures that resulted from dishonor seem to have first been imposed on executioners and skinners by honorable society in the mid-sixteenth century and to have become more pronounced as the century progressed. After mid-century all of Augsburg’s executioners and skinners had to face their dishonor at one point or another. The skinner Hans Gaisser the Younger, as we saw, had run-ins with the weavers’ guild in  and with the rope-makers in . In  Augsburg’s bathhouse-keepers appear to have attempted to bar the executioner Veit Stolz from using the public baths. The firing of skinner Barthlme Gaisser in  was provoked by a dishonor conflict. In a drunken spree he had demanded that city guards catch a stray dog for him. Since such a task fell within the skinner’s duties, anyone else who did it would have risked dishonor. When the guards refused, saying that they did not want to intrude in his craft, Barthlme attacked them with a knife. In  the skinner Hans Merklin precipitated a dishonor conflict by insisting that the master weaver Hans Seidler share a drink with him. When Seidler’s guild learned of this, they closed down his shop. In  the city government penalized executioner Lemler for defending himself against rock-throwing journeymen. In  the stonemason Thomas Biberer was punished by his guild for riding on the skinner’s cart together with the skinner Michael Leichnam. In , Barbara Metz, the wife of the executioner Dietrich Metz, had to face her dishonor when sociability with the military preacher had disastrous consequences for both the preacher and her host Georg Schmidt. In  Michael Leichnam was embroiled in the tragic conflict involving the marriage of his daughter Barbara to the young fisherman Andreas Anhauser. In  the executioner Marx Philipp Hartmann was confronted with his dishonor when the Mozart brothers were declared dishonorable for carrying Hartmann’s servant to his grave. Executioners and skinners even chose to emphasize their own dishonor when it was to their advantage to do so. In  the skinner Johann Jacob Scheller emphasized his own dishonor to further his economic interests. It fell within the rights of the skinner to confiscate diseased livestock. This brought skinners into frequent conflict with the butchers. Skinners inspected the cattle herds owned by the butchers and tried to confiscate animals which the butchers claimed were perfectly healthy. In one such conflict, Scheller used his dishonor in order to force the butchers to concede. He emphasized that slaughtering and skinning diseased animals was completely inappropriate for honorable artisans. He drove home this point by threatening to stick his skinner’s knife into the doorpost of any butcher   

StadtAA, RP , fo. r, June , . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Barthlme Gaisser, c, , , ; Strafbuch, –,  fo. r, September , . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , February –, . See above, chapter , pp. –.



The dishonorable milieu who continued to infringe upon his economic monopoly. This was a powerful threat since the skinner’s knife was an infamous object permeated by the skinner’s dishonor. Sticking the skinner’s knife into a doorpost was a conditional ritual insult, a form of honor blackmail, which skinners traditionally used to enforce their demands. If the skinner’s opponent touched the skinner’s knife and removed it from his doorpost himself, the infamy of the skinner’s knife would leave a taint on his honor. The victim of such blackmail really had no choice but to accede to the skinners’ demands. Then the skinner would remove his knife from the doorpost himself, leaving his victim’s honor intact. In this way dishonorable people could manipulate their dishonor to their economic advantage. Most dishonor conflicts involving executioners and skinners were concentrated in the second half of the sixteenth century, which indicates that the social distinction of dishonor was gaining greater force at this time and the boundary of honor was being established. In the seventeenth century there were noticeably fewer cases of this kind, which suggests that certain conventions and routines had been worked out which regulated the interaction of executioners and skinners with honorable citizens. A modus vivendi had been established which minimized conflicts. Indeed, the most costly dishonor conflicts in the seventeenth century involved other groups who were dishonorable to a lesser degree, for instance the bailiffs, with whom such social conventions had not been established. The marginalization of executioners and skinners after the mid-sixteenth century is reflected in the social topography of the city. From at least  on, the executioner’s residence lay in the alley In des Bartshof near the Go¨gginger Tor, one of the major city gates, and in the immediate vicinity of the municipal brothel, which was closed down in  as the Reformation took hold. We can only speculate whether this proximity of the executioner’s residence and the brothel means that the executioner in the early sixteenth century was still observing his old duties as municipal supervisor of Augsburg’s public prostitutes, as the civic code of  had described. The proximity of the brothel to the executioner’s residence seems to indicate the low social status of the executioner. However, the fact that both of these houses were located in a heavily populated part of the city, next to a major city gate and the imperial highway, suggests that neither executioner nor prostitutes were as marginalized in the late middle ages and the first years of the sixteenth century as they would become in the course of the early modern period. The executioner continued to live at this location until , when the city purchased a house in der Ko¨chin Gessle in the St. Jacob’s suburb. The     

Ibid., December , . On skinners’ practice of sticking knives into opponents’ doorposts, see Rudolf Wissell, Des alten Handwerks Recht und Gewohnheit , ed. Ernst Schraepler, vol.  (Berlin, ), pp. –. On bailiffs and other potentially dishonorable groups see below, chapter . For the executioner’s house see for instance StadtAA, Steuerbuch , fo. d. On the brothel, see above, chapter , p. . StadtAA, RP , part I, fo. v, February , ; Steuerbuch , fo. c.



Executioners and skinners suburbof St. Jacob’s was the poorest quarter of the city but still lay within the city walls. In  the executioner’s residence was moved to a new location for the last time. The executioner now lived in Undern Weschen, also in the St. Jacob’s suburb. The building was city property and had previously served as a hospice, for it is listed in the tax records as Brechhaus. This building was then converted to a new use as executioner’s residence. In this new residence executioner and ‘‘night-king,’’ the chief latrine-cleaner with whom he shared the building, had few immediate neighbors. Surrounded by grounds where wood and tallow were stored, in the immediate vicinity of the hospice for syphilitics, the house lay just within the city walls. In this semi-rural neighborhood the alleyways remained unpaved. This was the most impoverished section of the generally poor St. Jacob’s suburb. The residence of the executioner and ‘‘night-king’’ remained at this location until at least . The skinner, by contrast, lived outside the city walls. His residence lay in Undern Vischern (‘‘among the fishermen’’) immediately beyond the walls, where it remained until the early seventeenth century. In  the skinner’s residence was moved to the tax district Ausserhalb St. Gallen, iezo Stephinger Tor. The skinner now lived about a mile from the city wall, isolated from any neighbors. Here the skinner’s residence remained through the eighteenth century. The consolidation of Unehrlichkeit was also mirrored in the legal status of executioners and skinners in the commune. In the late fifteenth and the early years of the sixteenth century executioners and skinners sometimes were listed as citizens and sometimes paid the basic citizen’s head tax. Thus the skinner Simprecht Scheifelhut who was employed in the last years of the fifteenth century was a citizen, as was the executioner Meister Franz who was named in the tax records from  through . The administrative practice of placing executioners and skinners in a kind of legal limbo in which they were classified neither as citizens nor residents developed in the s and had become the customary practice by the mid-sixteenth century. To be denied citizenship was clearly a significant and symbolic form of discrimination. While citizens had to bear certain civic burdens – most importantly taxes – the relationship between citizenry and the city government was reciprocal. Fully incorporated in the commune, each citizen benefited from the political and legal protection of the city. Citizenship was not only a legal category; it also conferred higher social status in the commune. Conversely, that executioners and skinners were denied citizenship meant that the city government      

On Augsburg’s social topography see Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , pp. –.  StadtAA, Steuerbuch , fo. c. Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , p. . StadtAA, Steueramt, Steuerbuch , fo. a. StadtAA, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. c; , fo. d.; , fo. d; , fo. c; , fo. c. See for instance StadtAA, Steueramt, Steuerbuch , fo. a and fo. d. On the obligations of citizens, see Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , pp. –. On citizenship as a symbolic social distinction in the commune, see Erich Maschke, ‘‘Die Unterschichten der mittelalterlichen Sta¨dte Deutschlands,’’ in Erich Maschke and Ju¨rgen Sydow, eds., Gesellschaftliche Unterschichten in Su¨dwestdeutschen Sta¨dten (Stuttgart, ), pp. –.



The dishonorable milieu and the commune had no obligations towards them. As outsiders they could be discarded at any time. They had no right to remain in the city after their employment ended. It lay in the discretion of the city government whether to grant retired executioners or skinners a residency permit or not. This is illustrated by an entry in the marriage protocols which recorded the marriage of the skinner Michael Leichnam in : ‘‘They will move away [from Augsburg] after the end of their service. They have sworn an oath to this effect . . .’’ In practice the city government always did allow retired executioners and skinners to remain within the city, so that the denial of citizenship had no actual negative consequences for executioners and skinners. But as this entry in the marriage protocols makes clear, the permission to stay in the city was a mercy the magistrate was free to grant, not a right that could be demanded. Of little practical consequence to executioners and skinners, the denial of citizenship was a symbolic reminder of their outsider status. It is clear, then, that negative social sanctions and pressures exerted on executioners and skinners by honorable society contributed significantly to the consolidation of the dishonorable milieu. But the formation of a professional executioners’ and skinners’ caste did not result only from coercion. Certainly it was not exceptional in early modern society for a son to follow in his father’s trade or to marry within his craft. Indeed, some of the same factors which contributed to the formation of executioners’ and skinners’ dynasties encouraged endogamy in the artisanate. The advantages of early socialization within a craft and the privileges accorded to masters’ sons and to journeymen who married masters’ daughters and widows resulted in the development of artisanal dynasties whose members practiced the same craft over several generations. Of course, artisans were not subject to those external social pressures that compelled executioners and skinners to intermarry, so artisanal endogamy was never as exclusive as that of executioners, and artisanal dynasties were never as long-lasting and stable as executioners’ clans. Nonetheless, Lyndal Roper suggests that ‘‘the exclusiveness of the later sixteenth-century smaller craft associations meant that they increasingly tended to coincide with kinship networks.’’ The social endogamy of executioners and skinners was also promoted by family strategies intended to ensure the professional training of the young, the transfer of executioners’ and skinners’ posts, and the inheritance of property. The question of property brings us to the economic status of executioners and skinners. Here the sources are quite sketchy. As non-citizens, executioners and skinners did not pay the regular property tax. Cash reserves on which citizens would have been taxed were tax exempt for executioners and skinners. They only paid taxes on land and buildings they purchased on city lands. Thus, in the intermittent years when the tax records did record a payment by executioners, this  

StadtAA, HAP –, fo. , June , . Michael Mitterauer, ‘‘Zur familienbetrieblichen Struktur im zu¨nftischen Handwerk,’’ in Herbert Knittler, ed., Wirtschafts- und sozialhistorische Beitra¨ge. Festschrift fu¨r Alfred Hoffmann zum .  Geburtstag (Munich, ), p. , pp. –. Roper, ‘‘Weddings,’’ .



Executioners and skinners only reflects the real estate executioners owned. Other assets remain invisible. An executioner who paid one gulden in tax, for example, was possibly much wealthier than a citizen who paid the same amount. Here it becomes clear that the denial of citizenship, which on the symbolic plane was clearly a denial of social status, also offered significant economic advantage. Executioners were exempt from the basic head tax, most property taxes, the fee charged to finance city guards, military contributions, and indirect taxes on alcohol and meat. Judging by the vigorous protests with which executioners reacted to reforming administrators of the eighteenth century who wanted to cancel this exemption in an effort to make the tax system more uniform, the exemption from indirect taxes on alcohol and meat was a significant economic factor. The special tax status of executioners and skinners makes it impossible to consider their economic status in relationship to the citizenry in general on the basis of their tax payments. However, scattered sources indicate that Augsburg’s executioners tended to be well off in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and would have had little incentive to marry into economically weaker artisanal families. The executioner Veit Stolz died a wealthy man in . It is possible to follow the gradual accumulation of his wealth in the tax and guardianship records. In  Stolz purchased a house, on which he paid  gulden,  kreuzer property tax. At a tax rate of . percent for real estate, Stolz’s house was worth over  gulden. In  he purchased a second house worth  gulden. In  Stolz must have purchased additional property for he was now required to pay  gulden,  kreuzer,  heller for his houses, which means that he owned property worth more than , gulden. In  he purchased a fourth house and his tax payment now rose to  gulden,  kreuzer,  heller, so that his collected properties were worth at least , gulden. When Stolz died in  he left his adoptive daughter the impressive sum of , gulden. To give an idea of what these numbers might mean, in the sixteenth century Augsburg’s civic dowry fund provided poor but deserving couples with a dowry of  gulden as starting capital for their marriage. This was ‘‘enough to buy a good bed with a little to spare.’’ The urban authorities required that applicants for citizenship prove that they owned capital worth  gulden, to guarantee that the new citizens would not become a burden on the urban welfare system. Executioner Hans Deibler was not as wealthy as Veit Stolz, but he was still  

  

StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, April ,  and August , . The tax records use the abbreviations ‘‘f ’’ for gulden, ‘‘ch’’ for kreuzer, and ‘‘d’’ for heller. In Augsburg’s financial records ‘‘florins’’ and ‘‘gulden’’ are used interchangeably.  gulden was the equivalent of  kreuzer,  kreuzer was the equivalent of  heller. On Augsburg’s currency, see Georg Karl Mayr, Wegbuchlin der furnemesten Wege und gebreuchlichesten Strassen (Augsburg, ), p. . The city taxed real estate at . percent and cash reserves at . percent. On tax rates, see Clasen, Steuerbu¨cher, p. . StadtAA, Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. c; , fo. b; , fo. b; , fo. c; , fo. b. Oberpflegamt, Kleines Pflegschaftsbuch , –, p.  for December , .  Roper, ‘‘Weddings,’’ . Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , p. .



The dishonorable milieu comfortably well off. In  Deibler purchased a house worth  gulden. By  he was paying  gulden in taxes, which indicates that he had acquired property worth  gulden. The historian Claus-Peter Clasen places citizens who paid over  gulden in property taxes in the ‘‘middling’’ social stratum. Again, this payment only reflected the real estate Deibler owned; Deibler’s collected assets might have added up to a good deal more. In  Deibler arranged for the division of the property of his late wife Barbara Hartna¨glin among his three children. This property consisted of  gulden. Each child received  gulden. This was not the inheritance the children would receive at Deibler’s own death, but was taken from his wife’s assets alone. Unfortunately there are no records on the property Deibler himself left his heirs, but the son who succeeded him was also obviously well off. In  Hans’s son, Michael Deibler, purchased a house for which he paid  gulden property tax; in other words the house was worth  gulden. By  he had purchased two additional houses and paid a total of  gulden,  kreuzer, which shows that his combined properties were worth more than  gulden. When Michael Deibler died in  his widow Sabina Scheibenhart sold her share of her husband’s houses to her son-in-law, the new executioner Dietrich Metz, for , gulden. Metz had to buy out the other heirs for  gulden, so that the total value of Michael Deibler’s houses lay at , gulden. The testament of executioner Marx Philipp Hartmann enables us to flesh out these numbers. When his wife Barbara died in , Hartmann made a testament to settle the inheritance of his small daughter Maria Barbara Hartmann. He put up the respectable sum of  gulden as dowry. Maria’s inheritance was also to include three golden rings, several silver belts, two gold and silver inlaid cups and various other silver and gold items, together with ‘‘three of the best executioner’s swords,’’ twenty-one medical texts, and various household furnishings. This testament was made only five years after Hartmann had officially succeeded his father-in-law Dietrich Metz as executioner, so Hartmann had not had much time to accumulate property. During his long career Hartmann apparently continued to prosper. When he was arranging the marriage of his daughter Maria Barbara in , Hartmann boasted in public that he would provide her with a dowry of , gulden. When a property dispute arose over this issue the following year, Hartmann’s son-in-law brought in several witnesses, including a tavern owner and the skinner, who testified that they had heard Hartmann make this claim. Hartmann   



Claus-Peter Clasen, Die Augsburger Weber. Leistungen und Krisen des Textilgewerbes um  (Augsburg, ), pp. –. StadtAA, Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. b; , fo. d; , fo. a; StadtAA, Oberpflegamt, Pflegschaftsbuch –, fo. v, December , . StadtAA, Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. a; , fo. a; , fo. d; , fo. a; , fo. a; , fo. d. For Deibler’s petition see StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /. For the property settlement see Oberplegamt, Pflegschaftsbuch –, fo. , May , . In a petition from  Dietrich Metz described how he purchased the houses and bought out the heirs. StadtAA, HWA, Bierbrauer , for May , . StadtAA, CM in genere, –, Fasz. , testament from January , .



Executioners and skinners was unwilling to follow through, so this appears to have been an empty boast, but his son-in-law and his listeners seem to have believed him. Master Marx must have been very wealthy indeed for such a boast to be at all plausible. Skinners were less wealthy than executioners. In the early sixteenth century, when skinners were still listed as citizens in the tax record they paid the basic citizen tax, the ‘‘habnit’’ tax, which indicated that they owned no additional taxable income. Skinners, in contrast to executioners, seem never to have acquired any real estate within the city. From ca.  to  when the series of tax records ends, skinners never paid any property tax on houses or lands they had purchased. Only one source on the property a skinner left his heirs has been preserved, the entry in the guardianship records which settled the affairs of the skinner Johann Scheppelin, who had been employed in Augsburg from  until his death in . The skinner left  gulden which were divided equally among his five children. In addition the four sons received their father’s clothes and medical books, and the daughter received a bed. This inheritance was much smaller than what Marx Philipp Hartmann had bequeathed to his daughter in . Unlike Hartmann, Scheppelin left no gold and silver dishes and jewelry or other valuables. While this skinner was not poor, he was clearly less well off than the executioners discussed above. Since no wealthy skinners appear in the sources, it is safe to conclude that Augsburg’s skinners were generally in a weaker economic position than executioners. This confronts us with another question. What was the relationship between Augsburg’s executioners and skinners? To what extent did their status differ? We should recall that the skinner not only disposed of carrion, but also served as the executioner’s assistant in performing criminal punishments. The master executioner often delegated the execution of the dishonorable death penalty of hanging or the task of removing the corpses of suicides to the skinner. In northern Germany a social abyss separated executioners and skinners. According to Giesela Wilbertz, who has studied the social history of executioners and skinners in the principality of Osnabru¨ck in detail, executioners in northern Germany were not much affected by dishonor, but skinners felt the stigma in full force. The higher social status of executioners in northern Germany can be explained, according to Wilbertz, by the fact that executioners and skinners maintained a careful division of labor. Executioners in northern Germany were never personally involved with skinning. They merely controlled the economic rights to skinning in a certain area and leased out these rights to skinners as a concession. In their role as subordinates of the executioner, skinners were required to perform certain menial tasks.    

StadtAA, CM in genere, –, Fasz. , depositions from August –, . StadtAA, Oberpflegamt, Pflegschaftsbuch –, fo. , August , . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, petition by Johann Scheppelin from . Giesela Wilbertz, ‘‘Scharfrichter und Abdecker. Zur Sozialgeschichte zweier ‘unehrlicher’ Berufe im nordwestdeutschen Raum vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert.’’ Unser Bocholt. Zeitschrift fu¨r Kultur und  Heimatpflege  (), –, . Wilbertz, Scharfrichter, pp. –.



The dishonorable milieu Often executioners did not perform torture themselves but delegated this responsibility to their servants, the skinners. Skinners generally carried out the dishonorable death penalty of hanging, while executioners reserved the technically more demanding and more honorable penalty of beheading for themselves. Executioners and skinners formed two interdependent but distinct castes. Executioners were careful to distance themselves from skinners. Any executioner who personally dirtied his hands with skinning would have disqualified himself from being an executioner. In northern Germany executioners and skinners did not intermarry. If a member of an executioners’ clan married a skinner’s child, this was considered a me´salliance which sealed the executioner’s social decline into the subordinate skinners’ caste. Executioners were clearly of higher status than skinners in south Germany as well. The skinner was held in greater contempt by the public than the executioner. The skinner did filthy work with base materials, which lacked the drama of a spectacular execution. Feelings of ‘‘revulsion’’ (Abscheu), ‘‘horror’’ (Entsetzen), and ‘‘disgust’’ (Ekel) were often expressed in descriptions of the skinner’s work. In contrast, descriptions of the executioner’s various tasks in criminal executions were matter of fact, usually without any qualifying adjectives. As in northern Germany, the skinner served as the executioner’s assistant in Augsburg, but he got the dirty work. In , for example, executioner Marx Philipp Hartmann ordered the skinner Johann Scheppelin to dispose of the corpses of two suicides. The city paid Master Marx  gulden for this task. Master Marx in turn paid the skinner  kreuzer. But while skinners were clearly subordinate to executioners, their relationship was usually more cooperative than hierarchical. The Augsburg skinner did not lease the skinning rights in the area from the executioner. Rather he was granted this monopoly in his own right by the city. In southern Germany executioners and skinners did not establish as careful a division of labor as their colleagues in the north. In a large city such as Augsburg the offices of skinner and executioner were distinct, but many smaller Swabian towns and villages employed an ‘‘executioner’’ who fulfilled both functions, but was often no more than a glorified skinner. That  



 

Giesela Wilbertz, ‘‘Das Notizbuch des Scharfrichters Johann Christian Zippel in Stade (– ),’’ Stader Jahrbuch, N.F.  (), –. On separate marriage circles of executioners and skinners, see Giesela Wilbertz, Scharfrichter, pp. –, and Wilbertz, ‘‘Fremde in der Stadt. Herkunft und soziale Beziehungen der Halbmeister (Abdecker) in Quakenburg,’’ in Horst-Ru¨diger Jarck, ed., Quakenburg. Von der Grenzfestung zum Gewerbezentrum (Quackenburg, ), pp. –. See for instance a petiton by Elias Tregelin from , in StadtAA, HWA, Lederbereiter , and Weber , July , . Abscheulich (revolting, horrific), the adjective used most often to describe the skinner’s work, was also used to describe witchcraft, as in das abscheuliche Laster der Hexerei (the horrific sin of witchcraft). StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, undated petition most likely written between November  and June . For instance, the executioner of the free imperial city of Kempten was doing skinner’s work in . In that year he made a complaint against the ‘‘executioner’’ from the neighboring village of Sulzbach,



Executioners and skinners executioners and skinners did intermarry in the south has been demonstrated in the biographical sketches above. South German executioners and skinners cannot be separated into a superior and inferior caste. There were only more or less highly placed members within the same caste. The servants and laborers who worked and often lived with the executioner and skinner were also part of the core group of dishonorable people. Neither citizens nor residents, these dependent workers occupied the same legal limbo as the executioners and skinners and participated fully in the dishonor of their masters. Beadles and dungeon guards were recruited from south German executioners’ and skinners’ clans. It is likely that these were younger sons and daughters who could not acquire full positions and earned their living as servants of their more successful relatives. Hans Georg Reiser, the Henkersknecht (executioner’s servant) whom the Mozart brothers carried to his grave in , had come to Augsburg from the nearby Swabian village of Hochstett and had been in the employ of the executioner Marx Philipp Hartmann since . Hartmann referred to Reiser as his ‘‘cousin,’’ which indicates that Reiser was a member of an executioners’ clan. A Michael Reiser was executioner in the small Swabian town of Ingstetten in , and numerous other members of the Reiser clan filled south German executioners’ posts in the later seventeenth and the eighteenth century. Hans Crafft was one of Augsburg’s beadles (Malefizscherge). He had been hired in  from Nuremberg and in  he resigned the post because he hoped to find a better position ‘‘for himself and his family’’ – possibly an advancement to an executioner’s post. Hans Crafft was perhaps related to the executioner of Regensburg of the same name who was murdered in . By their intimate association with executioners and skinners – and by their family background – these laborers were clearly dishonorable. But in spite of the potential for pollution, executioners’ and skinners’ servants, like their masters, were rarely involved in dishonor conflicts with honorable guildsmen. In fact, the only such conflict I have found before the eighteenth century involved the burial of the executioner’s servant Hans Georg Reiser. Executioners’ and skinners’ servants apparently did not attempt to enter guilds and they seem to have conducted themselves in such a way that conflicts rarely arose. Finally, we must turn to the question of numbers. How many members of the dishonorable core group lived in Augsburg at any one time? It is difficult to estimate the size of the group of executioners, skinners, their families and their servants, and their servants’ families. Augsburg never employed more than one executioner and one skinner. Information on the number of children in executioners’ and skinners’ households is available in only a few cases. Skinner Johann Scheppelin left five who had removed a cow which had been struck by lightning from Kempten territory. StaatsAA, Reichsstadt Kempten , September , . On Reiser’s burial, see above, chapter . On Reiser’s background see StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgicht  Hans Georg Reiser, , , , . Glenzdorf and Treichel, Henker, vol. , p. .  StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, December , .  Glenzdorf and Treichel, Henker, vol. , p. . 



The dishonorable milieu children when he died in . Skinner Johann Jakob Scheller had four children during his second marriage between  and . Scheller married a third time in . In his third marriage he had eleven children, six of whom survived until adulthood. In the eighteenth century, and presumably in the earlier as well, Augsburg employed two dungeon guards (Eisenknechte), one Catholic, one Protestant. It appears that the skinner employed a large team of laborers. In  skinner Johann Jacob Scheller employed eleven servants (Schindersknechte). Since the responsibilities of skinners did not change much over time, we can safely assume that they employed a similar number of laborers in the earlier period as well. The executioner seems to have employed fewer assistants than the skinner. In  the city council ordered that the executioner should employ no more than two ‘‘married persons’’ as his servants (Henkersknechte) and that his other laborers – the decree did not state how many – should be expelled. Obviously it is impossible to offer more than a rough estimate. The dishonorable core could have numbered anywhere between thirty and sixty people. In a city of , in , or even in a city of around , in the late seventeenth century, this was not a large number of people. It is clear that the significance of dishonorable people did not lie in their numbers.      The core of dishonorable people did not form a homogeneous social group. Executioners, skinners, and their servants were all members of the same professional caste, but there were significant variations of wealth and status within this caste. Executioners were at the top of the spectrum, while the skinner’s laborers made up the bottom. The formation of this professional caste and the consolidation of the dishonorable milieu took place in the second half of the sixteenth century. The long tenures of executioners and skinners in the second half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, which contrast with the instability and rapid turnovers of the early sixteenth century, reflect this consolidation. Between  and  the average term of employment of Augsburg’s executioners and skinners was just over twenty years. In the early sixteenth century executioners and skinners were on average employed six years at the most. Before they developed a professional caste, executioners and skinners were often unruly and disorderly. In 

 

See Archiv des Bistums Augsburg, Matrikelamt, St. Stephan, Bd. , –, pp. , , , . Scheller’s wedding with Anna Maria Trenkler took place on January , , St. Stephan , p. . On the Trenkler skinners’ clan, see Volker Liedke, ‘‘Scharfrichter in Bayern,’’ Bla¨tter des Bayerischen Vereins fu¨r Familienkunde  (), , and Glenzdorf and Treichel, Henker, vol. , p. . On Scheller’s and Anna Maria’s children see St. Stephan , pp. , , , , , , , , and Archiv des Bistums Augsburg, Matrikelamt, Taufbuch Dompfarrei, Bd. , –, p. . On the number of Eisenknechte and the application of parity see, for instance, StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, October ,  and January , .  StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, October , . Ibid., September .



Executioners and skinners contrast, in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they generally behaved ‘‘honorably,’’ i.e. they acted in a morally respectable and law-abiding manner. By the early seventeenth century executioners and skinners had developed a stable endogamous marriage pattern. Within their caste social and professional relationships were articulated through the model of kinship – actual or metaphorical. We have seen that executioners and skinners referred to their colleagues and subordinates as ‘‘cousins,’’ regardless of the degree to which they were actually related. Executioners and skinners were subject to the same legitimacy requirements as honorable citizens. The dishonorable milieu consolidated and the boundary of honor hardened as part of the same social process. By the early seventeenth century the boundary separating dishonorable people from honorable society was firmly established. The role of external coercion in this process must be considered along with social pressures from within the professional groups of executioners and skinners, and incentives offered by honorable society to induce executioners and skinners to abide by the rules of their social exclusion. When one considers their polluting potential, surprisingly few dishonor conflicts involving executioners and skinners actually occurred. This is an indication that as the boundary of honor was established certain social conventions and routines were worked out to prevent incessant conflict. As will become clear in chapter , the most virulent and lengthy dishonor conflicts involved the less polluting groups on the periphery of dishonor rather than the dishonorable core itself. Social discrimination was certainly a significant factor in the development of executioners’ and skinners’ endogamous marriage pattern, but such intermarriage was also the result of family strategies to ensure the professional training of the young, the transfer of executioners’ and skinners’ positions, and the inheritance of wealth. We have seen that executioners were often wealthy. The high economic status of executioners will have made their low social status more palatable to them. Skinners, however, appear to have been less well off, and executioners’ and skinners’ servants who bore the stigma of dishonor along with their masters most likely did not benefit from such financial compensation. The ambiguous social position executioners and skinners occupied in this society is evident in their non-citizen status. While the denial of citizenship cast them as strangers passing through, their long terms of employment indicate that they were actually very rooted in Augsburg. The denial of citizenship was the most symbolic form of discrimination to which executioners and skinners were subjected in Augsburg. At the same time, their tax-exempt status that resulted from this denial presented a major financial benefit. Partly as a result of this paradox, the hierarchies of honor and wealth that structured the society of orders clashed in the person of the executioner.





Living on the periphery of dishonor

We have now considered in some detail what dishonor meant to executioners and skinners and how it shaped the particular social niche they occupied in Augsburg. But beyond this core group of defiled trades, various other groups at times were challenged as dishonorable. Shepherds, bailiffs, grave-diggers, and latrine-cleaners were sometimes involved in dishonor conflicts in Augsburg. This chapter compares and contrasts the position of these groups on the periphery of dishonor with that of executioners and skinners in order to assess how the label of dishonor changed meanings as it was applied to different groups in different contexts. How did Unehrlichkeit affect the life chances of these trades on the periphery of dishonor? Barbers and bathmasters were not considered dishonorable in Augsburg in the early modern period, though they were dishonorable in other areas of the empire. Occasionally, however, their honor was challenged by guilds outside Augsburg. In contrast to bathmasters, linen-weavers, who were also labeled as dishonorable in other regions, were never challenged as dishonorable in Augsburg. A brief comparison of the dishonor of bathmasters, barbers, and linen-weavers in other areas demonstrates that it is necessary to study dishonor in its local context first, but also shows how super-regional influences and external pressures for conformity affected local conditions. We shall see how publicity, rumor, and insult contributed to the peculiar marginalization process these defiled trades underwent.       Among these disparate groups, shepherds were the most dishonorable. The oldest source on shepherds’ dishonor is a privilege of the shoemakers’ guild in the north German town of Beeskow granted by the city council in  allowing the shoemakers to reject shepherds’ sons. North German guild roles required that applicants supply proof of their legitimate and honorable birth, and – in contrast to south German ordinances – usually listed the trades that were considered dishonorable. Along with linen-weavers, bathmasters, beadles, and many others, 

Werner Jacobeit, Schafhaltung und Scha¨fer in Zentraleuropa bis zum Beginn des . Jahrhunderts (Berlin, ), p. . See also Theodor Hornberger, Der Scha¨fer. Landes- und volkskundliche Bedeutung eines Berufsstandes in Su¨ddeutschland (Stuttgart, ), pp. –; Otto Beneke, Von unehrlichen Leuten.  Cultur-Historische Studien (Hamburg, ), pp. –. See above, introduction, pp. –.



On the periphery of dishonor shepherds figured prominently in these lists. The butchers of Hildesheim barred shepherds, millers, and linen-weavers from their guild in . The smiths’ and tailors’ guilds of Hildesheim excluded shepherds and linen-weavers in . Unlike the linen-weavers, however, who seem to have been labeled as dishonorable only in northern and northeastern Germany, shepherds were dishonorable almost everywhere. Most south German guilds were generally much less specific in their requirements of honorable background and did not include lists of tainted trades in their guild ordinances. However, the ordinance of the Frankfurt butchers’ guild from  is an exception. The guild roll did not list several dishonorable trades; it named only shepherds. A foreign journeyman who wanted to marry into the Frankfurt guild was required to present a birth certificate that attested that ‘‘he was born legitimately of a pious honorable father and mother and is not a shepherd’s son.’’ When south German ordinances named any trade that was to be excluded, this was always the shepherd. This was the case in Augsburg. Almost all of Augsburg’s guild ordinances required legimate and honorable birth only in general terms. The only exceptions are ordinances of the tanners’ guild. The tanners’ ordinance of  required that an apprentice be ‘‘born a child of marriage, and not a bastard . . ., and also not the son of a shepherd or others of this kind.’’ The ordinance of  repeated this requirement verbatim. From  on imperial legislation opposed this ‘‘abuse’’ and attempted to rehabilitate shepherds. The imperial police ordinances of  to  and the proposal of  declared shepherds to be honorable, though to little effect. Shepherds were considered extremely dishonorable because some aspects of their trade resembled skinner’s work. Many shepherds killed diseased sheep and skinned the carcasses themselves, thus likening themselves to the skinner. This association of shepherd and skinner was expressed in popular rhyme: ‘‘Scha¨fer und Schinder sind Geschwisterkinder.’’ Shepherds and skinners are siblings’ offspring.

Because shepherds often did the same ‘‘repulsive,’’ ‘‘horrific,’’ and ‘‘disgusting’’ work as skinners, they were, after executioners and skinners, the most defiled among dishonorable trades. The extent of their dishonor is illustrated in a conflict that occurred in the Augsburg tanners’ guild in . When the shepherd’s son Elias Tregelin tried to work in Augsburg as a journeyman tanner, the tanners’ guild rejected him. The 

  

Johannes Heinrich Gebauer, ‘‘Die ‘Unechten’ und ‘Unehrlichen’ in der Stadt Hildesheim,’’ Archiv fu¨r Kulturgeschichte  (), pp. –. For further examples see Rudolf Wissell, Des alten Handwerks Recht und Gewohnheit, vol.  (Berlin, ), pp. –, –. Jacobeit, Schafhaltung, p. . ‘‘Weißgerber Ordnung’’ of  and ‘‘Der erbarn von Ledern Ordnung’’ of  in StadtAA, HWA,  Lederbereiter , Ordnungen. See above, chapter , pp. –. Quoted in Carl Georg von Zangen, Abhandlung von der Zunftfa¨higkeit der Scha¨fer (Gießen/Marburg, ), p. .



The dishonorable milieu imperial police ordinance of  was not being enforced in the empire, the tanners argued, and they were obliged to uphold their privileges and traditions as laid down in their ordinances. The journeyman’s father, the shepherd Adam Tregelin, however, denied that he was dishonorable. It was necessary to make distinctions among shepherds, he argued. Honorable shepherds did not do the ‘‘repulsive’’ (abscheulich) work of killing diseased sheep and skinning the carcasses themselves. They employed special laborers for such tasks. Children of honorable shepherds should be admitted to guilds, in accordance with the imperial police ordinance of . The guildsmen responded that even if Tregelin and his son did not skin sheep personally, they lodged the dishonorable servants who did in their home and ate with them at the same table. By such intimate association, the Tregelins participated in their servants’ dishonor. When Tregelin denied eating with these laborers and claimed they were housed separately, the tanners argued that just because Tregelin was wealthy enough to pay special laborers to do the skinning, he should not be considered honorable. Ultimately he was no better than the servants he employed and their dishonor fell back on him. Wishing to avoid a strike among the journeyman tanners, the Augsburg city government decided in favor of the tanners’ guild, and justified its decision by agreeing with the tanners that the imperial police ordinance of  was not being uniformly enforced. Fifty years later, the city of Augsburg was asked to arbitrate a similar case that had occurred in the neighboring free imperial city of No¨rdlingen. In  Martin Eisenbarth, a wealthy peasant from the small Swabian village of Wertingen, had sent his son to the nearby No¨rdlingen to learn the weavers’ trade. But the guild refused to apprentice the boy: the peasant had large landholdings on which he grazed cattle and sheep. He owned sheepdogs and employed ‘‘special laborers and shepherds’’ to take care of the sheep. A special shack was located on his property where meat and skins of sheep that had died were stored. Neither the peasant nor his son ever tended the sheep personally, but because he employed shepherds who skinned diseased sheep and stored the meat on his property, the No¨rdlingen weavers’ guild rejected the peasant’s son. The No¨rdlingen city government inquired with Augsburg how the case should be handled. Augsburg’s magistrates in turn questioned their weavers about how they would react to such a case. First, Augsburg’s weavers carefully stated that a shepherd’s son or others ‘‘of this kind’’ had never trained or wanted to train in their guild. But then they conceded that they would be willing to accept the peasant’s son, because the imperial police ordinance of  declared shepherds to be honorable, and because this peasant’s son had never personally tended sheep. Though the No¨rdlingen city council followed Augsburg’s recommendation and decided the conflict in favor of the peasant and his son, this decree was never enforced. The young Eisenbarth was forced to do his apprenticeship in the town of  

StadtAA, HWA, Lederbereiter , June–October . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , August , ; Weber , correspondence from  and .



On the periphery of dishonor Lauingen instead of in No¨rdlingen, and when he returned to No¨rdlingen four years later the weavers organized a boycott against him a second time. These cases show the extent to which shepherds were considered polluting. Neither the young Tregelin nor Eisenbarth had ever done the dishonorable work of skinning personally or even tended sheep, nor had their fathers. But even the most tenuous connection with this type of work – the artisans even attached significance to the fact that the Tregelins and Eisenbarths owned sheepdogs – was enough to leave a taint of dishonor. But in spite of shepherds’ strong dishonor, very few dishonor conflicts documented in the Augsburg guild records involved shepherds. The Tregelin conflict is the only Augsburg case of its kind before the eighteenth century. Since Augsburg, unlike the free imperial cities of Nuremberg or Ulm, did not own much territory outside the city walls, it stands to reason that relatively few shepherds lived within the city. Perhaps this explains why so few of the dishonor conflicts that occurred in Augsburg’s guilds involved shepherds and why no sources are available from which to construct any kind of social profile of shepherds. We can only note the social and economic status of two individuals, the shepherd Tregelin and the peasant Eisenbarth. Tregelin was described as a wealthy and well-respected member of his rural community. The same was true of Eisenbarth. To support his son’s case, the peasant presented a birth certificate in which local authorities attested that the peasant was of legitimate and free birth (i.e. he was not a serf), that he was of honorable stock, and had a good reputation. The birth certificate also pointed out that the peasant’s father had been a juror in the village court, a sign of the family’s good reputation in the village community. The peasants who lived in close proximity with Tregelin and Eisenbarth apparently did not consider them dishonorable. Their dishonor became relevant only when they came in contact with urban artisans, to whom their wealth and standing in their rural communities were irrelevant and who considered shepherds every bit as contaminating as skinners.  The group most often embroiled in dishonor conflicts in Augsburg were the Stadtknechte, the mayors’ bailiffs. Augsburg employed six bailiffs, who had a variety of duties. They accompanied the mayors on official business, ran errands for them, and delivered messages and subpoenas. They also patrolled the streets and arrested and imprisoned offenders. Sometimes they whipped delinquents or escorted them   

Ibid. Rolf Kießling, ‘‘Territorial Hoheit,’’ in Wolfram Baer et al., eds., Augsburger Stadtlexikon. Geschichte, Gesellschaft, Kultur, Recht, Wirtschaft (Augsburg, ), pp. –. StadtAA, HWA, Lederbereiter , June–October ; Weber , August , ; Weber , correspondence from  and .



The dishonorable milieu to the pillory or to the border of Augsburg’s territory in case of banishment. It had long been Augsburg’s policy, however, to isolate bailiffs from serious criminals as much as possible. Bailiffs did not participate in the torture and interrogation of ‘‘malefactors’’ (Malefikanten, i.e. serious felons) and they were not involved in the execution process. All this was done by the executioner, his servants, and the dungeon guards. In contrast to these groups the mayors’ bailiffs were always citizens. By division of labor and legal distinctions, the authorities hoped to shield the bailiffs from the executioner’s dishonor. Thus it was always the official policy of the authorities that bailiffs were not dishonorable. This official stance was reinforced by the imperial proposal of , which made the same distinction between beadles who dealt with ‘‘malefactors’’ and bailiffs who did not. Augsburg’s efforts to contain dishonor had little effect, however. When bailiffs tried to apprentice their sons to craftsmen or when artisans married bailiffs’ daughters, conflicts erupted in the guilds, though few such conflicts occurred before the late sixteenth century. Bailiffs’ dishonorable status was established in the course of the seventeenth century. The experience of one bailiff’s family will illustrate the growing social impact of dishonor on bailiffs’ children. Tobias Frank had been employed as a bailiff in Augsburg at least since . In  the bailiff tried to apprentice his young son Hans Jerg to the goldsmiths’ guild. The goldsmiths refused – without giving a reason. Frank and his colleagues protested to the council: the goldsmiths were insinuating that bailiffs were dishonorable. The council stuck to its policy that bailiffs were not dishonorable and ordered the goldsmiths to accept the bailiff’s son. This decree was made palatable to the goldsmiths by emphasizing that Hans Jerg had been ‘‘conceived’’ before Frank had been hired as a bailiff, so he was not ‘‘really’’ a bailiff’s son. Hans Jerg Frank was inscribed as an apprentice goldsmith in . In  Frank apprenticed his second son Tobias to a tailor, apparently without encountering any resistance. However, when Frank tried to inscribe his third son Anthoni with the goldsmiths’ guild in , this resulted in another more vicious dishonor conflict. Anthoni had been ‘‘conceived’’ during Frank’s employment as bailiff. The goldsmiths no longer beat around the bush. They now argued explicitly that bailiffs were dishonorable. Their dishonor derived from the similarity of their duties to the work of the executioner. The journeymen would go on strike if the bailiff’s son were inscribed. The goldsmiths warned that even if Anthoni managed 

 

For examples of bailiffs’ duties, see StadtAA, Strafamt, Strafbuch, –, fo. v, December , , or GRP , –, fo. –. The authorities regularly certified ‘‘that the bailiffs here do not lead out the malefactors at the time of execution. This is done by the executioner and his servants.’’ StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , November , . For an early dishonor conflict involving bailiffs, see StadtAA, HWA, Weber a, October –, . On Tobias Frank’s employment as bailiff, see StadtAA, Baumeisteramt, Baumeisterbuch , fo. . On the dishonor conflict, see StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , December –February .



On the periphery of dishonor to complete his apprenticeship, he was in danger of losing life or limb on the road where Augsburg authorities could not protect him from the assaults of his fellow journeymen. In spite of these protests, the council ordered the goldsmiths to accept the bailiff’s son. Anthoni was inscribed as an apprentice in . All the decrees defending the bailiff’s honor represented partial victories at best, however, as the subsequent fate of the Frank brothers demonstrates. In  Anthoni was no longer working as a goldsmith. He was employed as a musician at the court of the count of the Palatinate. When he wanted to learn to play the trumpet, the trumpeters rejected him because he was a bailiff’s son. His brother Tobias was not working as a tailor in . Asked about his means of livelihood when he was arrested for a minor offense in that year, he testified that he had learned the tailor’s craft but did not become a master. He had also learned beer brewing, but did not practice that trade either. He had worked a while as a city guard. Now he made his living in a horse rental business. In  he enlisted in a military regiment. The records do not show what became of Frank’s eldest son, Hans Jerg, who was not ‘‘really’’ a bailiff’s son. The goldsmiths appear to have been correct in pointing out that Augsburg’s magistrates could force local masters to inscribe a dishonorable candidate in their guild, but on the road governmental decrees would not protect a bailiff’s son from the violence of his fellow journeymen. Presumably, such harassment by honorable journeymen forced Frank’s sons to abandon their careers as artisans. Faced with his sons’ failures, the bailiff did not even try to apprentice his youngest son Elias with an honorable guild in . Instead he placed Elias with a musician to learn the ‘‘free’’ (i.e. non-guild) art of trumpet playing. When Tobias Frank accepted a position as bailiff sometime before , he had no idea that his position would compromise his sons’ honor and livelihood. He said as much during his conflict with the goldsmiths: ‘‘What honorable father would act so shamelessly towards his own children and accept such a position if he knew that this job would make him and his children dishonorable for all time?’’ Frank came from a local family and like all mayors’ bailiffs he was a citizen. Frank’s father was a small retailer. Presumably Frank himself was working as a retailer or artisan before being hired as bailiff. At that time little stigma seems to have been attached to the position. Bailiffs were well integrated in the artisanal milieu. Marriages between bailiffs and daughters of artisans or between artisans and bailiffs’ daughters    

  

Ibid., August–October, . SStBA, ° cod Aug –; Ratsdekrete, pp. –, July , . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Tobias Frank,  d, , . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Tobias Frank, , , . Artisans remembered and discussed dishonor conflicts that occurred in their guilds for decades. Hearsay concerning Tobias Frank was still circulating among tailors in . The tailors told that Tobias joined the military because he was boycotted by the journeymen. StadtAA, HWA, Schneider , January , . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Tobias Frank, , , . StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , August , . Tobias Frank’s father was the retailer Hans Frank. StadtAA, RP , fo. , February , .



The dishonorable milieu occurred frequently and bailiffs served regularly as guarantors at guildsmen’s weddings. In a legal brief on the Frank case, Augsburg’s syndics pointed out that most bailiffs and other city guards were artisans, particularly weavers, who returned to their workshops when they retired from their municipal posts. Artisans, especially if they were as impoverished as many weavers, did not hesitate to accept such a position, which offered a regular salary and benefits. In  bailiffs were paid  gulden per quarter and a yearly payment of  gulden as a new year’s bonus. In addition they received a clothing allowance of  gulden per year, presumably to pay for their uniforms. They lived in rent-free apartments beneath the town hall and received free allotments of firewood. Bailiffs were paid all sorts of incidental fees, tips, and emoluments. They received an ‘‘unlocking fee’’ of  kreuzer (. gulden) every time they locked a delinquent in a cell or released him. Presumably they were paid a separate fee for each errand they performed, but the fee rates have not been preserved. When the position of mayor changed hands, which happened four times a year, each bailiff was paid  gulden  kreuzer. Collectively they were granted  gulden yearly to spend on wine. They were entitled to soup and bread every morning and every Sunday and holiday they received two measures of wine, six rolls, and cheese. It is impossible to estimate what all this added up to, but bailiffs do seem to have fared better than the majority of their fellow citizens. The habnit (‘‘have nothing’’) tax was the basic head tax required of all citizens regardless of economic status. Citizens who paid the habnit tax did not own enough assets to be required to pay property taxes. In ,  percent of Augsburg’s citizens paid this habnit tax. An additional  percent of the citizenry paid between  and  kreuzer property taxes. All of Augsburg’s bailiffs paid more than this. These bailiffs, then, were in a better economic position than  percent of their fellow citizens, and the citizens were themselves a privileged minority. Five of Augsburg’s bailiffs paid taxes with the next  percent of the citizenry who paid between  and  kreuzer. All five bailiffs paid  kreuzer. The sixth bailiff was Tobias Frank, who paid  gulden  kreuzer property tax on real estate worth , gulden, which placed him in the top  percent of the citizenry. But even without this information, it is clear that Frank was relatively well off. Had Frank not been able to pay the 

   

A few examples: the weaver Matheys Berthold married the bailiff’s daughter Maria Schmid, November , ; StadtAA, HAP –, fo. b. The bailiff Gall Lenz served as guarantor for Hans Lenz, a weaver, February , ; HAP, –, fo. . The bailiff Hans Bausch served as guarantor at the wedding of the shoemaker Hans Stainbrenner, July , . The butcher Stachus Luz married the bailiff’s daughter Regina Kreidenweis, September , ; the bailiff Gall Lenz served as guarantor for his son the stonemason Jeremias Lenz, October , ; the weaver Esaias Mayr married the bailiff’s daughter Rosina Heilin, April , ; HAP, –, fo. b, fo. b, fo. b. StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , ‘‘Advokaten Gutachten’’ and ‘‘Vota’’ for September , . StadtAA, Baumeisteramt, Baumeisterbuch , fo. . SStBA, ° cod Aug , Reformation Oeconomica ; ° cod Aug  Bu¨rgermeister amts Instruktion , , fo. –. On the economic stratification of Augsburg’s citizens, see Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , p. . For tax payments of bailiffs, see StadtAA, Steueramt, Steuerbuch , fo. a.



On the periphery of dishonor hefty fees required to inscribe apprentices with the goldsmiths’ guild, his dishonor conflicts with the goldsmiths would never have occurred. But Frank’s money did not enable him to buy his way back out of dishonor. The dishonor of the bailiffs became more pronounced in the course of the century. In  the bailiff Hans Bauer, a member of the weavers’ guild, was fired for being involved in a brawl. He apparently encountered some difficulties in returning to weaving, because the city government issued a decree on his behalf, declaring once again that Augsburg’s bailiffs did not deal with malefactors and that they were therefore honorable. But when Bauer still had not found a means of livelihood in , the city government gave him another municipal position – as grave-digger. The city government had issued a decree in  that declared that bailiffs’ sons were accepted without protest in the guilds of the weavers, furriers, stonemasons, shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, and embroiderers, but as the century progressed such declarations were increasingly out of touch with social reality. In  the weaver Johann Georg Vogel married the daughter of a bailiff from the neighboring Bavarian city Landsberg am Lech. This marriage precipitated a virulent dishonor conflict within the weavers’ guild. Landsberg authorities attested that their bailiffs did not deal with malefactors and never participated in executions, since capital punishment fell under the jurisdiction of the Bavarian state, not of the city government. Augsburg ruled in Vogel’s favor and ordered the weavers’ guild to accept him. In spite of favorable governmental decrees, however, the conflict dragged on for years. In the Frank case the goldsmiths had only threatened that the journeymen would go on strike. In this case the journeyman weavers actually did strike, organizing a regional boycott. Three years later, in , Vogel was on the brink of bankruptcy, and there was still no sign that the conflict was nearing resolution. At this point, his case disappears from the records. Faced with the unremitting resistance of artisans, the Augsburg magistrates were beginning to waver in their policy of forcing guilds to accept bailiffs’ sons. The bailiff Christoph Hu¨ttling’s attempt to apprentice his son Georg to the shoemakers’ guild in  is a case in point. In a desperate petition, Hu¨ttling wrote to the council that he was burdened with many children. They were all old enough to begin their craft training but he was unable to place them. The tailors had just refused to accept his son Georg. Whereas in earlier conflicts the city government had quickly decided the case in favor of the bailiff, Augsburg now conferred with Regensburg, Ulm, and Nuremberg before issuing a decree. All these cities answered that their artisans considered bailiffs dishonorable and re



StadtAA, Strafamt, Strafbuch –, pp. –, December , . On Bauer’s membership in the weavers’ guild see Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Hans Bauer, , , . For the governmental decree issued on his behalf on October , , see HWA, Schneider , quoted with correspondence of June , . For Bauer’s new position as grave-digger, see StadtAA, Gottesa¨cker, Finstere Gret/Kath. u. Evang. Gottesa¨cker, . Akt – Totengra¨ber St. Stefan, April ,  . SStBA, ° cod Aug –, Ratsdekrete, pp. –, July , . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , , , correspondence, –.



The dishonorable milieu fused to accept their sons. Faced with these responses, the Augsburg city government equivocated and refused to issue a decree one way or the other. In , two years after he had made his initial petition, the bailiff Hu¨ttling was quietly advised to drop the case. The records do not show what became of the bailiff and his many children. In  a dishonor conflict broke out among Augsburg’s linen-weavers which did not subside until . During this time the journeymen went on strike intermittently. The main focus of the strikes was the bailiffs’ sons who were working as linen-weavers, though the journeymen challenged various other city guards, grave-diggers, and latrine-cleaners as dishonorable as well. The linenweavers’ demands illustrate the severe decline in social status that bailiffs had experienced in the course of the seventeenth century. In the beginning of the century the sons of Augsburg’s bailiffs could be found working in almost any guild. The allergic reaction of the goldsmiths to the apprenticeships of the sons of bailiff Frank was the exception rather than the rule. But in  the linen-weavers complained that they were the only craft that was still required to accept bailiffs. When other guilds rejected bailiffs’ sons, the city government quietly acquiesced. Now the linen-weavers would no longer accept this indignity. In the beginning of the century honorable artisans had moved in and out of the bailiffs’ positions without difficulty, but by the s artisans only took these positions out of dire necessity. In  the government of Trier described bailifs as ‘‘honorable citizens and guildsmen who end up in these positions because of poverty.’’ In  Augsburg’s administrators reported that only people ‘‘pressed by extreme poverty’’ (extrema paupertate pressus) were willing to become bailiffs. The Augsburg city government reacted to the linen-weavers’ strike with traditional measures of insulating and containing dishonor by division of labor. The magistrates sought to appease the striking linen-weavers by hiring two additional Malefizschergen (‘‘sergeants for malefactors’’), beadles who would deal with serious felons, shielding bailiffs from contact with serious criminals. The city government had always been careful not to involve bailiffs in executions; after the Malefizschergen were hired the bailiffs did not even arrest and imprison serious criminals before the interrogations began. After these reforms, bailiffs could no longer be considered dishonorable, the government argued. The linen-weavers agreed to let those bailiffs and bailiffs’ sons who were incorporated in their guild work alone without apprentices and journeymen. The problem would be solved gradually by letting these bailiffs ‘‘die off’’ (absterben lassen), rather than by expelling them all at once, which would only create additional disruption and hardship.     

StadtAA, HWA, Schneider , December –January . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , , correspondence May –June . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , December , . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , April , . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Sebastian Mayr, Jacob Bo¨ck, Thomas Spiesser, David Scho¨n, , , , . Letter of March , .



On the periphery of dishonor   -       ‘‘  -     ’’ The journeyman linen-weavers also challenged two other groups, grave-diggers and latrine-cleaners as dishonorable. Grave-diggers were apparently considered dishonorable in some areas of the empire in the early sixteenth century, since the imperial police ordinance of  sought to rehabilitate them. The chief latrinecleaner was called ‘‘night-king’’ (Nachtko¨nig) and his team of laborers were called ‘‘night-workers’’ (Nachtarbeiter) because they did their work at night when the streets were empty and the stench was least likely to disturb the citizens. Gravediggers and latrine-cleaners regularly appear on all the lists of dishonorable trades that modern historians and folklorists have compiled. However, the linenweavers’ strike of – presents the only occasion these groups were labeled dishonorable in Augsburg before the eighteenth century. Like the bailiffs, many of Augsburg’s grave-diggers were recruited from the artisanate. In  the fisherman Martin Widemann applied for the position of grave-digger and was hired. In  the grave-digger Hans Leser was at the same time a weaver. In  the gravedigger Hans Freitag was also listed as a weaver. In  the grave-digger Thomas Feinler described himself as a weaver. In  Hans Luz was working as a stonemason and grave-digger. In  Martin Kromer was listed as both gravedigger and weaver. Grave-diggers and their sons seemed to move in and out of weaving without encountering any resistance. As weavers, all these men were members of an honorable, albeit impoverished guild. As guildsmen, they were also citizens. Even grave-diggers who did not give an alternate profession all signed their petitions or contracts as ‘‘citizens.’’ Those serving as guarantors or guardians for grave-diggers were mostly weavers, but they also included a furrier, a dyer, a gardener, and a cabinet-maker. Grave-diggers do not appear as a group separate from the artisanal milieu. Hard times presumably compelled many of these artisans to supplement their income as craftsmen with the salary of a grave-digger, an assumption which is all the more likely since most grave-diggers came from the weavers’ guild, which incorporated many impoverished masters.   



‘‘Abschied des Reichstags zu Augsburg,’’ , in Hans Proesler, ed., Das gesamtdeutsche Handwerk im Spiegel der Reichsgesetzgebung von – (Berlin, ), pp. –. See for instance Werner Danckert, Unehrliche Leute. Die verfemten Berufe (Bern/Munich, ), pp. –, –, and Beneke, Von unehrlichen Leuten, pp. –. For Martin Widemann see StadtAA, Bestand Gottesa¨cker, ‘‘Totengra¨ber,’’ and Strafamt, Strafbuch –, fo. v, April , . On Hans Leser see Oberpflegamt, Pflegschaftsbuch –, November ,  and Bauamtsberichte , August , . On Thomas Feinler see StadtAA, Bestand Gottesa¨cker, Finstere Gret, April , . On Hans Luz see StadtAA, Strafamt, Zucht- u. Strafamtsprotokoll –, fo. , September , . On Martin Kromer see StadtAA, Bestand Gottesa¨cker, ‘‘Totengra¨ber,’’ . See also the entire Bestand Gottesa¨cker for petitions by gravediggers which they signed as ‘‘citizens.’’ See for instance the guardians selected by Hans Freitag, StadtAA, Oberpflegamt, Pflegschaftsbuch –, November ,  and Pflegschaftsbuch –, fo. , February ,  and fo. , March , ; for the guarantors for Daniel Frank, HAP, –, fo. , October , ; for the guarantors for Johannes Lutz, HAP –, fo. a, August , .



The dishonorable milieu After the bailiffs and the grave-diggers, the striking journeyman linen-weavers also wanted to exclude the latrine-cleaners from their guild. In considering the social background of the latrine-cleaners, it is necessary to distinguish between the chief latrine-cleaner, the ‘‘night-king,’’ and his team of laborers, the ‘‘nightworkers.’’ Since the night-king shared the same house as the executioner and worked under his supervision, one would expect the night-king to be clearly dishonorable. But as we saw in chapter , the boundary of honor was not always predictable and artisans did not conform to modern expectations of consistency in their labeling of dishonorable groups. In spite of his close association with the executioner, the ‘‘night-king’’ was not dishonorable. Night-kings presented a similar social profile as the grave-diggers. All were guildsmen and citizens. Balthasar Geiger served as night-king from  to  and was also a member of the weavers’ guild. Hans Scheibenhart, who was employed as night-king from  to , was a weaver as well. Samuel Schu¨tz, who was employed from  to , was also a weaver. He signed his correspondence as ‘‘Citzen and weaver and my Lords’ night-worker.’’ Not only were night-kings recruited from the artisanate, they were also not segregated from honorable artisans once they held the position. Michael Fru¨holz was the night-king from  to . Fru¨holz was a stonemason. Fru¨holz’s two sons were working as journeyman stonemasons while they shared the executioner’s house. Tobias Schaumann, yet another weaver, filled the nightking’s post from  at least until . The night-king’s team of night-workers were of lesser status, however. In contrast to their master, they were not citizens or guildsmen. They seem to have been unskilled rural immigrants who were granted permission to reside in Augsburg for as long as they were employed. But this lower status did not make them dishonorable. Like the grave-diggers, the nightkings or night-workers were not challenged as dishonorable in Augsburg before the eighteenth century, except on the occasion of the journeyman linen-weavers’ strike in . On what grounds did the linen-weavers label night-workers and grave-diggers as dishonorable? In the summer of  four journeyman linen-weavers discussed the goals of their strike in an alley by night, as a spy listened in. The spy reported the content of their conversation to the authorities: the children of the night-workers were dishonorable, because the night-workers used the horses and wagon of the executioner to transport the feces. In the reasoning of the linen-weavers, the source  

See above, chapter , p. . On Balthasar Geiger see StadtAA, Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. a; , fo. a; HAP, –, fo. , June , . On Hans Scheibenhart see Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , fo. b; , c, and HAP –, fo. , where he is listed as a weaver. On Samuel Schu¨tz see Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , a; , d, and Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /. On Michael Fru¨holz see Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , b; , d, and HAP –, fo. , June , , and above chapter . On Tobias Schaumann see Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , d; , fo. c, and HAP –, fo. b, January , .



On the periphery of dishonor of the night-workers’ dishonor lay not in their contact with feces, but in their contact with the executioner’s horses and wagons. In this same conversation, the linen-weavers announced their intention to exclude grave-diggers from their guild. Hauled in for questioning, the journeymen explained why. They did not want to exclude all grave-diggers, they claimed, only those who had buried the corpses of executed delinquents. It was not the contact with dead bodies in itself that made grave-diggers dishonorable, but by handling the bodies of executed delinquents they participated in the execution process and were affected by the executioner’s dishonor. The filthy and stinking work of night-workers and gravediggers, their constant exposure to feces and rotting corpses was not relevant in the linen-weavers’ explanation of dishonor. In other words, the labeling of gravediggers and latrine-cleaners was not the result of a rising threshold of disgust as part of a ‘‘civilizing process.’’ Instead, once again, in the reasoning of the journeymen the dishonor of these groups derived from association with the executioner.              -    We should now consider the social status of Augsburg’s bathmasters and barbers. These trades were considered honorable in Augsburg, though they were labeled as dishonorable in other parts of the empire. The bathmasters and barbers first appeared among the tainted trades listed in north German guild documents in the late fourteenth century. A birth certificate of a journeyman goldsmith issued in Cologne in  specified that he was ‘‘not the child of a barber, a minstrel, or a vagrant, but he is the child of an honorable and pious man.’’ In Cologne such exclusion from honorable guilds was compounded by political discrimination. Even though barbers were citizens and formed a guild of their own at least since , they were denied representation on the city council from  on. How did the barbers respond to such discrimination? A document from  gives an idea. This was a list of those master barbers who could prove their legitimate birth. Apparently the barbers were trying to establish legitimacy as a prerequisite for admission to their guild. Thus the barbers were attempting to gain honor by living up to higher moral standards and by imitating the social exclusiveness of other guilds. In the fifteenth century this strategy only met with limited success. Their exclusion  

  

StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Sebastian Mayr, Thomas Spiesser, David Scho¨n, Jacob Bo¨ck, , , , . Ibid. The journeymen were trying to expel the grave-digger and weaver Johann Georg Lang, who had recently buried an executed delinquent. StadtAA, Gottesa¨cker, Acta, die Totengrebel betreff, June, –April, . On changing tolerances for filth, stench, and bodily functions see Norbert Elias, The History of Manners: the Civilizing Process, vol.  (New York, ), pp. –. Heinrich von Loersch, Die Ko¨lner Zunfturkunden nebst anderen Ko¨lner Gewerbeurkunden bis zum Jahre ,  vols. (Du¨sseldorf, , reprint of Bonn, ), vol. , p. . Ibid., vol. , pp. –.



The dishonorable milieu from the city council was reconfirmed in . In that year they petitioned to send a representative to the council, but were turned down: barbers had been barred from the council for fifty-four years, they were told, and there was no reason to change this custom now. It is not clear how long such political discrimination continued in Cologne and to what extent barbers’ dishonorable status changed in the early modern period. There is no firm evidence for discrimination against bathmasters and barbers in Augsburg. While they regularly appear in late medieval records, little is known on the legal status of these trades before the Caroline constitutional reform of . As guildsmen they were, of course, citizens, but it appears that they were not represented on the city council before . According to a chronicle entry, barbers and bathmasters were exempt from the duty of sending a representative to the council, because in their capacity as surgeons they were on call at all times. The chronicler thus cast their non-representation as an exemption or privilege rather than as an exclusion. The bathmasters did not see it that way. In the early sixteenth century, according to another chronicler, the bathmasters were incorporated into one political guild with the coopers, the coach-builders, and the turners. A dispute allegedly occurred in the guild sometime before  on who should be their representative in the council. At this point the bathmasters, ‘‘who were the most well off among [these trades]’’ and whose craft owned substantial assets, decided to split off from the collective guild and to form their own guild. The bathmasters then asked to be allowed to send a representative to the council. But, the chronicler reported, they were turned down ‘‘because in other cities of the empire no bathmaster can be found on the council.’’ The bathmasters gained political representation with the Caroline reform, when they joined with the barbers to form one guild. The crafts of the bathmasters and barbers were almost identical, with the one defining difference that bathmasters operated public baths and the barbers did not. Both shaved and cut hair, though the barbers were limited to ‘‘dry-cutting’’ (truckhen scheeren), which simply meant that the haircuts and shaves did not include a bath. Both cured syphilis and did surgery, let blood, set broken bones, and amputated limbs. Both were highly skilled trades. In  bathmasters and barbers were required to complete a two-year apprenticeship and work as journeymen for five years. Only then were they eligible to take an examination required of aspiring masters. By , the period of professional  

  

Ibid., ‘‘Einfu¨hrung,’’ p. . Franz Irisgler and Arnold Lasotta, Bettler und Gaukler, Dirnen und Henker. Außenseiter in einer mittelalterlichen Stadt. Ko¨ln – (Munich, , nd edn, p. . Robert Hofmann, ‘‘Die Augsburger Ba¨der und das Handwerk der Bader,’’ ZHVS  (), –, . Paul Hektor Mair, ‘‘Erste Chronik, –,’’ in Chronik der Schwa¨bischen Sta¨dte, vol. , Die Chroniken der deutschen Sta¨dte vom . bis ins . Jahrhundert, ed. Hisorische Commission bei der ko¨niglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Leipzig, –), pp. –, fn. .  Ibid., pp. –, fn. . Hoffmann, ‘‘Ba¨der,’’ p. . StadtAA, Bader und Barbiere , September , . Hoffmann, ‘‘Ba¨der,’’ p. . ‘‘Bader und Barbier Ordnung’’ of , StadtAA, Bader und Barbiere , Ordnungen; Hoffmann, ‘‘Ba¨der,’’ p. .



On the periphery of dishonor training had been lengthened to a total of ten years, and journeymen were required to ‘‘wander’’ for three years. While these requirements might have been motivated more by the desire to limit the number of masters and thus limit competition than by genuine concern for the professional training of young masters, another document gives a clearer picture of the level of skill necessary in this trade. A description of the traditional customs of barbers compiled in  stated that a new apprentice had to be able to read and write, ‘‘and if he knows Latin, that is even better, so that he can understand the authors and the terminology.’’ In  the bathmasters’ and barbers’ guild included sixteen bathmasters and eighteen barbers. Economic competition and incessant conflict over what constituted the correct division of labor between the two trades led bathmasters and barbers to split up and form separate guilds in . In , five years after the break-up, fourteen bathmasters and nineteen barbers were operating in Augsburg. The early sixteenth-century chronicler, as we saw, described the bathmasters as well off. This impression is confirmed by Bernd Roeck’s analysis of their tax payments. Only . percent of bathmasters, barbers, and other medical practitioners paid the habnit tax, compared to  percent of the general citizenry. The bathmasters seem to have been the wealthiest of the medical practitioners. . percent of bathmasters paid over one gulden in property taxes, and . percent of bathmasters paid taxes over ten gulden, compared to . percent and . percent of the citizenry respectively. Bathmasters and barbers were never involved in a dishonor conflict in Augsburg. However, when dishonor conflicts involving bathmasters erupted in other areas, local guilds and governments sometimes directed inquiries to Augsburg on the status of bathmasters there. In  the city government of Eger in Bohemia wrote to Augsburg about a dispute which had occurred in their coopers’ guild. The coopers were refusing to apprentice the sons of bathmasters and excluding guild members who married bathmasters’ daughters. When the Eger magistrate ordered their coopers to obey the imperial police ordinance of , the coopers argued that the ordinance was not being enforced in the empire. In Augsburg, they claimed, honorable guilds did not admit bathmasters. Eger’s magistrates then wrote to Augsburg to find out what really was the practice there. This case illustrates to what extent the boundaries of honor in one community could be influenced by practices or even hearsay about practices in other cities, especially if these cities were as famous and prestigious as Augsburg. In this case the Eger coopers were misinformed. In Augsburg, bathmasters’ sons were admitted to honorable guilds. But such insulting inquiries from abroad did not serve to enhance the status of      

StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere , September , . ‘‘Gebra¨uch und Ordnung’’ of , StadtAA, Bader und Barbiere , Ordnungen. Hoffmann, ‘‘Ba¨der,’’ p. . Ibid., p. . StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere , September , . Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , pp. , . StadtAA, Handwerksgerichtsprozeßakten, August –August , .



The dishonorable milieu Augsburg’s bathmasters at home. In the same letter, Eger also requested information on the status of bastards in the cabinet-makers’ and weavers’ guilds, so that the representatives of these guilds saw the inquiry and thus this foreign challenge to the bathmasters’ honor became public knowledge. The bathmasters reacted to the Eger inquiry with indignation. They vigorously asserted their honorable status. To back up their claim to honor, the bathmasters pointed out that their city government had granted them a guild ordinance as it had to other honorable trades, and that they, like other honorable guildsmen, did not accept bastards in their guild. Thus the bathmasters’ defense strategy against such aspersions was to emphasize their status as guildsmen and the exclusiveness of their guild. But as we saw in the case of the barbers of Cologne, who were also citizens and guildsmen, and were attempting to improve the status of their guild by excluding bastards, honorable status did not necessarily follow from these characteristics. In Augsburg, however, bathmasters were recognized as honorable guildsmen and the Augsburg city government answered Eger’s inquiry to this effect. This was not the last external challenge Augsburg’s bathmasters had to endure. In  the bathmasters and barber-surgeons of Basel launched a desperate appeal to their Augsburg colleagues. The Basel masters were embroiled in a dishonor conflict with the tapsters’ guild, which was trying to exclude bathmasters’ sons. The Basel masters asked the Augsburg guild to report on their situation and to include a certificate by the Augsburg city government which attested to the honorable status of bathmasters and barber-surgeons. Augsburg’s masters and magistrates willingly complied. Another such inquiry arrived in , when the town of Leutschau in Hungary asked whether bathmasters were accepted into honorable guilds in Augsburg. Once again Augsburg’s government attested that in Augsburg the bathmasters and barber-surgeons were honorable guildsmen. In  when the Augsburg tailors’ guild was involved in their dishonor conflict with the bailiff Hu¨ttling, the magistrate of Nuremberg reported that, along with bailiffs and members of several other trades, bathmasters were not admitted to honorable guilds in their city. Such foreign challenges and the knowledge of the dishonor of their fellow tradesmen abroad contributed to the low status of bathmasters in Augsburg. A case of  illustrates how this cultural knowledge could be used. In the night of August  a pasquill, an insulting placard, was attached to the gallows at the fish market. The fish market was located in the center of town just beneath the town hall, so that the next morning, a Sunday, numerous passersby could read the pasquill. Partly in prose, partly in verse, the placard denounced the bathmasters: they were drunkards and medical incompetents who regularly killed off patients. After attacking the moral reputation and professional competence of the bathmas  

 Ibid. StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere , June  and July , . StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere , May  and July , . StadtAA, HWA, Schneider , June , .



On the periphery of dishonor ters, the pasquill broadcast what was most likely already public knowledge or rumor: ‘‘in Saxony bathmasters are not tolerated, in Mainz the bathmasters are held in greater contempt than skinners, and in Nuremberg they are excluded from all guilds.’’ Why, the author asked, were the bathmasters still being accepted in Augsburg? Finally, the placard made the following associations: Schinder, Bader, Henkersknecht, seiendt einer Zunft und ein Geschlecht, weil dise alle insgemein von einem Stamm herru¨hrend sein, nemblich von einem Schinder. Skinners, bathmasters, and executioners’ servants are all of the same guild and the same lineage, because they all spring from the same stem, namely from a skinner.

Such an insulting pasquill was a powerful medium, made all the more effective in this case because it was attached to the gallows, the tool of the hangman, itself an infamous object with the power to pollute those who came in contact with it. By such symbolism the author reinforced the association between bathmasters and hangmen, insinuating that instead of the placard the bathmasters themselves should be hanging there. Efforts to identify the anonymous author soon met with success because the bathmasters had a pretty good idea who their adversaries were. They turned out to be Hans Stapf, a master stonemason involved in a long-standing feud with the bathmasters, because he claimed they had reduced him to a cripple, and Franz Scha¨ffer, a chemist in economic competition with the bathmasters because of the medicines he mixed. It is clear this was a conflict of a different kind than those discussed so far. This was not a dishonor conflict per se. It did not involve a dishonorable applicant for admission to an honorable guild or an honorable person who had become contaminated by contact with a dishonorable person. Rather this was a personal conflict that had nothing to do with dishonor. But the cultural knowledge of the bathmasters’ dishonor in other regions of the empire was at the authors’ disposal as they formulated their attack and they used it to good effect. To drive home their point still further, they established an association between their victims and dishonorable persons and objects, a common method of insult in early modern society. Schinder (‘‘skinner’’) and Henskersknecht (‘‘executioner’s servant’’) were frequently used insults of this period. Other common insults in this vein were Hundschlager (‘‘dog-killer,’’ which refers to the skinner’s  



StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Hans Stapf, b, , , , , , , , , , . On pasquills as an expression of a ‘‘plebeian sense of honor’’ see Peter Burke, ‘‘Insult and blasphemy in early modern Italy,’’ in his The Historical Anthropology of Early modern Italy (Cambridge, ), p. , or Martin Ingram, ‘‘Ridings, rough music and mocking rhymes in early modern England,’’ in Barry Reah, ed., Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (New York, ), pp. –. On the polluting potential of the gallows, see below, chapter , pp. –.



The dishonorable milieu duties in this domain), Racker (another word for ‘‘skinner’’), and Galgenvogel (gallows bird). The libelers dipped into this reservoir of cultural stereotypes in order to construct their insult. It is interesting, however, that Stapf and Scha¨ffer did not refer to the bathmasters’ medical competition with the executioner and skinner in their pasquill. As we shall see in chapter , Augsburg’s licensed medical practitioners experienced executioners’ intrusion into their craft as a ‘‘great ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.’’ They even inserted an article in their ordinance to protect their medical monopoly against ‘‘the executioner, or women, or other such unqualified persons.’’ Perhaps Stapf and Scha¨ffer chose not to make an issue of this competition because the executioner’s dishonor lay dormant in his medical contacts and no dishonor conflicts seem ever to have resulted from the executioner’s medical practice. But even though the libelers did not establish any connection between the work of bathmasters and the executioner or skinner, they did attempt to express and reinforce the notion of the bathmasters’ dishonor by associating them with the person of the skinner in insult. Mocking rhymes were a matter of serious concern to both bathmasters and city council. The pasquill constituted a massive attack on the honor of the bathmasters. Just how threatened they felt becomes evident in the humorlessness of their response. The detrimental effects of the insult could only be undone in a formal recantation ceremony. Accordingly, the council ordered Stapf and Scha¨ffer to be taken to a special ceremonial room in the town hall, where they would recant in the presence of a deputation of city councilors and bathmasters, though this recantation should not make them infamous. They should then be imprisoned for fourteen days on bread and water. When the ceremony had been arranged, however, the bathmasters protested that this punishment was far too light. This was no mere misdemeanor, they argued, for the libelers had insulted their fellow bathmasters, living and dead, in Saxony, Nuremberg, and other places. Dissension and unrest among the journeymen was sure to follow. The imperial police ordinance, the bathmasters argued, prescribed that a person should receive the same punishment that his victim would receive if the libel were true. The libelers had accused them of ‘‘capital’’ crimes – perhaps they were referring to the accusation that the bathmasters had killed many of their patients – therefore they should be punished as ‘‘malefactors’’ rather than as civil offenders. It is hardly likely that the bathmasters were actually calling for the death penalty for Stapf and Scha¨ffer. This was probably a rhetorical device. They were not satisfied with the semi-private recantation, however. At the very least, they argued, Stapf and Scha¨ffer should recant in a 

 

Heinrich Klenz, Scheltenwo¨rterbuch. Die Berufs- und besonders Handwerksschelten und Verwandtes (Strasbourg, ), pp. –, –. Karl-Sigismund Kramer, ‘‘Hohnsprake, Wrakworte, Nachschnak und Ungebu¨r. Ehrenha¨ndel in holssteinischen Quellen,’’ Kieler Bla¨tter zur Volkskunde  (), –. StadtAA, CM Pfuscher, –, December , ; HWA, Bader und Barbiere , Ordinance of . On the latency of executioners’ dishonor in the context of medicine, see below, chapter , p. .



On the periphery of dishonor public square, just as they had insulted the bathmasters in a public place. Undoubtedly, the bathmasters would have preferred the ceremony to take place at the gallows, the site of the original insult. Then the recantation would have taken the form of an honor punishment that would have left a mark of infamy on the libelers. Perhaps the bathmasters took such a hard line because at this time the label of dishonor was being applied ever more widely – just ten years earlier grave-diggers and latrine-cleaners had been challenged as dishonorable in Augsburg for the first time – so that the bathmasters perceived their own situation as increasingly precarious. Fortunately for our authors, the city council did not act on these petitions. They managed to placate the bathmasters and proceeded with the original ceremony as planned. In spite of the bathmasters’ fears, honorable artisans in Augsburg did not begin to label them as dishonorable or exclude them from their guilds. Their craft did occupy a somewhat ambivalent position, however. Bathmasters formed a highly skilled trade whose members were relatively well off. Nonetheless, in Bernd Roeck’s assessment, the bathmasters formed a relatively low status trade in Augsburg, though they were never explicitly dishonorable. Roeck examined the marriage partners and guarantors of bathmasters in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and came to the conclusion that bathmasters formed disproportionately many social networks with groups that were economically weaker than they, with weavers for example. Roeck interprets this economically ‘‘downward’’ orientation as a symptom of bathmasters’ low social status.

   -    Linen-weavers were never challenged as dishonorable in Augsburg, either in a dishonor conflict or in insult, even though they were considered dishonorable in wide areas of northeastern Germany. Linen-weavers were among the first trades to be listed as dishonorable in north German guild ordinances. The shoemakers of Bremen banned linen-weavers in , the goldsmiths of Braunschweig barred them in  and the goldsmiths of Lu¨beck listed them among the tainted trades in . They were labeled as dishonorable in many towns in Electoral Saxony, for instance in Dresden in , in Chemnitz in , and Pirna in . In birth certificates from Cologne linen-weavers were listed as dishonorable by the midfifteenth century. Like the barbers, the linen-weavers of Cologne were denied political representation on the city council. This exclusion was introduced in   

Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , pp. –. On Bremen and Braunschweig, see Wissell, Handwerkers Recht, p. . On Lu¨beck, see von Loersch, Ko¨lner Zunfturkunden, vol. , p. . On Dresden, Chemnitz, and Pirna see Alfred Mating-Sammler, Kampf der kursa¨chsischen Leineweber um die Ehrlichkeit ihres Handwerks. Beigabe zum Programm der Realschule in Rochlitz (Rochlitz, ), pp. –, .



The dishonorable milieu and lasted at least until  when the decision was reconfirmed. Again, it is not clear how long into the early modern period this political discrimination was continued. In Hildesheim they were first excluded by the butchers in  and regularly appeared on lists of dishonorable trades in that city through the seventeenth century. Some historians have explained the dishonor of linen-weavers by pointing to the rural origins of the craft. In his study of the dishonor of linen-weavers in Saxony, especially in the cities of Dresden, Pirna, and Chemnitz, Alfred Mating-Sammler argues that the rights of dishonorable people were curtailed in the middle ages because they were personally unfree or had been in the recent past. When towns gained independence from their lords and urban craftsmen formed guilds in the course of the late middle ages, personal freedom became the outstanding characteristic of city folk that distinguished them from the inhabitants of the surrounding villages. Urban weavers formed guilds like other crafts but were unable to establish an urban monopoly for their trade. With massive rural immigration to the towns in the fifteenth century, many rural weavers sought citizenship and admission to the weavers’ guild. The magistrates were willing to accept the rural immigrants as citizens and forced the weavers’ guild to admit them, even though the village weavers had been unfree and were therefore considered unacceptable by urban guilds. Other trades that had established an urban monopoly more effectively were less affected by rural immigration, so that the weavers’ guild alone lost prestige and honor by incorporating members who were personally unfree. Mating-Sammler’s theory also accounts for the fact that only linen-weavers and not weavers of woolen cloth were considered dishonorable, since most rural weavers were linen-weavers. The institution of journeymanship caused the dishonor of linen-weavers to spread beyond those towns where an actual immigration of rural linen-weavers had taken place. Interregional networking of guilds and journeymen’s organizations caused a certain conformity to develop in the practices of artisanal guilds in the empire. Mating-Sammler also suggests that the dishonor of linen-weavers might have been compounded in the early modern period by the high proportion of female labor in the craft. This explanation seems plausible in the light of recent work in women’s history which analyzes the dynamic between social status and the sexual division of labor with a craft. Jean Quataert emphasizes distance from household production as an important criterion of craft honor. Studying linen-weavers of the Bohemian Saxon province of Oberlausitz, she shows that linen-weaving, in contrast to the more highly specialized wool weaving, remained tied to household production and women’s work which, she argues, contributed to the linen-weavers’  



On Cologne, see von Loersch, Ko¨lner Zunfturkunden, vol. , ‘‘Einfu¨hrung,’’ p. , and vol. , pp. ,  . Gebauer, ‘‘Die ‘Unechten’,’’ pp. , –. Mating-Sammler, Leineweber, pp. –; Armin Tille, ‘‘Zur Ehrlichmachung der sa¨chsischen Leineweber,’’ Neues Archiv fu¨r sa¨chsische Geschichte und Altertumskunde  (), p. . Wissell, Handwerks Recht, pp. – makes essentially the same argument. Mating-Sammler, Leineweber, pp. –.



On the periphery of dishonor dishonor. This would fit into a trend which Merry Wiesner and others have documented: the sexual division of labor in artisanal workshops seems to have become more rigid in general in the early modern period. What reason, if any, did early modern artisans give for the dishonor of linenweavers? This is a difficult question. Guild ordinances and birth certificates are not the kind of sources in which such explanations would appear. If sexual division of labor did indeed contribute to the stigmatization of linen-weavers, this does not become explicit in the records. We saw above that when Augsburg artisans labeled shepherds, bailiffs, latrine-cleaners, or grave-diggers as dishonorable, they explained the dishonor of these groups by some connection or similarity with the work of the executioner or skinner. But it is hard to imagine how even the most inventive artisanal mind could establish any connection between the work of executioners and skinners and the work of linen-weavers. And yet artisans did associate these linen-weavers with executioners, though the connection was not based on similarities in their work. Linen-weavers and millers were allegedly subjected to a peculiar degradation ritual in which they were publicly associated with the executioner. When a gallows was built or renovated or when a hanging was to take place, the linen-weavers or millers were required to provide the ladder. Both the primary and secondary sources on this practice are vague. The primary sources rarely mention specifics of time or place. A Prussian edict of , for example, stated that the ‘‘master linen-weavers have complained to us that of late they have been insulted by various persons, both publicly and privately, who claim that they are obliged to carry the ladder to the gallows when a person is to be hanged, and that they like doing this . . .’’ The edict declared once again that linen-weavers were honorable and threatened anyone who insulted them with a fine of  reichs-taler. Even if linen-weavers were required to perform such a task in some ‘‘foreign lands,’’ this was not to be held against them, since it was not the practice in Prussia. The linen-weavers had to endure this insult outside Prussia as well. In  a vagrant was imprisoned in the small town of Teterow in Mecklenburg for claiming that in Nuremberg the linen-weavers had to help build the gallows. After a public 





 

J` ean H. Quataert, ‘‘The shaping of women’s work in manufacturing: guilds, household and the state in central Europe, –,’’ American Historical Review  (), pp. –. Similarly, Merry Wiesner suggests that competition by female medical practitioners might have contributed to the dishonor of bathmasters and barber-surgeons: Working Women in Renaissance Germany (New Brunswick, ), p. . On the growing rigidity of the sexual division of labor in the early modern period, Merry Wiesner, ‘‘Guilds, male bonding and women’s work in early modern Germany,’’ Gender and History  (), –, and Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘‘Women in the crafts in sixteenth-century Lyon,’’ Feminist Studies  (), –. Beneke, Von unehrlichen Leuten, p. ; Danckert, Unehrliche Leute, p. . ‘‘Edict, die Leineweber nicht zu schimpfen, daß sie die Leiter zum Galgen tragen mu¨ssen,’’ March , , in Christian Otto Mylius, Corpus Constitutionum Marchicarum, oder Ko¨niglich Preußische und Churfu¨rstlich Brandenburgische . . . Ordnungen . . .  vols. (Berlin, –), vol. , p. .



The dishonorable milieu recantation ceremony the vagrant was banished. In  the linen-weavers of Zerbst in the principality of Anhalt sued a master horse-smith for saying that there were still ‘‘places where the linen-weavers have to carry the ladder to the gallows.’’ Such cases give the impression that rumors about this ritual were far more widespread than the practice. Only further local studies can answer when and where such rituals actually took place. Given the lack of such studies the following thoughts must remain speculative. If and when such degradation rituals were performed, they were a symbolic expression of the low status of linen-weavers, who had, for whatever reasons, already been labeled as dishonorable. When such rituals were enacted and the rumors about them spread, the idiom in which their dishonor was expressed itself became the cause for further discrimination. This was a circular, self-confirming process. Even if most tales about this degradation ritual were fictitious, they reinforced notions of the linen-weavers’ dishonor, to the extent that the original reasons for their dishonor were forgotten. Artisans described linen-weavers as dishonorable because they were required to deliver the ladder. If such rumors were spread in Augsburg, they left no trace in the records. Though linen-weavers appear to have been dishonorable in more areas than bathmasters and barber-surgeons, this never became an issue in Augsburg. But then, the bathmasters’ and barbers’ guilds together never numbered more than forty, while the weavers’ guild incorporated , masters around . Given such numbers, it would have been wholly impractical, socially disruptive and politically very dangerous to impugn the honor of the linen-weavers. The journeyman weavers took to the streets in  when the skinner’s son attempted to join their guild, and the council, ‘‘in great earnestness,’’ immediately took steps to placate them and barred the skinner’s son. The reaction of the linen-weavers might have been even more extreme if they themselves had been attacked, either in a dishonor conflict or in rumor and insult. Furthermore, an attack on the honor of the linen-weavers would have constituted an attack on the city itself. Augsburg was a ‘‘weavers’ city,’’ whose economy, society, and culture were in many ways shaped by its largest guild.      This chapter has surveyed the various groups on the periphery of dishonor in Augsburg and compared them with dishonorable groups in other areas of the empire. Shepherds were considered extremely dishonorable in Augsburg. They felt the stigma of dishonor in its full force as early as . Dishonor conflicts involving shepherds rarely occurred in Augsburg, however, probably because  

Wissell, Handwerks Recht, pp. –. Claus-Peter Clasen, Die Augsburger Weber. Leistungen und Krisen des Textilgewerbes um  (Augs burg, ), p. . See above, chapter , p. .



On the periphery of dishonor Augsburg did not have a rural hinterland so that few shepherds lived in the city. It is impossible to make any generalizations on the basis of two cases, but when one compares the dishonor conflict of  with that of  the status of shepherds seems unchanged. In contrast, the status of bailiffs declined steadily in the course of the seventeenth century. Bailiffs formed the group that was most often involved in dishonor conflicts in Augsburg. While the goldsmiths’ guild was the first to exclude them in , virtually all guilds followed suit by the late seventeenth century. Grave-diggers and latrine-cleaners were not challenged as dishonorable in Augsburg before the late seventeenth century. So it appears that the label of dishonor was applied more widely in the late seventeenth century than around . As dishonor conflicts became more intense, Augsburg’s authoritarian regime came to realize that government had only limited power to force guilds to admit candidates they considered unacceptable. Under these circumstances it is understandable that barbers and bathmasters felt especially vulnerable to any challenges to their status, whether they were inquiries from abroad or insults at home. Although they were never explicitly dishonorable in Augsburg, they occupied a precarious position. The status of these groups on the periphery of dishonor was much more indeterminate than that of the dishonorable core group. Executioners and skinners were clearly defined as dishonorable people, though there was little consensus on what this meant in practice. Before the eighteenth century no one – not the authorities, not the general public, not even executioners and skinners themselves – ever seriously questioned that they were indeed dishonorable. In the seventeenth century executioners and skinners occupied a stable social niche relatively insulated from honorable society and apparently they rarely tried to leave this position, so that dishonor conflicts involving the dishonorable core did not occur very often. We saw that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the sons and daughters of executioners and skinners almost never sought to join or marry into an honorable guild. In contrast, other groups challenged as dishonorable – shepherds, bailiffs, grave-diggers, latrine-cleaners, bathmasters, and barbers – fiercely denied that they were dishonorable. They went to extremes to demonstrate their honorable status and sought and for the most part received the support of the authorities in doing so. These were the trades that legislation on the imperial and local level sought to rehabilitate. They were not separate from, indeed they were part of, the artisanal milieu. Since they were in closer contact with honorable artisans, conflicts occurred more frequently. Dishonor conflicts erupted when the children of potentially dishonorable persons tried to enter honorable guilds. Different dishonorable groups had very different social profiles. Executioners, skinners, and their servants were denied citizenship. Bailiffs, grave-diggers, latrine-cleaners, bathmasters and barbers were all citizens. The dishonorable core group was categorically excluded from guilds. Concerning the trades on the periphery of dishonor, this question was not so clear. Bathmasters and barbers were, of course, guildsmen themselves. Even in cities where they were explicitily 

The dishonorable milieu dishonorable, as in Cologne, they formed guilds and practiced a measure of social exclusiveness. Linen-weavers were considered dishonorable in wide areas of northern and northeastern Germany, and yet they formed guilds in all these areas. In Augsburg, individual bailiffs, grave-diggers, and latrine-cleaners were also guildsmen. As we saw, they were often recruited from the artisanate. If their fellow masters did not exclude them after they accepted these positions, they retained their status as guildsmen. Different guilds developed different standards of honor at different times, so that a potentially dishonorable individual might be tolerated in one guild and rejected in another. Such a person could occupy very different positions, depending on whether he lived in the city or the country. The dishonor of shepherds raises the question to what extent artisanal notions of dishonor infiltrated the countryside. The shepherd Tregelin and the peasant Eisenbarth were, as we saw, well respected by their rural neighbors. They were only confronted with their potential dishonor when they sent their sons to town. Even within the city different dishonorable groups were polluting to different degrees. Executioners and skinners were the most polluting, closely followed by shepherds. Casual contact or sociability with these groups could sometimes lead to a dishonor conflict. In contrast, no dishonor conflict seems to have ever resulted from sociability with a bailiff, grave-digger, or night-worker. The economic status of different dishonorable groups varied widely. Executioners were often quite wealthy. Skinners were less wealthy, but do not appear to have been poor. The shepherd Tregelin and the peasant Eisenbarth were described as wealthy, though we cannot make any generalizations on the economic status of shepherds based on these two individuals. Bailiffs did not do badly in comparison with their fellow citizens. In  they were better off than  percent of the citizenry. Grave-diggers, it is probably safe to assume, were poor, though little hard evidence is available. One city administrator wrote of the ‘‘low wages of a gravedigger.’’ No information is available on the economic status of the night-king. It is hardly likely that the team of immigrant laborers whom he employed as ‘‘nightworkers’’ received very high wages. Bathmasters and barbers were relatively well off, compared to most of their fellow citizens. In considering the relationship between honor and wealth, it is certainly not possible to set up any simple equations. Wealth did not necessarily equal honor, nor poverty dishonor. The relationship was more complex. Poverty could certainly precipitate a social decline into dishonor, as when an impoverished artisan was compelled to take a position as bailiff, or – and this was a different kind of dishonor – when a poor craftsman turned to begging or stealing and was subjected to a dishonor punishment at the hands of the beadle or executioner. Conversely, dishonor could cause poverty, as when the weaver Johann Georg Vogel, who had married a bailiff’s daughter, was driven into bankruptcy during his three-year-long dishonor conflict with his guild, or when the bailiff Hu¨ttling, burdened with many children, tried unsuccessfully to apprentice them to trades. Paradoxically, the social 

On the periphery of dishonor consequences of dishonor hit such individuals much harder than executioner, and skinner, at the symbolic center of dishonor. While executioners and skinners could and did use their dishonor to protect their economic monopolies, for the trades on the periphery dishonor could mean economic exclusion, loss of livelihood, and financial ruin. Wealth in turn did not guarantee a way out of dishonor, as the cases of the shepherd Tregelin, the peasant Eisenbarth, and the bailiff Frank illustrate. Artisans explained the dishonor of shepherds, bailiffs, grave-diggers, and night-workers by pointing to analogies or connections between their work and that of executioners and skinners. This connection was easy to establish between skinners and shepherds, some of whom actually did skin the diseased animals in their herds. The labeling of grave-diggers and latrine-cleaners as dishonorable in the late seventeenth century was not the result of changing sensibilities towards stench and filth. As we saw, the striking journeymen did not mention any feelings of repugnance or revulsion regarding the work of grave-diggers and nightworkers as such. The journeymen did not object to the burial of corpses in general, only to the burial of executed delinquents. The removal of feces was not dishonoring, but using the executioner’s horses was. According to the journeymen, such incidental connections with the executioner explained the dishonor of these groups. In the case of bathmasters in Augsburg and linen-weavers in northeastern Germany, these groups were associated with the executioner in insults. The dishonor of bailiffs derived from that of the executioner, even though the authorities went to great lengths to insulate the mayors’ bailiffs from the execution process. But in the minds of honorable artisans, the fact that they were involved in the administration of criminal justice at all was reason enough to consider them dishonorable. We conclude by asking again how many dishonorable people lived in Augsburg at any one time. Augsburg employed six mayors’ bailiffs. They all had families. In  bailiff Hans Bausch had eight children; his wife was pregnant with the ninth. Bailiff Tobias Frank had at least four sons; if he had any daughters they left no trace in the records. We have no way of knowing whether the Bausch or Frank family were representative. Bernd Roeck estimates the average size of middle-income households at just over four persons. So by multiplying the number of bailiffs by four, we arrive at a number of twenty-four persons who might potentially be involved in dishonor conflicts. In  Augsburg employed five master gravediggers. Since grave-diggers were of lower economic status than bailiffs, we will multiply this number by three, the average household size for low-income families, to arrive at a number of fifteen persons somehow associated with grave-digging. Then there was the night-king and his family, which we might estimate at four  

Beverly Ann Tlusty, ‘‘The devil’s altar: the tavern and society in early modern Augsburg (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, ), pp. –. On the number of grave-diggers, see StadtAA, Gottesa¨cker, Acta, die Totengrebel betref, October , . On average household sizes, see Roeck, Stadt in Kreig, vol. , p. .



The dishonorable milieu individuals. The night-king employed fourteen laborers on a regular basis. We have no information on how many shepherds lived in Augsburg. To these trades on the periphery of dishonor we must add the dishonorable core group, executioners and skinners, and their dependents. We estimated their number at anywhere between forty and sixty people. Taking all these groups together, it is probably safe to assume that there were just over one hundred dishonorable or potentially dishonorable people in Augsburg at any time during the early modern period, though there might well have been quite a few less. It is clear that dishonorable people occupied a place in the social imagination of honorable guildsmen that was out of all proportion with their numbers. 

StadtAA, RP , June , , p. .



PART III

Paradoxical dishonor: punishment and healing

MMMM



The infamous fur coat, or the unintended consequences of social discipline

In the preceding two chapters our focus has been the dishonorable milieu itself. We have detailed the legal, economic, and social effects of dishonor in order to reconstruct the experience and self-identity of dishonorable people. We now turn to the logic of pollution in the minds of honorable artisans who labeled these groups as dishonorable. Artisans identified two main sources of dishonor pollution: contact with animal carcasses and involvement in the performance of criminal punishment. Artisans’ pollution anxieties surrounding carrion will be discussed in chapter . Here we are concerned with the transmission of pollution in the context of criminal justice. Guildsmen labeled bailiffs as dishonorable by associating them with the executioner. Augsburg’s bailiffs tried to ward off the attribution of dishonor by emphasizing that they did not assist the executioner. But this defense was futile, for in the minds of artisans dishonor permeated the entire sphere of criminal justice. Punishment meted out in the name of sovereign authorities (Obrigkeit) was central to artisans’ ideas about dishonor. The day-to-day administration of criminal justice produced a diffuse dishonor that spread far beyond the criminal who was being punished. Dishonor produced in the course of criminal punishments resulted not only in the clear-cut and spectacular infamy of the executioner and the condemned criminal on the scaffold. Dishonor also spread in directions unforeseen and unintended by the authorities, as they orchestrated ever more elaborate rituals of punishment in the early modern period. Governments often found that they could not contain the pollution their punishments unleashed. Dishonor came to affect anyone and anything involved in the process of punishment, polluting both persons and objects connected with criminal punishment, no matter how tenuous such a connection might be. This chapter examines how dishonor was produced, whom or what it affected, and how the spread of this dishonor impacted the administration of criminal justice and the authorities’ agenda of social discipline. We shall see that dishonor was 

On the concept of social discipline, see R. Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe – (London/New York, ), especially pp. –; Stefan Breuer, ‘‘Sozialdisziplinierung. Probleme und Problemverlagerungen bei Max Weber, Gerhard Oestreich und Michel Foucault,’’ in: Soziale Sicherheit und Soziale Disziplinierung. Beitra¨ge zu einer historischen Theorie der Sozialpolitik, eds. Christian Sachße und Florian Tennstedt (Frankfurt a.M., ), pp. –.



. Mid-eighteenth-century illustration from Samuel Valentin’s list of criminals executed in Augsburg, –. Crowd assembled in front of the city hall while a death sentence is proclaimed. The Perlach bell tower and the city hall are visible to the right. Magistrates are standing on the balcony addressing the crowd. Beneath the balcony, the executioner is binding the condemned criminal as two clergymen look on. A path has been cleared for the procession to the site of execution outside the city walls. The vignettes at the bottom of the print depict the types of executions performed in Augsburg.

The infamous fur coat

. Marginal drawing in city council protocol from . It depicts the decaying corpse of a burglar who had been hung ‘‘with the rope and the dry hand.’’ The birds symbolize the extreme dishonor of execution by hanging, where the corpse was typically left exposed to the elements indefinitely.

both an instrument of and an obstacle to the social disciplining ambitions of early modern German governments. In some cases, governments could tap into and exploit the polluting power of dishonor in order to exercise social control over their subjects. In many other cases, however, dishonor pollution hampered the authorities’ ability to enforce the laws and police ordinances that were being promulgated in ever-increasing density in the early modern period. More often than not, dishonor pollution functioned to undermine governmental authority.

            The sight of gallows and scaffold were likely to evoke mixed feelings among early modern Augsburgers. On the one hand, the gallows was a source of collective honor to the citizenry. Travelers who passed the gallows on their way into the city knew they were entering a polity endowed with the privilege of ‘‘high justice.’’ In this sense, the physical structure of the gallows was a symbol of sovereignty and source of civic pride. Possession of a gallows even became a criterion of artisanal honor. In 

Johann Georg Kru¨nitz, ‘‘Galgen’’, in Johann Georg Kru¨nitz, ed., Oeconomisch-technologische Encyclopa¨die, vol. xv, pp. –.



Punishment and healing  some rural linen-weavers from the environs of Augsburg tried to get the big-city weavers to recognize them as honorable guildsmen by demonstrating that their territory had its own ‘‘stocks and gallows.’’ On the other hand, while the possession of the gallows might instill pride, the structure itself could also inspire dread, because of the magical forces present there, and because of the danger of pollution that emanated from the entire site. Magical beliefs surrounding the gallows will be discussed in the next chapter. Here we are concerned with the gallows as a ‘‘conductor’’ of dishonor, polluting individuals who came into physical contact with it. Next to animal carcasses, the gallows was the physical object most permeated by dishonor. Hanging was the most dishonorable form of execution. When there were extenuating circumstances surrounding a crime, the city government ordered the delinquent to be beheaded ‘‘out of mercy with the wet hand’’ (aus Gnade mit nasser Hand). Criminals who were beheaded typically received an honorable burial in consecrated earth. The bodies of delinquents who were hanged ‘‘by the dry hand’’ (aus trockener Hand) were left exposed to the elements until they fell off the gibbet and then were buried beneath the gallows by the executioner’s men. The gallows was a site of special horror that honorable artisans took care to avoid. To willfully come into contact with the gallows was a form of deviance that the artisans sanctioned severely. It was no trifling matter when the journeyman weaver Leonhard Nadler secretly went to the gallows outside the city walls in the summer of . Here he cut a toe off the corpse of a criminal who had been broken on the wheel and whose body now lay exposed at the site of execution. Nadler had been losing money gambling; he believed that carrying the toe of an executed criminal in his pocket when playing would bring him better luck. The guild reacted quickly. In July Nadler was called in for questioning before a committee of masters and journeymen. The parallels between Nadler’s deed and the work of the executioner were obvious. The objects Nadler had touched – the corpse, the wheel, the entire site of execution – were infamous. When Nadler admitted cutting off the toe, the weavers pronounced him dishonorable and forbade him to work. The city government, incidentally, arrested Nadler for witchcraft. The issue of dishonor played no role in the magistrates’ investigation, an illustration of the completely different priorities of guild and government in these matters. The guild was less concerned with preserving religious orthodoxy than with the purity of honor. Nadler’s offense was certainly an extreme deviation from the artisanal code of conduct, for he had  



StadtAA, HWA, Weber , May , . Mary Douglas uses this term to describe matter that transmits ritual impurity in the Indian caste system. See her Purity and Danger: an Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, ), p. . Adalbert Erler, ‘‘Galgen,’’ in Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, eds. Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann,  vols. (Berlin, –), vol.  (Berlin, ), pp. –; D. Marschall, ‘‘Ha¨ngen,’’ in ibid, pp. –.



The infamous fur coat gone far beyond merely touching the tools of punishment. Like the executioner, Nadler had mutilated a human body. But simple touch already constituted a transgression. In  masters and journeymen of several Augsburg trades were punished by their guilds and journeymen’s associations because they had climbed on the scaffold while a beheading was taking place in order to get a better view. Even though these artisans did not touch the executioner, the malefactor, the sword or blood, and in no way became involved in the execution process, their physical contact with the scaffold in itself constituted a serious violation of the artisanal code of honor. This type of ritual pollution occurred at regular intervals throughout the early modern period. The consequences of such transgressions became more severe over time. Gallows and scaffolds retained their polluting power long after an execution had taken place. Their contamination did not fade or evaporate with time and they could transmit dishonor even outside of any punitive context. Sometimes, however, artisans had no choice but to come into contact with the gallows. Stonemasons and carpenters were periodically called upon either to erect a new gallows or to renovate an existing one. On such occasions the risk of pollution was high. We saw in chapter  that honorable artisans explained the dishonor of linen-weavers and millers by claiming that these trades were required to provide the ladder to the gallows. The stonemasons and carpenters who actually built the gallows had to take care that they did not share the fate of dishonorable millers or linen-weavers. Elaborate precautions were necessary to contain the dishonor that permeated the gallows. In  Augsburg’s gallows needed to be restored, so the council ordered the entire guilds of stonemasons and carpenters, masters and journeymen, to do the repairs collectively. ‘‘All carpenters and stonemasons were ordered to do the work together, so that no one [master] would be able to insult the next.’’ Such collective work was the common procedure for building or renovating the gallows in many 







StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgicht Leonhard Nadler, a, , , ; Strafamt, Strafbuch –, January , , fo. v. See also Bernd Roeck, Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden. Studien zur Geschichte der Reichsstadt Augsburg zwischen Kalenderstreit und Parita¨t (Go¨ttingen, ), vol. , p. . The artisans involved were weavers, bakers, and tailors. StadtAA, Strafamt, Strafbuch –, July –July , , fo. v–v. Urgichtensammlung, Hans Do¨lderle et al., July , ; Urgichtensammlung, Georg Erhard et al., July , . See, for example, StadtAA, HWA, Buchbinder , March–April . These cases illustrate that the British custom in which friends and relatives of condemned criminals actually participated in the execution itself as an act of friendship, pulling on the legs of the criminals as they were being hanged in order to induce a swifter and less painful death, was unthinkable in the German context. See Thomas W. Laqueur, ‘‘Crowds, carneval and the state in English executions, –,’’ in A. L. Beier, David Cannadine, James M. Resenheim, eds., The First Modern Society (Cambridge, ), pp. –  , p. . See above, chapter , pp. –. Marcus Welser and Achill Pirmin Gasser, Chronica der weitberuempten Keyserliche Freyen und deß Heiligen Reichs Statt Augspurg in Schwaben (Frankfurt a.M., ), vol. , p. , May . See also StadtAA, RP , –, fo. , May ; Scha¨tze Nr. , Hans Mair Memorialbuch, fo. v; Paul von Stetten, Geschichte der Heiligen Ro¨mischen Reichs Freyen Stadt Augspurg. Aus bewa¨hrten Jahrbu¨chern und tu¨chtigen Urkunden gezogen,  vols. (Augsburg, ), vol. , p. .



Punishment and healing 

regions, and as we shall see below, guildsmen developed mechanisms of control over fellow craftsmen that tended to promote a common artisanal culture throughout the empire. The collective gallows-building ritual dated back at least to . In that year the carpenters of Nuremberg, masters and journeymen, about  men altogether, repaired the gallows. When the work was done they formed a procession back into town accompanied by pipers. When they reached the market place, minstrels played while the artisans were regaled with bread and wine at the expense of the city council. The ceremonial aspects of such processions became more elaborate in the course of the early modern period. The processions were designed to achieve maximum publicity. In  the carpenters and stonemasons of Nuremberg marched from their guild halls past the town hall, the largest churches, and through the market place, to the music of pipes and drums, while each artisan proudly displayed the tools that were the trademark of his craft. Sometimes representatives of the city government participated in the procession. When the city of Frankfurt repaired its gallows in  a city council member accompanied the blacksmiths’ guild to the gallows. The councilman climbed onto the scaffold and nailed one of the chains to the gallows himself. In the late seventeenth and especially in the eighteenth century, the role of representatives of government became more pronounced. In  Augustus Giese, a city councilor in Husum in north Germany, and a hostile observer of artisanal customs, described the procedure with sarcasm: When a new gallows must be . . . erected, what a commotion, before the work can begin. So that no one must bear the alleged mark of infamy alone, the entire carpenters’ guild must be together. The mayor or councilor, or whoever has authority there must strike the first blow to the wood. Beer must be served to give the workers courage for such a dangerous job. I am surprised that smelling salts are not applied to their nostrils.

When the gallows needed repairs in the small territorial town of Weickersheim on the river Tauber in , the mayor, the city syndic, and other municipal officials led the procession on horseback as the guildsmen marched out to the construction site. At the gallows, the mayor addressed the crowd. The mayor declared the gallows to be honorable in the name and by force of the sovereignty of 

   

For examples, see Wolfgang Oppelt, ‘‘Die Verlegung des Ansbacher Galgens ,’’ Ansbach, Gestern und Heute  (), –, and  (), –; Helmut Schuhmann, Der Scharfrichter. Seine Gestalt – seine Funktion (Kempten, ); Rudolf Wissell, Des Alten Handwerks Recht und Gewohnheit, ed. Ernst Schraepler (Berlin, ), vol. , pp. –. Albrecht Keller, Der Scharfrichter in der deutschen Kulturgeschichte (Bonn/Leipzig, ), p. . Stadtbibliothek Nuremberg, Handschriftenabteilung, Nor. H.  (): ‘‘ Relatio des Auf- und Auszuchs auch der Uncosten, so bei der wider erbauung des Hochgerichts uffgangen.’’ Achilles Augustus Lersner, Der weit-beru¨hmten Freyen Reichs- Wahl- und Handels-Stadt Frankfurt am Mayn Chronica, oder ordentliche Beschreibung der Stadt Frankfurt (Frankfurt, ), vol. , pp. –. [Augustus Giese], Der weheschreiende Stein, u¨ber die Greuel daß man die Diener der Justiz . . . nicht zu Grabe . . . tragen . . . will (n.p., ), pp. –. Giese published this tract anonymously but identified himself as ‘‘one of the main participants in the sufferings the magistrate has endured for a long time’’ in dealing with the artisans.



The infamous fur coat his territorial lord. After repeating this formula three times, the mayor guaranteed that no one would impugn the honor of the artisans who worked at the site. Then the mayor and other municipal officials touched the gallows, whereupon the artisans began their work. Sometimes these festivals developed into lavish extravaganzas involving hundreds of participants. Perhaps the most elaborate gallows-building festival ever held took place in Frankfurt in . Twelve hundred artisans worked on the gallows for five days and concluded their work with a celebration at which they allegedly consumed , sausages and drank , Ohm of beer and wine. How are these rituals to be interpreted? The artisans’ strategy to contain dishonor operated in three ways. One idea was stated explicitly by contemporaries. The artisans strongly emphasized the collective nature of the enterprise. Safety lay in numbers. If all guild members participated in the repairs, no individual master would be vulnerable to accusations of dishonor by his fellow artisans. But such collective work only protected against insults from within the guild. The guildsmen were still vulnerable to challenges from outside their guilds, as were the linenweavers and millers. The guildsmen countered this danger by orchestrating pompous public displays. When their processions passed in front of the town hall, the artisans emphasized that they were fulfilling their civic obligations. The processions were very similar to other artisanal parades, such as guild processions on Corpus Christi day, or the processions of striking journeymen through the city they were boycotting. The artisans deliberately cultivated maximum publicity to force a positive interpretation of what might otherwise have been construed as a defaming action. But such pomp and public display were not enough to contain infamy, especially as the artisans’ fear of pollution by dishonor grew stronger in the course of the early modern period. By the late seventeenth and especially by the eighteenth century the participation of the authorities had become indispensable. By declaring the site to be honorable and laying hands on the dangerous object, governmental officials made it safe for artisans to touch. The officials were, of course, of higher estate and thus more honorable than the artisans whom they were shielding. In free imperial cities the officials were for the most part patricians, in territorial cities the judges might have been aristocratic representatives of the territorial lord. By  



Otto Beneke, Von unehrlichen Leuten. Cultur-historische Studien und Geschichten (Hamburg, ), pp. –. An Ohm, an archaic liquid measure, is equivalent to about  gallons. Contemporary tracts commemorated this spectacular event. See for instance, Vollkommener . . . Bericht, . . . und Beschreibung des der . . . heiligen Ro¨m. Reichs Kays. freyen . . . Handels-Stadt Frankfurt am Mayn vorder Sanct-GallenPforten . . . aufgebauten Hochgerichts . . . . (Frankfurt a.M., ), and Lersner, Frankfurt am Mayn Chronica, vol. , pp. –. See also Keller, Scharfrichter, pp. –; Heinz Lenhardt, ‘‘Feste und Feiern des Frankfurter Handwerks,’’ Archiv fu¨r Frankfurts Geschichte und Kunst, Fu¨nfte Folge,  (), –. For further examples, see Stadtbibliothek Nuremberg, Handschriften Abteilung, Nor. H. . (), and Amb. . . For Ansbach, see Oppelt, ‘‘Verlegung,’’ p. ; For Kiel and Lu¨beck, see Wissell, Handwerks Recht, vol. , p. ; For Memmingen and Frankenried, see Schuhmann, Scharfrichter, pp. –. Andreas Grießinger, Das Symbolische Kapital der Ehre. Streikbewegungen und kollektives Bewußtsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen im . Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a.M./Berlin/Vienna, ), p. .



Punishment and healing

. Marginal drawing in city council protocol from . It depicts the pillory and neck ring with which offenders were attached. The caption beneath the drawing reads ‘‘Banishment from the city forever,’’ a punishment that frequently accompanied exhibition at the pillory.

orchestrating and participating in these gallows-building rituals, the authorities managed to exploit dishonor symbolically to enhance their own status and honor. The message communicated in such gallows-building rituals was that persons of high honor were somehow immune to the contaminating effects of dishonor. More than immune, persons of high estate actually could cleanse an object of the dishonor that permeated it. This is an idea that we will encounter in other contexts. In spite of such elaborate measures aimed at containing and neutralizing dishonor, handling the tools of punishment remained a precarious and risky affair that always bore the possibility of pollution. The pillory, like the gallows, was an important symbol of lordship. Only sovereign territories endowed with ‘‘high justice’’ had their own pillory. Unlike the gallows beyond the city walls, the pillory was usually located at the heart of the city. In Augsburg the pillory consisted of a balcony on the corner of the city hall overlooking the central square. The offender was exhibited standing on the balcony with an iron chain around the neck. The 

On the pillory, see Gerd Schwerhoff, ‘‘Verordnete Schande? Spa¨tmittelalterliche und fru¨hneuzeitliche Ehrenstrafen zwischen Rechtsakt und sozialer Sanktion.’’ Mit den Waffen der Justiz. Zur Kriminalita¨tsgeschichte des spa¨ten Mittelalters und der fru¨hen Neuzeit, eds. Andreas Blauert and Gerd  Schwerhoff (Frankfurt a.M., ), pp. –, . Schuhmann, Scharfrichter, p. .



The infamous fur coat polluting potential of the pillory is illustrated by a dishonor conflict that erupted in the small south German town of Mindelheim in  during the renovation of the town’s pillory. The iron railing surrounding Mindelheim’s pillory needed to be replaced, and so the city council commissioned the local metal-workers’ guild to make the necessary repairs. This work was fraught with danger, for the pillory, like gallows and scaffold, was a contaminated site that was infused with the dishonor of the criminals who were punished there, and with the dishonor of the executioner who typically performed these punishments. Like the gallows, then, the pillory was at one and the same time a source of collective civic honor and an intensely polluting object, a source of individual dishonor for the persons who were punished there. To be exposed at the pillory was not a minor punishment. It was a defamatory honor punishment reserved for only the most serious criminals who had been convicted of a felony or capital offense. Criminals who were spared execution were often exposed at the pillory instead. This honor punishment frequently occurred in combination with a physical punishment, such as whipping, branding, or mutilation. Even without an additional physical punishment, however, the exhibition at the pillory alone conferred a formal legal infamy (infamia iuris), which, in the words of the historian Richard van Du¨lmen, resulted in a kind of ‘‘social death’’ for the offender. Invariably, after the criminal had spent the specified amount of time at the pillory, he or she was banished from the territory. The Mindelheim authorities orchestrated the renovation of their pillory along the same lines as the typical gallows-building ritual. It was a public and festive occasion in which the metal-workers guild performed their repairs collectively with pomp and circumstance before an audience of several hundred spectators. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, when one artisan fatefully misjudged the situation. The work was almost completed, when one of the guildsmen, Tobias Ha¨userer, jokingly took the iron chain and neck ring with which offenders were attached to the pillory and tossed it at a fellow artisan. This artisan, however, was not amused, so Tobias tried to appease him by placing the metal ring around his own neck. Wearing the metal ring, Tobias presented himself to the audience watching the on-going repairs and exclaimed that ‘‘on this day, everything is permitted.’’ He was mistaken. The public and collective nature of the ritual did allow the guildsmen to enter a space which was normally off limits to them; however, it did not give permission to play with dishonor. Guildsmen were expected to perform this dangerous work with the appropriate decorum, for dishonor was never a joking  



StadtAA, HWA, Schlosser , August –February . On honor punishments at the pillory see Gerd Schwerhoff, Ko¨ln im Kreuzverho¨r. Kriminalita¨t, Herrschaft und Gesellschaft in einer fru¨hneuzeitlichen Stadt (Bonn, ), pp. –. On ‘‘social death’’ as a consequence of honor punishments, see Richard van Du¨lmen, Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, ), pp. –. StadtAA, HWA, Schlosser , August –February .



Punishment and healing matter. Tobias’s fellow guildsmen described his behavior in the following terms: he ‘‘had the nerve, to take a ring of shame [Schandring, e.g. the neck ring], which did not need to be repaired, which has been hanging on this pillory for many years, and which has been used by the executioner to attach many malefactors and to disgrace them . . .’’ and to throw it at another artisan and attach himself to it in front of a large audience. Tobias’s fateful misinterpretation had disastrous consequences for him. As a guild master Tobias was a member of the town council. His ‘‘shameful license’’ demonstrated that he was ‘‘forgetful of honor.’’ He was excluded from the council, his guild expelled him, and he was forbidden to work. His mistake cost him his livelihood and social identity as a guildsman and a citizen.             Gallows, scaffold, and pillory were spectacular, public symbols of sovereignty and the authority to punish. Dishonor also permeated more modest, mundane tools of punishment hidden from public view within the Augsburg dungeon. In their management of equipment and space within the dungeon, Augsburg’s governors attempted a delicate balancing act of exploiting the potential of dishonor as an instrument of coercion and yet preventing its uncontrolled spread. An inventory taken in  of all the equipment in the dungeon revealed that among the possessions of the dungeon was a fur coat which was associated with a peculiar tradition in Augsburg’s penal culture: ‘‘Even honorable prisoners and residents, who have been imprisoned for a small infraction, and not for a maleficent or serious crime, are forced without distinction of person or of the nature of their crime, to appear [to be interrogated] wearing the fur coat.’’ The result of this practice was that these persons now had a stigma attached to them. Upon their release they were defamed as someone who had been forced to wear the ‘‘thief’s fur coat’’ (diebs pelz). To prevent this stigmatizing effect, the city government decreed that in the future when honorable citizens were arrested for minor offenses they should be allowed to bring their own furs from home. Thus they could protect themselves from the ‘‘cold and frost’’ of the dungeon without suffering the dishonoring effects of having worn the ‘‘thief’s fur coat.’’ Only prisoners accused of capital offenses would still undergo the humiliation and disgrace of facing their patrician interrogators wearing the infamous coat. When the city councilors decreed that serious criminals would still be required to wear the diebs pelz during their interrogations, they were undoubtedly aware of the leverage and psychological pressure such humiliating practices allowed them to exert, and it is likely they did not want to relinquish such a powerful instrument of coercion entirely. The policy they developed for the use of the thief’s coat is typical  

Ibid. StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. ,  June, and  June, . For another example of efforts to insulate dishonor within the dungeon, see Stadtbed. ,  July, .



The infamous fur coat of their general strategy for the management of dishonor in the judicial process. They made distinctions between those offenders whose honor needed to be protected and those prisoners whose honor was expendable or who, from the councilors’ perspective, had no honor to begin with. This distinction between prisoners of different ‘‘quality’’ was mirrored by a complex division of labor among the bailiffs, beadles, and dungeon guards assigned to guard and punish them. In this way, the authorities tried to mark off and insulate an explicitly dishonorable group of offenders and their guards, and within this infamous sector of the penal economy, the authorities set out to exploit dishonor as an instrument of social control to its fullest potential.                          In those punishments which the authorities intended to be permanently dishonoring, they deliberately cast the executioner, the most dishonorable servant in their employ, in the main role. In  the Augsburg city council orchestrated an elaborate degradation ritual to punish a city official who had embezzled funds. ‘‘Although he deserved the rope,’’ a chronicler commented, the official was forced to sit on a chair beneath a bay window of the town hall from which governmental decrees were typically proclaimed, and then ‘‘the hangman placed the skinner’s knife under his chin, so that he had to look up, and so with great shame and ridicule he was made infamous.’’ In this ritual, the government tapped into two sources of dishonor, reinforcing the polluting effect of the executioner’s touch by likening the offender to skinner’s carrion. Authorities could tap into dishonor in viciously creative ways. In sixteenthcentury Ofen, women who had committed sexual offenses were forced to do a public dance with the executioner on the town square; men were forced to dance with prostitutes. It was not necessary to introduce such grotesque refinements, however, in order to defame the offender. Exhibition at the pillory was the standard honor punishment that explicitly conferred legal infamy. Typically, the executioner escorted delinquents to the pillory and performed any additional bodily punishments there. Such punishments were extraordinarily effective. In  some journeymen engaged in a drunken brawl with the city guards in Munich, for which they received the very stiff penalty of banishment. They were escorted to the city limits by the executioner. In a petition to the Holy Roman Emperor in which they  

SStBA, ° cod Aug , Malefikanten –, August , . Wolfgang Schild, Alte Gerichtsbarkeit. Vom Gottesurteil bis zum Beginn der modernen Rechtssprechung (Munich, ), pp. , . I deliberately do not use the term ‘‘carnivalesque.’’ According to Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘‘carnivalesque laughter’’ is ambivalent; destruction is counterbalanced by regeneration. See Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World (Bloomington, ), pp. – But there was nothing regenerative about this type of punishment. The vicious humor of honor punishments was purely destructive. For further examples of the use of humor and the grotesque in honor punishments, see C. Hinkeldey, Justiz in Alter Zeit (Rothenburg o.d.T., ), pp. –.



Punishment and healing

. Marginal drawing in city council protocol from . The rope and switches are a symbolic representation of an honor punishment intended to make the offender legally infamous. Instead of hanging a thief, the council pardoned him ‘‘to be exposed at the pillory and publicly denounced. The executioner then threw a rope around his neck.’’ He was whipped while wearing the rope and then banished.

begged him to remove the infamy they had thus contracted, we get a sense of what happened to people after being subjected to an honor punishment: they were ‘‘avoided by everyone,’’ and could no longer practice their trade. In a similar petition from , a journeyman imprisoned in Frankfurt in the aftermath of the Fettmilch Uprising, described how he was bound in iron bands and chains (in many cases iron as opposed to wooden restraints seem to be a significant symbol of infamy), and then was publicly whipped out of town. As a result of this punishment, the journeyman reported, he was now living as a vagrant, ‘‘wandering around in great sorrow and spending my life in misery.’’ In addition to causing the loss of livelihood, citizenship, and residency, such punishments also had a devastating emotional impact. In a petition from , a retailer from Augsburg described how he felt after he was exposed on the pillory: ‘‘. . . after having endured public ridicule, I was banished from the city . . . I am taking this great ridicule, which I, as an honorable man, had to suffer innocently, more and more to heart as time passes.  

HHuStA, Restitutiones, , /G, H, Hans Greml, . HHuStA, Restitutiones, , /G, H, Stefan Hoffmann, .



The infamous fur coat It is becoming utterly unbearable.’’ The subjective effect of these punishments seems to have been a kind of shattering of identity. The extreme vulnerability of their subjects’ honor provided governments with a powerful handle of coercion. The authorities exploited their subjects’ pollution anxieties to ensure compliance of the condemned criminal on the scaffold. Even in the face of death, offenders remained acutely sensitive to dishonor. To encourage the criminal’s cooperation in what always remained a precarious ritual, the authorities could reduce the infamy of execution by variations in procedure. The most important distinction was between dishonorable hanging and the somewhat less dishonorable beheading. Violent crimes committed out in the open, such as manslaughter, were typically punished by beheading, whereas hidden and therefore more treacherous and ignominious crimes, such as theft or treason, were punished by hanging. But the magistrates were not bound by this rule of thumb. They could consider family background and intercessions on behalf of the condemned, or reward voluntary confession or expressions of repentance by ‘‘pardoning’’ the delinquent whose offense theoretically merited hanging to be beheaded instead. On the other hand, if the criminal did not cooperate or had committed a particularly heinous crime, the authorities could intensify dishonor by hanging him or her higher than usual or by using a chain instead of a rope – most likely because a chain, more enduring than rope, ensured that the body would be exposed longer to public view. The authorities calculatedly parceled out dishonor (and pain) according to the ‘‘social capital’’ of the felon. Gerd Schwerhoff coined the phrase ‘‘social capital,’’ expanding on Pierre Bourdieu’s definition of honor as ‘‘symbolic capital,’’ to describe an individual’s rootedness in the community. Social capital is not equivalent to social status; a very humble member of the urban community could have more social capital than a wealthy foreign merchant. Social capital refers to offenders’ level of social integration. Did they have family in town? Were neighbors and fellow guild members willing to intercede on their behalf, or were they strangers with no stake in the community? Would anyone else be affected if the authorities meted out punishment with the full harshness of the law? A few examples will illustrate how authorities took such factors into account when reaching a judgment. In  Joachim Elsesser, member of a reputable merchant family, attempted to poison his wife and embezzled public funds. For this crime, a chronicler observed, ‘‘he deserved to be torn with red hot tongs and to be dragged to the scaffold . . . to be broken on the wheel and then, while still living, to be quartered.’’ Elsesser did not suffer this punishment, however. ‘‘An honorable council considered the numerous intercessions on his behalf by persons of high and low estate. Out of mercy, the council condemned him be led . . . to the scaffold and to be executed by the    

StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Georg Schmidt, , , , May , . On popular disturbances at botched executions, see Schwerhoff, Ko¨ln im Kreuzverho¨r, p. . Rudolf His, Das Strafrecht des deutschen Mittelalters,  vols. (Aaalen, ), vol. , pp. –. Schwerhoff, Ko¨ln im Kreuzverho¨r, pp. –.



Punishment and healing sword and bloody hand.’’ In , the patrician connection of one city official condemned to death for fraud mitigated the infamy of his execution. He was hanged, the customary punishment for theft, but ‘‘because his wife was of patrician background, he was not stripped of the cloak he was wearing on the gallows as other thieves were. And the next day he was taken down from the gallows and buried in the cemetery by the grave-diggers.’’ Given the role of clothing in conferring social identity in early modern society, this was a significant gesture on the part of the authorities. Executioners claimed the clothing of executed criminals as part of their customary emoluments, so that corpses were typically left exposed on the gallows in various states of undress. Nudity was part of the degradation process. The preceding two cases seem to be clear examples of class justice. Both men were members of the social elite of the city. But the magistrates exercised similar ‘‘mercy’’ for more modest offenders. In  the council pardoned an impoverished weaver and notorious thief. Instead of being hanged, he was beheaded. A chronicler commented: ‘‘He was supposed to be hanged, but because of his many children, out of mercy he was executed by the sword.’’ The authorities, then, had a varied palette at their disposal in orchestrating the execution ritual. Hanging or beheading, rope or chain, additional refinements (red hot tongs, etc.), length of time the body remained exposed, and method of disposal were all variables which the authorities could manipulate to communicate the nuances of dishonor. The reactions of condemned criminals demonstrate to what extent government could exploit the coercive potential of such symbolism. In the early seventeenth century, a Nuremberg cleric who ministered to the condemned recorded how he and another clergyman visited two thieves in the dungeon to inform them that they would be beheaded instead of hanged: ‘‘when they heard the happy news that they had received a merciful sentence, they both fell on their knees and thanked God . . . They also thanked us, kissing our hands . . . beside themselves with joy . . . they thanked the authorities for a merciful judgment . . .’’ Uwe Danker interprets such emotional scenes as an expression of the ‘‘total’’ control the early modern state could exercise within a very limited sphere over an individual in its grip. ‘‘The early modern state was not totalitarian, because it could not realize its all-encompassing will to regulate . . . but when an individual prisoner was completely at the mercy of this will to discipline, the state could achieve total domination.’’ Danker is referring to the way the authorities obtained condemned crimi

  

 

Die Chroniken der Schwa¨bischen Sta¨dte. Augsburg, vol.  (Go¨ttingen, ), pp. –.  StadtAA, AHV, Malefikantenliste, April , . See above, chapter . StadtAA, Reichtsstadtakten, Stadtbed., /. On executioners’ claim to deliquents’ clothing and on the nudity of executed criminals, see, for example, the petitions of executioner Johann Georg  Trenkler, June –January . Ibid., January , . Theodor Hampe, Die Nu¨rnberger Malefizbu¨cher als Quellen der reichsta¨dtischen Sittengeschichte vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert (Bamberg, ), pp. –. Uwe Danker, Ra¨uberbanden im Alten Reich um . Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte von Herrschaft und Kriminalita¨t in der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M., ), pp. –.



The infamous fur coat nals’ obedience by manipulating their religious fears (which we will discuss in the next chapter), but the same can be said about how the authorities instrumentalized the ideology of honor. Even when a suspect had escaped the authorities’ physical grasp, the authorities made use of dishonor symbolism to defame a delinquent at a distance. To induce military deserters to turn themselves in, the government orchestrated a public degradation ritual. The name of the deserter was proclaimed three times to the beat of the drum. The soldier was ordered to return to the flag he had deserted, or else his name would be publicly attached to the gallows. If he failed to appear, the executioner pinned a placard with the name of the deserter to the gallows in a public ceremony. This placard remained attached to the gallows until the deserter surrendered or was apprehended. This ceremony was extraordinarily effective. Deserters frequently turned themselves in and submitted to severe corporal punishment if the government agreed to conduct a ceremony in which their name was removed from the gallows and their honor restored. In  the parents of the deserter Caspar Wu¨stle negotiated such an exchange on behalf of their son. When the young man turned himself in to the Augsburg authorities the city government ordered his name removed from the gallows by the executioner in a formal military ritual. Wu¨stle was to be whipped for three days in a row to the beat of the drum. Thereupon he would receive an honorable discharge.                    Dishonor could obviously be instrumentalized as a powerful weapon against those persons the authorities chose to defame. But the aim of this weapon was not precise, so that dishonor pollution threatened to spread in an uncontrolled manner. We have already alluded to government’s attempt to insulate dishonor by instituting a division of labor in criminal punishment between those officers who performed explicitly dishonoring tasks and those whose duties theoretically left them undefiled. But how effective was this policy of containment? In , Anthoni Hefelin, a bailiff in the small duchy of Hohen Embs, petitioned the emperor to cleanse him of infamy. Hefelin could pinpoint the exact moment when he had become dishonorable. When a local church robber was condemned to death, Hefelin was called upon to ‘‘lay my hands on him, putting him in chains, and unchaining him.’’ This particular act of touching and chaining a felon or ‘‘malefactor’’ dishonored him in the eyes of local artisans who, from that moment on, no longer associated with him and refused to apprentice his children in their honorable guilds. In this case, the bailiff’s dishonor was undisputed. Authorities and artisans agreed that those bailiffs who touched a ‘‘malefactor,’’ e.g. a criminal who had   

StadtAA, Militaria, , : Deserteure, –. Ibid., September –October , . HHStA, Restitutiones, , /G, H, Hefelin, .



Punishment and healing committed a capital offense, thereby took part in the execution process and participated in the dishonor of the executioner. Constant vigilance was necessary to shore up the symbolic boundary which separated infamous officers from other public servants. When an over-eager bailiff tied the hands of a malefactor on the way to his beheading in , making himself dishonorable by this act, he was fired immediately. Judicial torture posed considerable practical problems for authorities trying to contain dishonor. Torturing a suspect fell within the duties of the executioner and was therefore a clearly dishonorable task. In , the bailiffs attempted to distance themselves from the executioner by requesting to be excused from escorting prisoners to be tortured. The government decreed that they should deliver the prisoner to the interrogation chamber, but if the executioner, who was waiting in a separate room, was actually called in to show the delinquent the instruments of torture – this act of psychoterror, literally called the Territion, was defined as the first level of torture – then the bailiffs would be free to go. The newly ‘‘maleficent’’ (malfizisch, i.e. infamous) prisoner would be returned to his cell by the explicitly dishonorable dungeon guards. As governments subdivided the tasks associated with criminal punishment, this was reflected in a proliferation of terms used to designate different types of police officers. These designations spanned the gamut from the euphemistic, to the neutral, to the intentionally defaming. Police officers might be called ‘‘servant of the council’’ (Ratsdiener), ‘‘servant of the court’’ (Gerichtsdiener), both relatively honorific. Amtsmann, Amtsknecht, Stadtknecht, or Stadtdiener, which I translate as ‘‘bailiff’’, were somewhat more neutral. The terms Almosenknecht (welfare servant), and Bettelknecht (beggars’ warden) designated those officers who rounded up foreign beggars. The Scherge (sergeant), Blutscherge (blood-sergeant), and Malefiz-Scherge or Malefiz-knecht (sergeant or servant for malefactors) were explicitly dishonorable. Diebs-faher (thief-catcher) was intentionally insulting. Law officers were also called Bu¨ttel, Fronbote, Untervogt, Stockmaister, Provoß, weltlicher Richter, Gerichtsweibel, Gewaltrichterdiener, or Oeschey. These de           

 StadtAA, Chroniken Nr. , February , . Danker, Ra¨uberbanden, p. .  StadtAA, RP , February , , fo. . StadtAA, HWA, Weber a, April , . StadtAA, HWA, Seiler , May , . StadtAA, Kunst-, Gewerbs-, und Handwerksgericht, Provokationsklage /, Kasten . Stadtknecht is used most frequently in Augsburg sources. See for example StadtAA, HWA, Weber , for October , . StadtAA, Markgrafschaft Burgau, Akten Nr. , –, Blutschergenenkel Franz Antoni Geißler.  StadtAA, HWA, Weber , May , . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , March , . HHuStA, Restitutiones /E, Zacharias Egger, . StadtAA, HWA, Schuhmacher , January , . HHuStA, Restitutiones , /G, H, Anthoni Hefelin, . Gewaltrichterdiener was the term for bailiff in Cologne. Schwerhof, Ko¨ln im Kreuzverho¨r, p. . StadtAA, Handwerksgerichtsprozeßakten, September , . The Deutsches Wo¨rterbuch, edited by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, defines many of these terms. See, for example, the entries on Bu¨ttel (vol. , p. ), Stadtknecht (vol. , pp. f), or Scherge (vol. , pp. f.).



The infamous fur coat signations overlapped in meaning. Since the duties of law officers differed from city to city, even contemporaries were confused about what each term implied. Local authorities frequently inquired with one another as to the exact tasks of bailiffs or constables in a particular locality. Contemporaries obviously felt a certain discomfort in naming law officers and the duties they performed. Despite such delicacy in naming officers of the law and the tasks they performed, the containment of dishonor ultimately failed. According to an officer who styled himself as a ‘‘bailiff in civil affairs’’ (Amtmann in civilibus), ‘‘the common folk and especially the artisans do not make any distinctions, but generically take the word ‘bailiff’ to mean ‘criminal bailiff’.’’ Contagious dishonor was produced not only in cases of capital punishment and torture, but in lesser cases as well. We will examine a few cases of ritual pollution and insult prosecutions, to illustrate the proliferating criteria of infamy and the logic according to which artisans attributed dishonor. In  Hans Ho¨zl, a master glazier from the small Bavarian town of Aichach, married a woman whose ‘‘relative’’ had served as a bailiff. The exact family relationship between the glazier’s wife and the bailiff does not become clear in the records; however, the bailiff was not a member of her immediate family. Ho¨zl could prove that this bailiff had never laid hands on a ‘‘malefactor.’’ The bailiff was dishonorable nonetheless, the guildsmen claimed, because even if he had never personally touched a malefactor, ‘‘if the case arose’’ he would have to do so, reason enough to consider him dishonorable. By extension, Ho¨zl’s wife who was related to the bailiff was dishonorable; by marrying her the glazier himself had become tainted with the bailiff’s dishonor, and so he should be excluded. In a similar vein, the Augsburg rope-makers in  impugned the honor of a city guard – an office which had never before been categorized as dishonorable – claiming ‘‘in case (casu quo) one or the other malefactor should escape the hands of the executioner, these officers must catch, grasp, and lead such fugitives.’’ These situations had never actually arisen, but in the artisans’ minds, the ‘‘potentiality’’ was dishonor enough. In dishonor conflicts, insults, and street brawls, artisans identified a set of markers that indicated whether a candidate was dishonorable. When the Augsburg weaver Johann Vogel married the daughter of a bailiff from neighboring Landsberg in , his fellow guildsmen, predictably, declared him dishonorable. Though Landsberg authorities attested that their bailiffs were honorable (‘‘they never laid hands on a malefactor’’), Augsburg’s weavers set out to prove otherwise. They sent a delegation of masters to Landsberg with a questionnaire to put to regular citizens (as opposed to an official government spokesman) about the status of bailiffs in their city. Their questionnaire yielded the desired result: Landsberg bailiffs were dishonorable, because they lived in a city-owned apartment which contained stocks  

 HHuStA, Restitutiones , , Georg Urmann, . StadtA Munich, Gewerbe Amt /. StadtAA, Seiler , June , . For an example of similar logic, see StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichten sammlung, Michel Degert, , , . StadtA Munich, Gewerbeamt /.



Punishment and healing and chains. Vogel countered that honorable bailiffs and dishonorable sergeants lived in separate quarters. Bailiffs did keep shackles in their dwelling, but they were made of wood, not iron – the significance of this distinction being that wood was used on civil offenders, iron on malefactors. Unconvinced, the weavers maintained a boycott of Vogel’s shop at least until , when his case disappears from the records. In  the bookbinders produced the same type of evidence to demonstrate the dishonorable origins of one of their apprentices. A group of bookbinders traveled to Andechs, the hometown of the questionable apprentice, to investigate his background. Peering into his father’s dwelling, they found – so they claimed – a regular chamber of horror, replete ‘‘with all sorts of instruments, as you would see with a beadle, such as chains, handcuffs, and salvo honore an ox-tail whip.’’ The fact that the bailiff handled such tools was proof enough of his dishonor. Artisans identified bailiffs’ uniforms as a visible sign of their dishonor. German bailiffs wore multi-colored liveries, usually in the official colors of the city or territory they served. In Augsburg, bailiffs wore liveries with white, red, and green stripes, in the colors of Augsburg’s coat of arms. Badges and banners in white, red, and green expressed political identity and civic pride. The bailiff’s uniforms were meant to symbolize the sovereign authority of the magistrate whom they served, but artisans read a different meaning in bailiffs’ heraldic colors. Bailiffs, they claimed, ‘‘are everywhere kept separate from other honorable people. So that they may immediately be recognizable to all, especially to strangers, such beadles and bailiffs must always wear special liveries . . . This shows that they are not equal to other honorable people, and do not participate in civic affairs.’’ This interpretation of the meaning of the uniform had direct impact on face-to-face interactions in the street. In , as an Augsburg bailiff returned home after an evening in the tavern, a soldier taunted him: ‘‘Where are you going, striped coat?’’ Drawing his dagger, the bailiff told the soldier to ‘‘stop mocking the striped cloak, for it is my Lord’s livery.’’ A knife fight ensued. An intriguing aspect of this encounter is that the bailiff was ridiculed by a soldier, who was himself wearing a uniform (although not striped). Obviously not any uniform, but only the multicolored uniform of officers of the law signified dishonor. Striped uniforms as a sign of defiled status gained wide cultural currency. Ruth Mellinkoff has documented how late medieval and early modern painters employed parti-colored and striped clothing as a symbol of infamy. Infidels, minstrels, court jesters, and most typically the tormentors and executioners of Christ were depicted wearing such attire.      

StadtAA, HWA, Weber , , , September , , and May , . StadtAA, HWA, Buchbinder , May , . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , , , September , , and May , . See the book of civic oaths, StadtAA, Scha¨tze, Eidbuch, p. , for a colored drawing of Augsburg’s  bailiffs in striped uniforms. StadtAA, HWA, Weber , September , . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Hans Baur, , IV, . Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages,  vols.



The infamous fur coat In contrast to sumptuary legislation which imposed special identifying costume upon prostitutes, Jews, and executioners to signify their defiled status, the authorities certainly did not intend to defame the officers who wore their city colors. Much to the contrary, the uniform was meant to communicate authority and status. But the meaning of such signs was not fixed and could not simply be imposed from above. Meaning remained fluid and emerged in everyday interactions. What the authorities intended as a prestige symbol was transvalued into a stigma symbol in social practice. As in the case of gallows and pillory, the city’s heraldic colors were a source of honor and pride to the collectivity, but they became a source of dishonor and ridicule when they were attached to an individual.

                      According to Gerhard Oestreich’s model of social disciplining, territorial lords succeeded in ‘‘disciplining’’ their officer corps and civil service during the seventeenth century. This ‘‘disciplining of the staff’’ was a precondition for the much more far-reaching ‘‘fundamental disciplining’’ of society in the eighteenth century. Oestreich was writing about army officers and upper-level civil servants, not about the low-level policemen on whom the actual implementation of the state’s morals offensive depended. To what extent discipline was imposed upon and internalized by the upper echelons of the new standing armies and bureaucracies is a question we cannot address here. At the lower end of the scale, however, dishonor pollution presented a major obstacle to a ‘‘disciplining of the staff.’’ As we have seen, artisans were master casuists when it came to explaining why a police officer should be considered dishonorable. As artisans continually identified new criteria of infamy, dishonor spread beyond the explicitly dishonorable sector of the penal economy to affect all public servants involved in criminal justice. The bailiffs, who as we have seen were recruited from the artisanal milieu, shared the guildsmen’s pollution anxieties. Attempting to insulate themselves from dishonor, law officers frequently balked at carrying out the commands of the state authorities who employed them. Such an embarrassing episode occurred when Private Wu¨stle, the hapless deserter, turned himself in to the Augsburg authorities so that his name would be removed from the gallows. The stage was set for his whipping to occur, drums were set up in front of the town hall, but the punishment could not proceed because the two corporals who were ordered to administer the actual whipping refused. 

(Berkeley, ), vol. , p. . On the transvaluation of prestige symbols into stigma symbols and vice versa, see Diane Owen Hughes, ‘‘Distinguishing signs: ear-rings, Jews, and Franciscan rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance city,’’ Past and Present  (), –, and Robert Ju¨tte, ‘‘Stigma-Symbole. Kleidung als identita¨tsstiftendes Merkmal bei spa¨tmittelalterlichen und fru¨hneuzeitlichen Randgruppen (Juden, Dirnen,  Aussa¨tzige, Bettler),’’ Saeculum  (), –. Breuer, ‘‘Sozialdisziplierung,’’ p. .



Punishment and healing Wu¨stle’s name had been attached to the gallows, the corporals explained. Regardless of the fact that by this time his name had already been removed, he could not be considered honorable until flags were swung over him in a formal military ritual to remove the infamy he had contracted. To whip Wu¨stle in his present state would dishonor them, the corporals declared, and result in their expulsion from their honorable regiment. In exasperation, the Augsburg government postponed the whipping of Private Wu¨stle. The council ordered flags to be swung over Private Wu¨stle, and finally the whipping was administered and Wu¨stle was released. Meanwhile the two recalcitrant corporals were to be punished for their disobedience. Such disobedience occurred not only among military personnel, but also among Augsburg’s bailiffs who resisted administering punishments they feared would taint their honor. In  the city government had to threaten to fire their bailiffs to force them to administer a private beating within the confines of the prison to a delinquent whom the authorities had categorized as a ‘‘civil’’ offender – in other words, he was not a dishonorable ‘‘malefactor.’’ The fear of contracting dishonor made the bailiffs less than willing instruments of governmental authorities, so that the magistrates’ social disciplining agenda was sometimes thwarted by the disobedience of their own staff. Reports like this cast new light on the image of the ‘‘well-ordered police state’’ that emerges from the edicts and mandates of the time.               ’     In addition to the potential disobedience of their staff, the authorities were often confronted with the fact that contact with the criminal justice system defamed prisoners, regardless of the authorities’ intentions. Dishonor pollution resulting from judicial torture is a particular case in point. Beginning in the early seventeenth century, artisans began to expel fellow guildsmen who had been subjected to torture in the course of a criminal investigation, even when they were pronounced innocent by the authorities. By the sixteenth century judicial torture at the hands of the executioner had become an integral part of the criminal justice system. In the ‘‘inquisitorial’’ procedure, a confession by the suspect was the ‘‘queen of proofs.’’ Indeed, a confession was indispensable for a conviction and torture was considered   

 

StadtAA, Militaria, , : Deserteure, –, September –October , . StadtAA, GRP , January , , pp. –. For a similar case, see StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. , May , . Authorities were often unable to hire people to serve as bailiffs in the first place. See the ‘‘Edict, daß derer Scha¨ffer, Voigte, Wa¨chter, Stadtknechte Kinder in die Zunfft zu nehmen,’’ from  July , in Christian Otto Mylius, ed., Corpus Constitutionum Marchicarum, oder Ko¨niglich Preußische und Churfu¨rstlich Brandenburgische . . . Ordnungen,  vols. (Berlin, –), vol. , pp. –. On this image, see Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, – (New Haven, ). Edward Peters, Torture (New York, ), p. .



The infamous fur coat a legitimate means of securing it. According to contemporary legal interpretation, torture was not a punishment, it was a means of finding the truth. If the suspect endured torture without confessing, he had cleared himself of suspicion. Prosecution ended; the prisoner was released. He had vindicated himself in the eyes of the law. He had also in some sense been absolved of sin. Judicial torture and the confession it elicited were understood as a kind of secular parallel to the sacrament of confession and penance. The language used to describe the effect of torture is evocative of religious purification. Suspects who withstood torture were typically described as having ‘‘purged’’ themselves. A legal report concerning a journeyman who had been tortured but found innocent concluded: post torturam absolutus est. In  a journeyman carpenter who suffered torture without confessing claimed ‘‘I have cleansed myself by means of the hardest torture, and saved my innocence and my life.’’ Such language reflects a positive attitude towards pain common to late medieval and early modern culture. From the Christian point of view, pain had a purifying, indeed salvific effect. Lyndal Roper has argued that the mystical identification with the sufferings of Christ typical of Catholic CounterReformation piety influenced attitudes towards pain in the context of criminal justice. She suggests that city councilors who interrogated prisoners saw torture as ‘‘a kind of medicine of salvation’’ that helped the suspect achieve grace. Artisans, however, did not share this belief in the cleansing effect of torture – or rather, the religious implications of torture were simply not relevant in the context of artisanal honor. With increasing frequency in the seventeenth century, torture victims’ torments did not end with their release. According to the artisans, torture at the hands of the executioner left an indelible mark of infamy on the victim. This infamy was not the result of a criminal act or the resulting punishment. Torture itself made infamous, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the prisoner. Here we find that Christian notions of purity and sin clash with artisanal ideas about honor and dishonor. Honorable artisans insisted on the permanent expulsion of torture victims from their guild. Governments viewed this development with alarm, for it posed a threat to the criminal justice system itself. Authorities could hardly conduct a criminal investigation with a free hand if torture, one of their principal means of investigation, had the unintended consequence of destroying the victim’s social identity,     

John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Re´gime (Chicago, ), p. . Talal Asad, ‘‘Notes on body pain and truth in medieval Christian ritual,’’ Economy and Society   (), –. See for example, StadtAA, HWA, Schmiede , January , . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Augustin Gerstecker, , , , V, . StadtAA, HWA, Zimmerleute , February , . Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London/New York, ), pp. , –. On parallels in attitudes towards pain in the spheres of religion and criminal justice, see also Ester Cohen, The Crossroads of Justice: Law and Culture in Late Medieval France (Leiden, ), pp. –.



Punishment and healing regardless of the outcome of the case. By the late seventeenth century artisans’ attempts to expel torture victims had become so widespread that the practice was listed in the catalogue of artisanal abuses compiled in the ‘‘Proposal’’ produced by the imperial diet in . A particularly tragic case of this kind involved a young journeyman embroiderer, Augustin Gerstecker, who was arrested under suspicion of witchcraft in . The twenty-one-year-old journeyman was imprisoned and tortured for seven weeks. However, steadfast denial and a physical peculiarity saved him from conviction. While shaving Augustin’s body to search for the devil’s mark, the executioner Marx Philipp Hartmann discovered a physical feature which proved the young man’s innocence: ‘‘his virile member is in such a condition that he must still be a virgin, because the foreskin cannot be pulled backwards.’’ In other words, the young man could not have engaged in sexual intercourse with Satan, the necessary consummation of the devil’s pact. The authorities pronounced him innocent, but seven weeks of torture had left Augustin a cripple. The records do not show what permanent injuries he sustained; among other things his hands were damaged. He could no longer keep up with his fellow journeymen, so that no master would have employed him. But this never became an issue. Though innocent of witchcraft in the eyes of the magistrates, he was infamous in the eyes of his fellow guildsmen and they expelled him from their guild. Pressed to explain his expulsion, the embroiderers simply stated that Augustin had been under the hands of the executioner and therefore the matter was beyond their control: ‘‘If this happened to another person, he would have the same fate.’’ Dishonor conflicts resulting from the executioner’s touch during torture continued through the eighteenth century. Jurists made futile proclamations that torture did not leave a mark of infamy on the suspect, while artisans continued to expel the victims of torture.          -           Even in cases involving petty crime, when torture was not applied, the authorities often found that the impact of their punishments was more severe than intended.  





‘Gutachten des Reichstages’’ of , in Hans Proesler, ed., Das gesamtdeutsche Handwerk im Spiegel der Reichsgesetzgebung von – (Berlin, ), p. . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Augustin Gerstecker, , , , , , Meister Marx’s testimony for April , . The authorities’ conclusion that Augustin’s inability to sustain an erection proved his innocence is an intriguing indication of their construction of male sexuality: apparently, a male witch would have to play the active role in homosexual intercourse with Satan in order to consummate the pact! See, for instance, Paul Do¨pler, Theatrum Poenarum, Supplicorum, et Executionum Criminalium, der Schauplatz der Leib und Lebensstrafen (Sonderhausen, ), p. . For the late eighteenth century, see Johann Christian Quistorp, Grundsa¨tze des peinlichen Rechts, vol.  (Rostock/Leipzig, ), pp. –. For further examples see StadtAA, HWA, Gerber , November ; Zimmerleute , February– March, , and Schmiede , January , .



The infamous fur coat The punishment of ‘‘strong beggars,’’ the undeserving poor, was a primary arena of the state’s social disciplining project. In the eyes of the authorities, the beggary of the able-bodied poor was the result of a dissolute lifestyle, of willful and sinful idleness. Governments resorted to forced labor, imprisonment, and corporal punishments to instill moral habits and to impose labor discipline on the undeserving poor. But dishonor pollution hampered governments’ disciplining agenda. In Augsburg, the government tried to instill a new work ethic by putting beggars to work in chain gangs cleaning out latrines and doing construction work on city fortifications. When the welfare administrators suggested subjecting them to disciplinary whippings, the city council inquired with the free imperial city of Nuremberg about how they handled such vagrants. Nuremberg advised against the whippings: ‘‘if these fellows were whipped, they would be even more likely to turn into thieves and highway robbers, since their honor would be impugned and they would no longer be tolerated among artisans.’’ Authorities attempted to punish petty offenders with discretion, so as not to defame them permanently. This is illustrated in their punishment of sexual offenses. In  the Augsburg council issued a secret decree ordering that adulterers be prosecuted and punished with ‘‘due caution’’ (mit beho¨riger Behutsamkeit). This internal directive contrasted with the draconian public language of police ordinances that threatened corporal punishment or even death for fornicators and adulterers so ‘‘divine wrath . . . does not engulf the entire city.’’ In  the Bavarian government grappled with dishonor pollution, when they found that punishing fornicators or adulterers ‘‘publicly or in other ways according to our edicts,’’ resulted in offenders’ expulsion from their guild. Guildsmen had internalized strict sexual mores too well. Their unwillingness to forgive such transgressions hindered the authorities’ attempts to impose a stricter sexual morality on the public at large. The prison workhouse or house of correction, the paradigmatic penal institution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was also bedeviled by the problem of dishonor pollution. Within the walls of the Zuchthaus, literally the ‘‘discipline house,’’ the authorities exercised almost total control over the inmates, imposing     



Robert Ju¨tte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, ), pp. –. Max Bisle, Die o¨ffentliche Armenpflege der Reichsstadt Augsburg mit Beru¨cksichtigung der einschla¨gigen Verha¨ltnisse in anderen Reichssta¨dten Su¨ddeutschlands (Paderborn, ), p. . Paul von Stetten, Geschichte der Heiligen Ro¨mischen. Augspurg, vol. , p. ,  September . SStBA, ° cod Aug –, Ratsdecreta, Nr. , April , , ‘‘Bestrafung der Unzucht.’’ StadtA Munich, Bu¨rgermeister und Rat, Mandate  B , p. , October , , and Georg Karl Mayr, Sammlung der Kurpfalz-Baierischen allgemeinen und besonderen Landesverordnungen, vol.  (Munich, ), p. . Isabel Hull, Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, – (Cornell, ), p. . In contrast to the social disciplining approach which emphasizes the state’s efforts to criminalize extra-marital sex, Hull finds that ‘‘church and state tried for several hundred years to interpret legitimacy less strictly, but they remained adamant . . . the ferocity of the guilds far outstripped what the church or state either demanded or wanted’’ (p. ).



Punishment and healing detailed regimens upon the prisoners to inculcate moral habits and labor discipline. Prison workhouses exemplify the pedagogical impulse of social disciplining. They provided an alternative to bloody punishments to the body; the stated goal of punishment was resocialization rather than retribution. But dishonor pollution threatened to derail efforts to rehabilitate the offenders. In  Augsburg established two prison workhouses – one for Catholics and another for Protestants, according to the principle of confessional parity. These institutions were supposed to discipline a motley assortment of miscreants: ‘‘sassy and incorrigible local or foreign beggars . . . insolent and disorderly journeymen, lazy apprentices and misbehaving schoolboys . . . disobedient children, impudent and flighty girls who hanker after the luxurious life . . . in sum everyone who misbehaves and leads a sinful and idle life . . .’’ These workhouses were obviously not intended to punish serious criminals. Only minor offenders in need of a ‘‘civil correction’’ would be admitted. Criminals who had been ‘‘under the executioner’s or blood-sergeants’ hands’’ were excluded. They were sent to the prison workhouse of the Swabian circle in Buchloe, which had a separate wing for infamous inmates. But despite such efforts to separate and exclude infamous offenders, the authorities’ policy of containment failed once again. Soon the city government was confronted with the problem of what to do with inmates who had served their time. In  a number of boys who had been imprisoned in the workhouses for minor thefts were due to be released. The boys had been sent to the workhouse in the first place because the authorities judged them to be ‘‘correctable.’’ Timely discipline would lead to their ‘‘improvement,’’ saving them from a life of crime. But when the boys had completed their term, the authorities did not know where to place them. The boys were clearly not dishonorable, the magistrates affirmed, since they had not been subjected to dishonoring punishments. But they could not be foisted on the guildsmen, for the councilors feared this would foment conflict and unrest. The patrician administrators finally recommended that the boys be handed over to military recruiters or employed in the construction of city walls. The prison workhouse, an institution specifically intended to rehabilitate offenders, failed at this task, because dishonor pollution made it impossible for inmates to be reintegrated into honorable society. Dishonor affected not only the offender who was being punished, but his or her family members as well. A case from  offers a stark illustration of this effect. Four artisans from Neuß in Silesia petitioned the emperor for legitimation and restitution of honor. The wives of these artisans had been arrested during a 

 

For a classic description of disciplining practices with the prison workhouse, see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (New York, ). For a social historical approach, see Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and their Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, ). StadtAA, Akten das evangelische Zucht und Arbeitshaus, ferners das heilige Almosenamt betref. StadtAA, Handwerksgerichtsakten, June , , and March , . For a similar case, see StadtAA, HWA, Schneider , correspondence on Joesph Ettinger, March–June .



The infamous fur coat witch-hunt in the previous year. ‘‘They were tortured and examined, but after enduring multiple torments, they were found innocent.’’ Their innocence notwithstanding, the stigma conferred by torture caused ‘‘both the men and their aforementioned wives to suffer contempt of their fellow citizens, in particular their fellow guildsmen. They were regarded as dishonorable.’’ Dishonor spread from the women to their spouses. Their guilds shut down their shops. The tragic story of these women and their husbands, as well as that of the Augsburg journeyman Augustin Gerstecker, draw attention to an aspect of the European witch-hunt which has received scant attention in the burgeoning literature on the subject. If witchcraft suspects survived the judicial process, their troubles were not over upon their release from prison. Petitions by family members of offenders give an idea of the impact of honor punishments on the delinquent’s kin. In  the relatives of a woman who was condemned to a public whipping at the pillory for committing fornication with a Jew, begged the authorities to take into account the fate of ‘‘her poor fatherless orphans’’ and to ‘‘spare us, the honorable kin, this public whipping.’’ In  the relatives of a deserter begged the authorities not to attach his name to the gallows, because ‘‘the shame and disgrace will mostly fall on us innocent siblings, and we will hear about it on every occasion . . .’’ An objection might be made that in these cases infamy resulted less from the executioner’s polluting touch than from the nature of the crimes. This is especially plausible in cases of witchcraft, where lingering suspicion and fear might contribute to the dishonor of the accused even after her or his release. The family members of the purported witch might be vulnerable to dishonor, because witchcraft was believed to run in families. Historians have suggested that the efficacy of honor punishments at defaming a delinquent was dependent upon a consensus between the authorities and the common people who made up the audience at such shaming rituals. If the plebeian public did not agree that an offender’s conduct was worthy of condemnation, the honor punishment would remain ineffective. However, these arguments are usually based on studies of rural society. The analysis of honor conflicts in Augsburg and other urban societies leads to a different conclusion. In towns the impact of dishonor pollution was devastating and permanent for offenders and their families, even in cases where no stigma attached to a particular offense in popular culture. In , when some journeymen escorted to the Munich city limits by the executioner for engaging in a drunken melee with the city guards, it is hardly likely that their fellow journeymen found their crime particularly objectionable. Drinking and brawling went hand in hand with male sociability. Ritualized drinking bouts and the violence that followed were, as     

HHuStA, Restitutiones /A, Aust et al., . My emphasis. StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Barbara Frankin, d, , , . StadtAA, Militaria, , : Deserteure –, correspondence on Abraham Braun, November . For a similar case, see correspondence by Maria Seyfrid, July , . Merry Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, ), p. . Schwerhoff, ‘‘Verordnete Schande?,’’ p. ; Hull, Sexuality, pp. –.



Punishment and healing Lyndal Roper has argued, ‘‘a means of advancing the honor of guild or journeyman band.’’ These unruly young men were conforming to the demands of the male honor code and the group norms of their journeymen’s association, but they became dishonorable nonetheless. Such cases demonstrate that it was the punishment that conferred infamy, not the nature of the offense. The defaming effect of punishment took place ex opere operato, regardless of moral condition or intentions.      Dishonor cannot simply be understood as a form of death pollution, since it was produced not only in the context of capital punishment, but resulted from almost any imaginable punitive procedure. Dishonor did not originate only with the executioner, though it was most strongly concentrated in him. By the eighteenth century the most mundane application of criminal justice dishonored the officer who carried it out. Dishonor did not flow in any particular direction, but instead seemed to expand in all directions simultaneously. The touch of the executioner or a particular punishment dishonored the criminal, and conversely, contact with the criminal dishonored the bailiff who laid hands on him or her. Particular actions, such as laying on iron chains, dishonored the bailiff and prisoner simultaneously. The chain itself or other tools of punishment also became infused with dishonor, so that physical contact with such an object could dishonor a third party who was not implicated in the punitive process at all. In spite of its potential as an instrument of social control, dishonor caused as many problems for the authorities as it solved. The ideology of dishonor did serve to support government on a symbolic level – we saw this very clearly in the gallows-building ceremonies where the logic of the ritual expressed the high honor of the authorities. But on a practical level, dishonor pollution severely hampered the day-to-day administration of criminal justice and actually tended to undermine governmental authority. Sovereignty and lordship seems to have been a key factor in the production of dishonor. In , the leaders of the association of journeymen shoemakers were arrested for disciplining some of their members by whipping them with a strap. The authorities objected to such intra-guild discipline because administering such a whipping fell within the prerogatives of government. By meting out such a punishment, the journeymen’s association was infringing upon the sovereignty of the magistrates. What is intriguing about this case for our purposes, is that this whipping did not produce dishonor. Neither the journeymen who administered the    

On the disruptive potential of male honor and masculinity, see Roper, Oedipus, pp. –. Beverly Ann Tlusty, ‘‘The devil’s altar: the tavern and society in early modern Augsburg (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, ), pp. –. HHuStA, Restitutiones , /H, H, Greml et al., . StadtAA, HWA, Schuhmacher , June , .



The infamous fur coat whipping, nor the journeymen who were disciplined were tainted by this punishment. Punishment or violence per se did not dishonor, only punishment meted out in the name of sovereign authorities. What does the exponential expansion of dishonor reveal about popular attitudes towards governmental authority and criminal justice? It does not mean that artisans rejected the social disciplining agenda of the authorities. Much to the contrary, artisans were among the early champions of social discipline. Augsburg was governed by a guild regime when it published a comprehensive new ‘‘discipline ordinance’’ in , the first major act of civic legislation after the introduction of the Protestant reformation. Lyndal Roper describes this ordinance as ‘‘the cornerstone of Reformation guild-influenced moralism.’’ In its effort to impose moral reform and create a godly city, the ordinance was all-encompassing in scope. It sought to enforce church attendance; it prohibited blasphemy, perjury, libel and insult, drunkenness, and gambling, along with adultery, rape and seduction, concubinage and fornication, ‘‘damned and forbidden mixing’’ (e.g. sodomy and bestiality), procuring, and violence and fighting. It shored up the authority of husband over wife, parents over children, masters over servants – and of the city council over the city’s inhabitants, who were now addressed as subjects rather than citizens. The ordinance is typical of what R. Po-chia Hsia has called the ‘‘intersection between the history of sin and the history of criminalization’’ in the public policy of social disciplining governments. Augsburg’s evangelical regime enhanced the power of the city council at the expense of the guilds, a process in which the artisans were complicit because they were heavily involved in the institutionalization of discipline. The new disciplinary agencies set up to implement the morals campaign, such as the ‘‘Discipline Lords,’’ were mostly staffed by guildsmen. The guildsmen’s wholehearted endorsement of discipline casts doubt on a social disciplining paradigm that typically sees discipline as a top-down process. Of course guildsmen’s enthusiasm for discipline might have waned after the abolition of the guild regime and the imposition of an authoritarian patrician government by emperor Charles V in . Seeing themselves as patriarchs rather than brothers, the new patrician rulers abandoned communitarian government, and imitated the governing style of the dynastic rulers of neighboring absolutist states. New government agencies such as the ‘‘Discipline Lords’’ survived this change of regime and continued to mete out punishment even after the evangelical fervor of the Reformation had died down. Perhaps dishonor      

Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, ),  p. . Ains Erbern Rats der Stat Augsburg Zucht und Pollicey Ordnung (Augsburg, ). Hsia, Social Discipline, p. . Roper, Holy Household, pp. –. See Roper’s penetrating critique of the social disciplining paradigm in Oedipus, pp. –. Wolfgang Zorn, Augsburg. Geschichte einer deutschen Stadt (Augsburg, ), pp. –. Ibid., p. .



Punishment and healing pollution spread because artisans came to reject discipline once they were no longer in control of its administration? It would be a misreading of artisans’ pollution anxieties, however, to interpret them as a clear-cut rejection of criminal justice. Recent research on the history of crime suggests that criminal justice cannot be understood as a unilateral imposition of social discipline from above. Authoritarian rhetoric notwithstanding, the actual practice of criminal justice was characterized by a high level of consensus between the city government and their subjects. Judges gave much weight to intercessions by their subjects on behalf of the accused, so that the sentences they ultimately handed down were essentially negotiated settlements between rulers and subjects. Authorities punished with moderation, according to the principle of ‘‘mercy before justice’’ (Gnade vor Recht). The common people who witnessed scaffold justice typically did not perceive criminal punishments to be tyrannical or unjust. This consensus between rulers and subjects is also reflected in the fact that there were few rescue attempts at the scaffold. When execution riots did occur, this happened after the condemned criminal was already dead. When an executioner botched a beheading, the crowd waited until his unfortunate victim had finally expired, and then stoned the executioner. The rioters were not protesting the death penalty, but rather the improper performance of the execution ritual. The dishonorable status of the executioner and other police officers should not be read as popular hostility towards capital punishment. Artisans’ pollution anxieties reveal a profoundly ambivalent attitude towards criminal justice. Early modern Germans seemed to attribute a kind of personal guilt to officers involved in law enforcement, as if the blame for the sufferings of the punished criminal lay with them. In  an innkeeper’s wife insulted a bailiff, saying that if the delinquent he had just arrested ended up on the gallows, the bailiff would bear the guilt of his death. In  two offenders who had been exposed to the pillory went about town blaming the bailiff who escorted them there for their dishonor. Such sentiments notwithstanding, the common people supported criminal justice as it was meted out by the authorities. But they were unwilling to associate with people who were personally involved in the performance of criminal punishments, no matter how tangential their connection might be.   

Schwerhoff, Ko¨ln im Kreuzverho¨r, pp. –. For a similar assessment see Evans, Rituals of  Retribution, pp. –. Van Du¨lmen, Theatre of Horror, pp. –. StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Michel Degert, December , . StadtAA, HWA, Schneider , December , .





The executioner’s healing touch: health and honor in early modern German medical practice

‘‘It is one thing to let yourself be cured by the hangman, it is another thing entirely to be tortured under his hand.’’ Thus a journeyman embroiderer commented on the case of Augustin Gerstecker discussed in the previous chapter. Augustin’s arrest and torture precipitated a virulent dishonor conflict in the embroiderers’ guild in . Pressed to justify why torture left a permanent taint on Augustin’s honor despite his innocence, the embroiderers explained, ‘‘If you get a stain on your clothing, you can wash it out. Nonetheless, you cannot say that the stain was never there.’’ To ‘‘be cured by the hangman,’’ however, did not pose a threat to an artisan’s honor. Early modern German executioners carried on an active medical practice and were regularly consulted by honorable guildsmen and by members of all other social estates. Executioner medicine presents a number of incongruities. First, the executioner’s symbolic role as one who was licensed to kill was offset by his role as a healer. The very man whose official function was to kill and maim spent much of his time ‘‘off duty’’ practicing medicine. Second, executioner medicine demonstrates the complexity and fluidity of the social boundary separating honorable estates from ‘‘dishonorable people’’ and the fundamental ambivalence artisans felt as they negotiated this boundary. Executioners were not polluting all the time. It was completely unproblematic to consult them in medical matters. Patients left the executioner’s home after close personal and often physical contact with the executioner with their honor intact. The executioner’s healing touch left no mark on his patients’ honor. Depending on the context, then, the executioner’s touch could be a source either of death, mutilation, and infamy or of healing and health. Artisans – and executioners’ patients of much higher estate – never explained how they distinguished  

 StadtAA, HWA, Bortenmacher , November , . Ibid. On the executioner’s practice, see Franz Heinemann, ‘‘Die Henker als Volks- und Vieha¨rzte seit Ausgang des Mittelalters,’’ Schweizerisches Archiv fu¨r Volkskunde  (), –; Markwart Herzog, ‘‘Scharfrichterliche Medizin. Zu den Beziehungen zwischen Henker und Arzt, Schafott und Medizin,’’ Medizinhistorisches Journal  (), –; Jutta Nowosadtko, ‘‘Wer Leben nimmt kann auch Leben geben – Scharfrichter und Wasenmeister als Heilkundige in der fru¨hen Neuzeit,’’ Medizin, Gesellschaft und Geschichte  (), –.



Punishment and healing social contexts in which contact with the executioner was polluting from unpolluting medical contacts. Nor did they explain why they considered the executioner to be so gifted in medical matters in the first place. What is incongruous or paradoxical to the modern observer seems to have corresponded for early modern Germans to a particular logic, a particular way of making associations; for them the executioner’s healing power and its unproblematic nature was self-evident. It is not self-evident to us, and so we approach the subject of executioner medicine keeping in mind Robert Darnton’s methodological observation ‘‘that the best points of entry in an attempt to penetrate an alien culture can be found where it seems most opaque.’’ Executioners’ gift of healing allowed them to come in contact with people of the highest social estate. We find executioners – defined in contemporary legal literature as ‘‘repulsive’’ and ‘‘contemptible’’ – practicing medicine in the homes of patricians and aristocrats, and at the courts of territorial lords. In these contexts, executioners’ infamy was latent or in some sense became inverted into its opposite: executioners as healers were accorded social recognition, prestige, and fame. There were some obvious connections between executioner medicine and criminal justice, which are clearly expressed in the sources, and some more deep-seated, underlying assumptions that led early modern Germans to associate executions and medicine. There was a disjunction between executioners’ self-presentation as sober, rational, qualified medical professionals and the symbolic, in some sense magical, associations that ultimately explained their popular appeal as healers. Contemporaries did not articulate these associations explicitly, but we can decipher them by examining executioner medicine in the context of the execution ritual. The fundamentally Christian idiom of the early modern execution ritual presents the key to unlocking the symbolic logic of executioner medicine and to resolving the apparent paradox of the executioner’s dual role as healer and killer. This chapter is based on two groups of sources. First, sources from Augsburg allow me to reconstruct executioner medical practice in one city from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The records of the barber-surgeons’ guild and of the Collegium Medicum, the corporate organization of medical doctors, contain lengthy petitions by executioners, in which they exchanged recriminations with official medical practitioners. The second set of sources, a collection of imperial ‘‘legitimations’’ located in the imperial archive in Vienna, provides the imperial context for the detailed picture of executioner medicine in Augsburg. Executioners petitioned the emperor to cleanse them of their hereditary infamy and to grant  



Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, ), p. . See, e.g. Paul Do¨pler, Theatrum Poenarum, Supplicorum, et Executionum Criminalium, der Schauplatz der Leib und Lebensstrafen (Sonderhausen, ), pp. , , . Do¨pler calls them abscheulich,  garstig, and vera¨chtlich. StadtAA, CM and HWA, Bader und Barbiere. HHStA, Restitutiones. This collection contains petitions from all over the empire: Basel, Cologne, Danzig, Nuremberg, Silesia, and Hessia, among other places.



The executioner’s healing touch them imperial privileges that would allow them free practice of medicine. Executioners included letters of recommendation by patients with their applications – a windfall for historians, since sources in which early modern patients speak for themselves are rare. In these letters we learn how sick people ended up in the executioner’s practice.          Early modern Germans could choose among a wide variety of authorized and unauthorized medical practitioners. At the top of the hierarchy were the universityeducated physicians. Augsburg sumptuary legislation placed them just beneath the patrician ruling class, in the same class as wealthy merchants and above the highest commoner estate that included such prestigious trades as goldsmiths and printers. As members of a learned profession, they were admitted to the exclusive drinking societies of the merchants and patricians. Physicians expressed their status pretensions through exclusivity and strict rules of conduct. In sixteenth-century Cologne, for example, aspiring physicians had to promise never to work with Jewish doctors or the uneducated. They swore an oath that they had not been excommunicated, that they were not dishonorable, that they had never committed murder, and – most significant in maintaining their superior status – that they had never practiced surgery. In Augsburg, as in most other cities, the medical doctors were organized in the Collegium Medicum, a corporate organization that granted – and frequently denied – licenses to medical doctors who wanted to practice in Augsburg. Augsburg doctors subscribed to Galenic theories and attempted to reserve the practice of internal medicine for themselves. According to medical codes that the city government issued from the sixteenth century on, medical doctors alone were entitled to prescribe internal purgations. Apothecaries were ordered to fill no prescriptions except those made out by licensed physicians. The Collegium Medicum exercised an oversight function over the other authorized practitioners within the city, the barber-surgeons, bathmasters, and midwives, to ensure that they met medical and professional standards, and, perhaps most importantly, to enforce the division of labor laid out in the medical codes. Barber-surgeons and bathmasters formed the second tier in the urban medical hierarchy. Barbersurgeons and bathmasters were dishonorable in some regions of the empire. Although they were never explicitly challenged as dishonorable in Augsburg, the fact that they were labeled as dishonorable elsewhere made them vulnerable to   

See, for instance, the Augsburg clothing ordinance of . StadtAA, Ratserla¨sse, Eines . . . Hochweisen Raths . . . Ernewerte Policey- Zierd – Kleider . . . Ordnung, . Bernd Roeck, Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden. Studien zur Geschichte der Reichsstadt Augsburg zwischen Kalenderstreit und Parita¨t, vol.  (Go¨ttingen, ), p. . ¨ rzte, Heiler, und Patienten. Medizinischer Alltag in der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Munich, ), Robert Ju¨tte, A  pp. –. Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, p. .



Punishment and healing insults and lowered their standing within the city. But, as with executioners, their potential dishonor remained latent within the context of healing. The only officially authorized position a woman might hold as a medical practitioner was that of midwife. Midwives played a visible and public role in early modern German cities. Their training and professional conduct was mandated in the medical codes. According to an Augsburg ordinance of , local midwives had to have given birth themselves and were required to lead an ‘‘honorable, Christian, and God-fearing life.’’ As was typical of early modern midwifery ordinances, moral and religious requirements were given greater weight than medical or technical regulations. The Augsburg ordinance ordered midwives to encourage parents to have their newborns baptized as soon as possible, and to alert the authorities if they refused. It was customary for midwives to attend baptisms, often holding the infant during the ceremony. In Augsburg and elsewhere, they were municipal employees who received an annual salary. While they did not form a guild, they had a clear sense of themselves as a professional group; they trained apprentices and held a welcome meal for newly appointed midwives. Although they were typically paid less than half as much as male medical practitioners and were heavily recruited from the working poor, their low economic status did not translate into dishonor. In contrast to male bathmasters and barber-surgeons, midwives were never named in lists of defiled trades. While they were frequently vulnerable to accusations of superstition and magical healing, such suspicions did not result in dishonor. Anyone who practiced medicine without being incorporated into one of these groups occupied a position of dubious legality. Itinerant specialists such as stonecutters, hernia-surgeons, eye doctors, or dentists received permits to practice for brief periods before they were ordered to move on. The authorities continually issued mandates designed to protect the medical monopolies of resident licensed practitioners, but city governments had neither the means nor the will to enforce such legislation. Furthermore, local and imperial authorities continually undercut existing medical legislation by granting special privileges to empirics, allowing them to practice within the jurisdiction of local medical corporations or barbersurgeons’ guilds. One hostile observer listed ‘‘old women, pick-pockets, crystalreaders, village priests, . . . urine-prophets, Jews, cow- and calf-doctors, vagabonds,

 

 

See above, chapter , pp. –. Ute Ecker-Offenha¨ßer, ‘‘‘Pest, Frantzosen, Scharbock’-Krankheitserfahrung und medizinischer Alltag des . Jahrhunderts im Spiegel der Werke des Augsburger Wundarztes Joseph Schmid’’ (MA thesis, Universita¨t Augsburg, ), p. . Merry Wiesner, Working Women in Renaissance Germany (New Bruswick, ), pp. –. Merry Wiesner, ‘‘The midwives of south Germany and the public/private dichotomy,’’ in Hilary Marland, ed., The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe (London, ), pp. –, p. ; Heide Wunder, ‘‘Er ist die Sonn, sie ist der Mond.’’ Frauen in der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Munich, ),  pp. –. Wunder, Frauen, p. .



The executioner’s healing touch . . . executioners, . . . witches, . . . and gypsies’’ among the ‘‘empirics’’ who swarmed into early modern cities. Clearly emphasizing the ‘‘superstitious’’ or ‘‘magical’’ element in the empirics’ practice, this observer did not differentiate between resident and itinerant practitioners, a distinction local authorities were careful to make. When city governments did choose to make an example and actually suppress unlicensed practice, they were most zealous against itinerants. Local empirics often enjoyed considerable tolerance. When the Augsburg grave-digger Hans Luz was sued by the barber-surgeons for unlicensed practice in , Luz provided references by patients and claimed that he was reading medical books. Luz’s practice was clearly illegal, but the city council decided to appoint a commission from the Collegium Medicum to arbitrate the case. Outraged, the medical doctors refused. The city government should enforce the existing medical legislation; otherwise, the Collegium Medicum would always be occupied with ‘‘any vagabond, grave-digger, hangman, skinner, old woman, and other such people who are forbidden to practice either internal or external cures . . .’’ In the preceding list the medical doctors placed the ‘‘hangman’’ and his assistant, the skinner, on the same level as lowly and illegal empirics and itinerants. However, as will become clear, executioners were in a much better position than most empirics. Executioners’ medical practice was at least semi-legal. And, in contrast to itinerant quacks, executioners were permanent residents. Individual families occupied local executioner positions for generations, and just as the executioners’ trade was passed along in families, so was their medical practice. Executioners’ power to heal ran in families. Executioners occupied a sanctioned niche as hereditary healers in the medical infrastructure of the early modern German town.             Executioner medicine is a phenomenon of longue dure´e. First mentioned in the fifteenth century, executioners’ medical practice is abundantly documented throughout the empire into the early decades of the nineteenth century. In  the executioner of Frankfurt set up a stand within the city to sell medicines. In  the Munich city government hired the executioner to treat burn victims. In  the magistrate of Hildesheim ordered the executioner to treat pregnant women. In  the Schaffhausen city government paid the executioner to treat citizens suffering from venereal disease. In  the Hamburg city government ordered its executioner to treat two deranged girls in the city orphanage. Executioners’ medical skills – with animals and humans – even became a professional requirement. In 



The hostile observer is Ludwig von Ho¨rnigk in his Politia Medica of , quoted in Barbara Elkeles, ‘‘Medicus und Medikaster. Zum Konflikt zwischen akademischer und ‘empirischer’ Medizin im . und fru¨hen . Jahrhundert,’’ Medizinhistorisches Journal  (), –, . StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere , for .



Punishment and healing  Frankfurt hired one executioner because he presented certificates proving ‘‘he was a good horse doctor.’’ In  the city of Eger hired an executioner under the condition that he could heal broken legs. In  King Frederick I of Prussia appointed the Berlin executioner, Martin Coblentz, as his personal physician, and in  his grandson Frederick the Great, disregarding the protests of barbersurgeons, issued a decree reaffirming executioners’ traditional right to practice as long as they passed a medical examination – a somewhat surprising move for an enlightened despot in what is commonly held to be an age of medical professionalization. The earliest source on executioner medicine in Augsburg is a petition from  by executioner Caspar Behem. Recently hired, he had several patients under his care when, prompted by his conscience, he decided to resign his post and henceforth earn his living ‘‘piously and honorably’’ as a medical practitioner. But Behem soon fell on hard times. He saw his ‘‘small fortune’’ diminish and found that he could not make a living on medicine alone. There were many doctors available, he wrote, and ‘‘perhaps because the rich do not want to entrust themselves to me’’ he was consulted only by the poor who could not pay him. He begged the council to give him back his post as executioner. He promised that he would make ‘‘the art of his medicine’’ available to poor citizens free of charge. But we find no further record of executioner Behem in Augsburg. The council apparently turned him down, most likely because they no longer considered him reliable – not because they disapproved of his medical practice. Behem’s offer to treat the poor for free obviously was intended to strengthen his application. A few years later, in , Wolf Forssdorffer, an executioner from Pfaffenhofen in Bavaria, was whipped, exposed on the pillory, and banished from the city. He had posed as a medical doctor and sold medicines. He had also practiced white magic, retrieved lost objects, and told fortunes. Forssdorffer was punished for his magic and the adoption of a false identity, not for his medical practice as such. 



  

On Munich, see Nowosadtko, ‘‘Wer Leben nimmt,’’, p. . On Hildesheim, see Wolfgang Oppelt, ¨ ber die ‘‘Unehrlichkeit’’ des Scharfrichters. Unter bevorzugter Verwendung von Ansbacher Quellen U (Lengfeld, ), p. . On Schaffhausen, see Hans von Hentig, ‘‘Zur Genealogie des Scharfrichters,’’ Schweizerische Zeitschrift fu¨r Strafrecht,  () –. On Hamburg, see Otto Beneke, Von unehrlichen Leuten. Cultur-Historische Studien und Geschichten (Hamburg, ), p. . On medical skills as a professional prerequisite, see Albrecht Keller, Der Scharfrichter in der deutschen Kulturgeschichte (Bonn/Leipzig, ; Hildesheim, reprint ), p. . On executioner medicine in Prussia, see Christian Otto Mylius, ed., Corpus Constitutionum Marchicarum, oder Ko¨niglich Preussische und Churfu¨rstlich Brandenburgische . . . Ordnungen . . ., vol.  (Berlin, ), p. . On Martin Coblentz, see Alfons Fischer, Geschichte des deutschen Gesundheitswesens, vol.  (Hildesheim, ), p. . On Frederick II’s ruling, see Heinemann, ‘‘Henker als Volks- und Vieha¨rzte,’’ p. . For nineteenth-century examples see Mary Lindemann, Health and Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Baltimore/London, ), pp. –, . The petition is not dated but it is most likely from , since it mentions the firing of an executioner ‘‘Master Peter’’ in that year. StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /. StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Wolf Forssdorffer, , , .



The executioner’s healing touch Forssdorffer’s case is atypical in two ways. First, executioners normally did not conceal their identity. They regarded medical practice as a legitimate right of their profession, even advertising that they were executioners to draw more patients. Second, as will become clear, executioners usually did not mix medicine and magic. The council, in any case, was ill disposed towards transient foreign executioners and magicians, as they were toward all vagrants. In that same year the executioner from the neighboring city of Landsberg was expelled for hawking his medicines in Augsburg. The city government did not object, however, to the medical practice of their own executioner, Veit Stolz. A decree from  allowed Stolz to treat broken bones, though it forbade him to perform other medical treatments. The executioner’s entire family shared in his power to heal. In  the municipal midwives complained that the executioner’s sister-in-law was treating pregnant women in the suburbs: ‘‘she delivers the women . . . of their children and carries them to be baptized,’’ as if she were a licensed midwife. In  the barber-surgeons accused ‘‘the executioner together with his wife and children’’ of quackery. In  a woman with a broken hand sought treatment from the executioner’s wife. In  the medical doctors complained to the council about the medical practice of Anna Catherina Hartmann, the wife of the executioner Matheus Hartmann, claiming that she had ‘‘impudently undertaken many cures of pregnant women and those giving birth, which rightly falls under the responsibility of properly examined midwives. Obviously, it was not unusual for women in executioner households to participate in the executioner’s practice. The executioner’s subordinates, skinners and dungeon guards, recruited among the younger sons in executioner clans who had been unable to acquire positions as master executioners, also practiced medicine. When the skinner Johann Scheppelin died in , he left several medical books to his sons. During the investigation of an infanticide in , the skinner Hans Jo¨rg Widemann was questioned whether he had treated the young woman during her pregnancy, which he vigorously denied. Whether or not the skinner was involved in this case, he obviously had a reputation for treating reproductive complaints and perhaps for distributing abortifacients. Why did executioners and their families have such an affinity for medicine? One connection between executioners’ medical practice and their criminal functions was obvious to contemporaries: executioners drew much of their medical expertise directly from their performance of criminal punishments. The executioner’s craft required a certain knowledge of human anatomy. Executioners had to judge the physical condition of prisoners when deciding which torture to apply, and they had       

StadtAA, GRP , fo. r, June , . StadtAA, RP , part , fo. v, November , . StadtAA, CM, Hebammen/Obfrauen, –, October , . StadtAA, CM, Pfuscher, –, December , . StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere , December , . StadtAA, AHV, CM Prot. , fo. v. StadtAA, Oberpflegamt Pflegschaftsbuch, –, p. , August , .



Punishment and healing to nurse them back to health afterwards. In , for example, the executioner Johann Adam Hartmann was ordered to examine a seventy-nine-year-old female suspect and report ‘‘what type of torture she could still endure.’’ Investigations into witchcraft called for particularly detailed inspections. It was regular procedure to shave the suspect’s entire body to search for the devil’s mark. The executioner’s wife might perform this examination on female suspects, as in , when executioner Johann Adam Hartmann was ordered to bring his wife to prison to examine a suspected witch. Her charge was to find the witch’s mark ‘‘particularly in secret parts.’’ This was not the general procedure for examining female suspects, however. Female prisoners usually endured the indignity of an examination by the executioner himself. Executioners’ tasks in criminal justice provided them with greater opportunity to study the human body than university-trained doctors. Before the mid-seventeenth century, Augsburg’s medical doctors rarely performed dissections on human bodies. A chronicle reports such a dissection by a medical doctor in Augsburg in  as a special event. For reasons that remain unclear, the regular practice of human dissections by medical doctors or barber-surgeons began later, remained less frequent, and seems to have incurred greater cultural resistance in Germanspeaking lands than in Italy, for example. Whereas dissections became common in Italy during the fourteenth century, anatomical dissection for teaching purposes was not introduced at the University of Cologne before . The government had to force barber-surgeons and midwives to attend by threatening them with fines. By contrast, it seems to have been common practice for German executioners to dissect their victims. Master Franz Schmidt, executioner in Nuremberg from  to , who kept a diary in which he recorded all criminal punishments he performed, noted on several occasions that he had dissected a delinquent’s body. In Munich, on those occasions when medical doctors and barber-surgeons did perform dissections, executioners participated in such examinations, as a  decree condemning executioners’ attendance attests. In Augsburg, dissections by medical doctors remained infrequent until the mid-eighteenth century. A ‘‘List of Malefactors,’’ that recorded executions after , did not note a dissection

   





StadtAA, GRP , fos. v–r, June , . For an example of the detail of such examinations, see StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgicht Augustin Gerstecker, , , , , , Meister Marx’s testimony, April , .  StadtAA, RP , p. , May , . StadtAA, Chroniken Nr. , May , . For Italy, see Katherine Park, ‘‘The criminal and the saintly body: autopsy and dissection in ¨ rzte, pp. – Renaissance Italy,’’ Renaissance Quarterly  (), –, . For Cologne, see Ju¨tte, A . For instance, after the beheading of a robber on  July , Meister Franz recorded that he ‘‘dissected and cut him.’’ Schmidt, Franz, Das Tagebuch des Meister Franz, Scharfrichter zu Nu¨rnberg, ed. Ju¨rgen Carl Jacobs and Heinz Ro¨lleke (; Dortmund: Harenberg, reprint ), p. . Stadtarchiv Munich, Bu¨rgermeister und Rat  B , Scharfrichter Mandat, June , .



The executioner’s healing touch performed by medical doctors before . Until then, executioners’ right to dissect criminals’ bodies appears to have been undisputed. Medical doctors began to encroach on this traditional practice in the mid-eighteenth century. In  executioner Johann Georg Trenkler was required to deliver the bodies of executed criminals to the hospital to be dissected by the medical doctors, and in  he was explicitly forbidden to perform dissections. This constituted a blow to executioners’ traditional medical practice, which required a regular supply of cadavers. It is not clear whether executioners performed dissections in order to learn about human anatomy; their primary goal, in any case, was to acquire raw materials for their medical treatments. Executioners derived many ingredients for their medicines from the bodies of executed criminals. The executioner’s wife, for example, who cared for the woman with the broken hand in  used human fat in her treatment. Human fat, specifically Armsu¨nderfett (poor sinner’s fat) rendered from the bodies of executed criminals, was considered a potent medicine and was used to cure a variety of ailments, particularly broken bones, sprains, or crippling arthritis. According to a traditional rhyme, Zerlassen Menschenfett ist gut fu¨r lahme Glieder, So man sie damit schmiert, sie werden richtig wieder. Melted human fat is good for lame limbs. If one rubs them with it, they become right again.

Poor sinner’s fat was a stock remedy in executioners’ medical repertoire. In  medical doctors remarked contemptuously that the executioner should stick to his human fat and dog grease; ‘‘just because he can reset the dislocated joints of tortured delinquents does not mean he understands illnesses and can cure them.’’ The physicians did not consider human fat inefficacious; they were trying to exclude the executioner from their preserve of internal medicine. Indeed, there was a general consensus concerning the healing power of poor sinner’s fat. In Munich the executioner delivered human fat to the city’s apothecaries by the pound until the mid-eighteenth century, a sure sign that executioners were not alone in prescribing it. As late as  executioner Johann Georg Trenkler buttressed his petition to continue dissecting executed delinquents by pointing out that this was the best source of human fat. ‘‘The whole town knows,’’ he wrote, ‘‘that by mixing a salve with human fat . . . I have cured several patients of their nerve gout.’’ He      

SStBA, ° cod Aug , Maleficanten Liste, . StadtAA, RP , p. , May , , and Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, decree from   March . StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere , December , . Quoted in ‘‘Fett,’’ HDA, : –. StadtAA, CM, Apotheker von –, Tom. , January–February . Jutta Nowosadtko, Scharfrichter und Abdecker. Der Alltag zweier ‘‘unehrlicher Berufe’’ in der Fru¨hen Neuzeit (Paderborn, ), p. . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, March , , March , .



Punishment and healing also treated cramps, goiter, and other afflictions with this remedy. The council turned Trenkler down, not because they objected to the use of human fat but because by this time the medical doctors were regularly performing dissections. The doctors, the council decreed, would provide the apothecaries and country doctors with human fat from their anatomical demonstrations, a clear indication that human fat was still an accepted remedy in the mid-eighteenth century. The use of human fat was not particular to executioner medicine; executioners simply had privileged access to it for most of the early modern period. Human fat was not the only human material executioners used in their medical treatments. In , a chronicle records, the executioner sold the skull of a young woman to an apothecary for  gulden. The chronicler did not explain how the skull was to be used. Folklorists report that human skull was baked, ground into powder, and administered in a drink as a cure for epilepsy. This was also recommended in the official London pharmacopoeia of , another indication that the medicinal use of human body parts was not limited to executioner medicine, or for that matter to German medical practice. In  executioner Trenkler reported on the beneficial effect of another human material: he had ‘‘given pregnant women very valuable help by applying human skin’’ (he did not specify how). Licensed midwives also used human skin. In early seventeenth-century Munich, executioner Hans Stadler arranged with a local midwife to supply her with human skins in exchange for her free assistance to his wife during pregnancy. According to folklorists, the tanned human skin was cut into straps, which women wore as belts during labor. Wearing a strip of tanned human skin around the neck helped against goiter. The use of executed criminals’ blood as a cure for epilepsy was documented in the empire and other European countries well into the nineteenth century. Epileptics waited at the scaffold as a beheading took place and drank the ‘‘poor sinner’s blood’’ immediately, while it was still fresh and warm. At    

  

In early modern Italy executioners sold human fat as a pain killer. Giovanna Ferrari, ‘‘Public anatomy lessons and the carneval: the anatomy theatre of Bologna,’’ Past and Present  (), –.  StadtAA, AHV, CM Prot. , fo. v. StadtAA, Chroniken Nr. , February , . Oskar von Hovorka and Adolf Kronfeld, Vergleichende Volksmedizin. Eine Darstellung volksmedizinischer Sitten und Gebra¨uche, vol.  (Stuttgart, ), p. . William Brockbank, ‘‘Sovereign remedies: a critical depreciation of the th-century London pharmacopoeia,’’ Medical History  (), –, . On English popular beliefs in the healing powers of the cadavers of executed criminals, see Peter Linebaugh, ‘‘The Tyburn Riot against the Surgeons,’’ in Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Douglas Hay et  al. (New York, ), pp. –, pp. –. Nowosadtko, Scharfrichter, p. . On the medicinal powers of human skin, see ‘‘Haut,’’ HDA, : –, and ‘‘Hingerichteter, Armsu¨nder, Hinrichtung,’’ HDA, : . G. La¨mmert, Volksmedizin und medizinischer Aberglaube in Bayern (Wu¨rzburg, ), p. . For graphic descriptions of this practice from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, see ¨ ffentlichkeit und Autorita¨t. Zur Geschichte ‘‘Hingerichteter,’’ HDA, : –; Richard J. Evans, ‘‘O der Hinrichtungen in Deutschland vom Allgemeinen Landrecht bis zum dritten Reich,’’ in Ra¨uber, Volk, und Obrigkeit. Studien zur Geschichte der Kriminalita¨t in Deutschland seit dem . Jahrhundert, ed. Heinz Reif (Frankfurt a.M, ), pp. –, pp. –, and Evans, Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany – (Oxford, ), pp. –. For examples from Sweden,



The executioner’s healing touch an early sixteenth-century execution in Swabia, a vagrant grabbed the beheaded body ‘‘before it had fallen, and drank the blood from him, and they say he was cured of the falling sickness from it.’’ In  Johann Joachim Becher, personal physician to the Elector of Mainz and subsequently to the Elector of Bavaria, waxed poetic about the healing virtues of ‘‘human flesh, or mummy’’: Die Mumie resolvirt geronnenes Geblu¨t Vor Miltzes stechen und vor Husten es behu¨t Bla¨hung und Wind des Leibs, verhaltene Weiberzeit Zwey Quintlein o¨ffnen dir, zum Pulver seyend bereit.  Mummy dissolves blood clots, It protects from painful spleen or coughing, Two ounces, ground to a powder, will open up flatulence and wind of the body as well as blocked menstruation.

Becher used the term ‘‘mummy’’ in a different sense than its original meaning in ancient and medieval medical sources. The term originally referred to bituminous materials that oozed from Egyptian mummies. The Roman naturalist Pliny was one of the first to recommend its medicinal use. Medieval sources, using the term in this original sense, described mummy as ‘‘menstruation of the dead.’’ By the fifteenth century, the meaning of the term had changed and referred to the entire mummified body, impregnated with these precious fluids. When early modern physicians prescribed mummy, they meant the flesh itself, rather than liquids exuding from the body. But since ‘‘true Egyptian mummy’’ was in short supply, physicians developed recipes for making ‘‘fresh’’ mummy from the more recently deceased. Becher praised the efficacy of both ‘‘true Egyptian’’ and ‘‘fresh’’ mummy. In addition to mummy, Becher recommended that apothecaries keep at least twenty-three types of human material in stock. And indeed, apothecary inventories and pharmacopoeias confirm that a ready supply of human raw materials was on hand. In , the official pharmacopoeia of the free imperial city of Nuremberg,





  

Denmark, and Switzerland from the early modern period and the nineteenth century, see Mabel Peacock, ‘‘Executed criminals and folk-medicine,’’ Folk-Lore  (): –. This is recorded in the Zimmern Chronicle, the house chronicle of the Zimmern, a Swabian aristocratic family, written from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Quoted in ‘‘Hingerichteter’’, HDA, p. . Quoted in Elfriede Grabner, ‘‘Der Mensch als Arzenei. Alpenla¨ndische Belege zu einem Ka¨rntner Schauerma¨rlein,’’ in Festgabe fu¨r Oskar Moser. Beitra¨ge zur Volkskunde Ka¨rntens (Klagenfurt, ), p. . Karl H. Dannenfeldt, ‘‘Egyptian mumia: the sixteenth century experience and debate,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal  (), –. Marie-Christine Pouchelle, The Body and Surgery in the Middle Ages (Oxford, ), p. . Alfred Wiedemann, ‘‘Mumie als Heilmittel,’’ Zeitschrift des Vereins fu¨r rheinische und westfa¨lische Volkskunde  (), –, –.



Punishment and healing which served as model in south Germany, lists whole human skull (Cranii Humani Integri) and prepared human skull, human grains (Granii Humani), mummy or ‘‘marinated human flesh’’ (balsamiertes Menschenfleisch), human fat (Pinguedo Hominis), salt from human grains (Salis Granii Humani), and spirit of human bone (Spiritus Ossium Humanorum). In  apothecaries in Ulm stocked all these materials, as well as moss that had grown on human skulls (usnea). All these examples demonstrate that the medicinal exploitation of the human cadaver was undisputed in unofficial as well as in licensed medical practice, in popular as well as in learned medicine.           How did contemporaries explain the healing powers of human body parts? According to learned physicians, these healing powers derived from a vital force which remained in the body beyond the moment of death. This belief was articulated most clearly by Paracelsus and his followers. In a treatise entitled ‘‘Of Flesh and Mummy,’’ Paracelsus, who claimed that he acquired much of his medical knowledge from conversations with vagabonds and executioners, argued that this healing life force was strongest in the body of a young and healthy person who had died a sudden, violent death. He condemned the use of cadavers of persons who died of natural causes, comparing their flesh to skinner’s carrion. ‘‘The most noble mummy,’’ he contended, could be derived from the body of a person who had been hanged or broken on the wheel: ‘‘If the doctors . . . knew what one can do with this mummy and what it is good for, no criminal would remain on the gallows or wheel more than three days . . .’’ Doctors were well aware of what mummy was good for. Paracelsian physicians commented extensively on its uses, echoing Paracelsus’ argument that the ‘‘spirits’’ could most effectively be captured in the bodies of executed criminals; for them death arrived so suddenly that their life force did not have time to escape. This force could be harnessed to influence living bodies by means of sympathetic action. Orthodox Galenic physicians did not comment on the power inherent in mummy or other body parts, but they did not deny it, and they too exploited the cadaver in their medical practice. The English College of Physicians, dominated by Galenists, included mummy, human blood, and human skull in the  edition of  

 

SStBA ° Med , Erneuerte Gesetz . . . Eines Edlen . . . Raths des Heil: Reichs Statt Nu¨rnberg, dem Collegio Medico . . . gegeben (Nuremberg, ). StadtAA, CM, Medizinal und Apotheker Ordnungen, Des Heiligen Reichs-Stadt Ulm Erneuerter Apotheker Tax (Ulm, ). For further examples, Ludwig von Ho¨rnigk, Politia Medica (Frankfurt a.M., ), , , , –. For nineteenth-century examples, see Grabner, ‘‘Mensch als Arzenei,’’  p. . Oppelt, ‘‘Unehrlichkeit;’’ p. . ‘‘Von dem Fleisch und der Mumia,’’ in Theophrastus Paracelsus, Werke, vol. . Philosophische Schriften, ed. by Will-Erich Peukert (Basel, ), pp. –, pp. –. Wiedemann, ‘‘Mumie als Heilmittel,’’ p. .



The executioner’s healing touch their official pharmocopoeia, and kept adding body parts in subsequent editions. German collegia medica were heavily Galenic, and yet, as we have seen, they authorized official municipal pharmacopoeias which listed numerous human materials. In the words of one historian, ‘‘it was basically why certain medicines were used which distinguished a Paracelsian from a non-Paracelsian, and not so much which medicines were used.’’ Such learned discussions about why the human cadaver was efficacious were relatively far removed from the everyday concerns of patients and practitioners who, for the most part, simply used the body parts without further comment. On one thing, however, everyone was agreed: there was nothing magical or supernatural about using human raw materials in medicine. The medical efficacy of human body parts derived from the powers that were naturally inherent in them. When the Munich executioner Hans Stadler came under suspicion of practicing white magic in the early seventeenth century, he protested that he only used ‘‘natural means’’ in his medicines, namely, ‘‘herbs, roots, and human fat.’’ It is difficult to explain how contemporaries drew this boundary between nature and magic, especially since many of the same raw materials executioners put to ‘‘natural’’ use in medicine could also be employed for magical ends. In  the weaver Thomas Trummer despoiled the corpse of a criminal who had been broken on the wheel, and whose body lay exposed on that same wheel at the scaffold. Thomas removed his ‘‘secret’’ (die Haimlichkhait), along with a finger, spokes of the wheel, and the rope with which he was tied. Thomas knew how to help ‘‘when someone is harmed by evil people, or is robbed of his manhood in some other way’’ – hence perhaps the ‘‘secret?’’ In  the carpenter Georg Schott approached the executioner in Schongaw to purchase the colon of a man who had hanged himself. He intended to burn the colon and mix the residue with gunpowder, so he would become a sure shot. In the eyes of the authorities such practices were unequivocally magical and superstitious and were therefore subject to prosecution. After being interrogated under torture, Georg was lucky to get off with a whipping and banishment. When executioners used body parts for medicine, this was natural and therefore legal. The medical use of human body parts was permissible and recommended in divine and human law and custom, the Prussian court physician and medical professor 



  

Karen Gordon-Grube, ‘‘Evidence of medicinal cannibalism in Puritan New England: ‘mummy’ and related remedies in Edward Taylor’s ‘dispensatory’,’’ Early American Literature  (), –,  . Ibid., p. . See, e.g. Philippe Arie`s’ discussion of the writings of the German physician Christian Friedrich Garmann (–). In his De Miraculis Mortuorum (Dresden, ), Garmann argues that cadavers provided effective medical remedies of a non-magical character. Arie`s, The Hour of our  Death (New York, ), p. . Nowosadtko, Scharfrichter, p. . StadtAA, Strafamt Urgicht Thomas Trummer, a, b. See also Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London, ), p. . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgicht Georg Schott, a, /, Nr. ; Roper, Oedipus, p. . StadtAA, Strafamt, Strafbuch –,  January , fo. v.



Punishment and healing Daniel Becker argued in his Medicus Microcosmus published in . In contrast, when a journeyman weaver kept a criminal’s toe in his pocket as a good luck charm, or when an old woman performed cures with the needle and thread used to sew a corpse into the shroud, or when people turned items taken from the living or dead body – nails, hair, cauls, afterbirth – into protective amulets, this smacked of superstition and fraud at best, of harmful magic and witchcraft at worst. A Bavarian mandate against superstition and witchcraft issued in  criminalized these and many other popular apotropaic practices. The edict specifically condemned ‘‘that many people dare to take things from executed criminals, and take the chains from the gallows where the criminal was hanged, . . . as well as the rope . . . to employ in certain arts.’’ The decree forbade the use of all objects ‘‘to which superstition . . . attributes another effect than it can have naturally.’’ Cunning folk and magical healers were frequently swept up in the European witch-hunt. Not satisfied to prosecute maleficium alone, state and church set out to extirpate all popular magic. Executioners, however, remained more or less immune to witchcraft prosecutions. How did contemporaries distinguish between natural medicine and popular magic, and why were executioner-healers not criminalized until the late eighteenth century, long after the witch-hunt had ended? Keith Thomas argues that early modern medical prescriptions that appear magical to the modern observer were ‘‘in fact based on obsolescent assumptions about the physical properties of natural substances.’’ When Elizabethans wore certain rings to ward off the plague, ‘‘they were not resorting to magic, but employing a purely physical form of treatment.’’ The healing touch of kings could also be understood as a natural process. In his famous work on the royal touch, Marc Bloch describes how French and English monarchs healed scrofula, a tubercular skin disease, by laying on of hands. This healing ritual inspired a lively debate among medical doctors, natural philosophers, and theologians. The actual efficacy of the royal touch was never in question, but contemporaries were divided as to the ultimate source of the kings’ healing powers. Did the healing touch derive from the sacred nature of kingship, a result of supernatural, divine intervention, or was the healing efficacy of the royal touch a natural effect? According to majority opinion, the royal touch was thaumaturgic, e.g. miraculous, but a number of Renaissance philosophers denied any direct divine participation in the healing action. The Renaissance skeptic Pietro Pompanazzi, for example, argued that just as particular plants or minerals could cure particular diseases, so certain individuals could possess as a personal attribute the power to heal certain diseases. The healing     

 Grabner, ‘‘Mensch als Arzenei,’’ p. . Roper, Oedipus, pp. –. Wolfgang Behringer, Mit dem Feuer vom Leben zum Tod. Hexengesetzgebung in Bayern (Munich,  ), pp. –, . Harmful magic. Richard van Du¨lmen, Kultur und Alltag in der fru¨hen Neuzeit, vol.  (Munich, ), pp. –. Johann Glenzdorf and Fritz Treichel, Henker, Schinder, und arme Su¨nder,  vols. (Bad Mu¨nder am Deister, ), vol. , p. . Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, ), pp. –.



The executioner’s healing touch powers of French and English kings might derive from blood relationships or hereditary disposition, both natural influences according to Pompanazzi. Similarly, other individuals who healed by laying on of hands or ‘‘stroking’’ were not necessarily practicing magic. According to Galenic medical theory, this treatment worked as a magnetic means of evacuating excess humors through the extremities, thus restoring equilibrium to the body. The practice of stroking sufferers from goiter with ‘‘the dead hand of freshly hanged man,’’ a remedy highly recommended by Robert Boyle, could also be considered a natural cure since it worked by means of the same magnetic influence. These examples demonstrate that contemporaries had considerable latitude in classifying which practices were natural and which were magical. ‘‘In practice,’’ argues Keith Thomas, ‘‘the presence or absence of charms as an accompaniment to the medicine became the test of whether magic was involved.’’ As long as executioners did not resort to spells or prayers in their practice, they would remain undisturbed by the authorities. Early modern patients seem to have drawn the line between medicine and magic in a quite pragmatic manner. Since people wanted to consult the executioner when they were ill, they were inclined to believe, or at least to claim, that executioners cured by natural means.        ’      What exactly did executioners do with their raw materials? How did they treat their patients? Treating broken bones, sprains, dislocated joints, and external injuries was the executioner’s particular specialty. Even when the authorities – under the prodding of licensed barber-surgeons and medical doctors – attempted to suppress executioner medicine, executioners were allowed to treat such external ailments. This fell within the traditional rights of executioners throughout the empire. In  the city of Nuremberg, answering an inquiry from Augsburg, reported that their executioners were permitted to treat external injuries ‘‘about which they have some knowledge.’’ In  and again in  executioners in Prussia were granted the right to treat broken legs. Patients’ letters confirm executioners’ skill in treating external injuries. The patients tell dramatic stories of suffering for weeks or months at the hands of doctors and barber-surgeons, tales of gangrenous limbs and impending amputations. When all seemed lost, they placed themselves under the care of the executioner who saved their limbs after all. In  Lorentz Seitz, for example, a journeyman brewer in Nuremberg, was rescued from knife-happy barber-surgeons by the ministrations of Johann Michael Schmidt, the local executioner. Schmidt saved Seitz’s wounded leg, which the barber-surgeons had  

Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch: Monarchy and Miracles in France and England (New York, ),   pp. –. Thomas, Religion, p. . Ibid., p. . StadtAA, CM, Pfuscher, –, letter from Nuremberg, May , ; for Prussia, see Mylius, Corpus Constitutionum Marchicarum, p. .



Punishment and healing threatened to amputate, by visiting him in his home and applying new bandages twice a day: ‘‘in this way, with God’s help he put me back together again, . . . so that I can walk and work . . .’’ Seitz is frustratingly vague, however, concerning the details of the treatment. Did the executioner apply human fat? Seitz and all other patients remain silent on this point. Should we interpret this silence to mean that the use of human fat on external injuries was so obvious as to need no mention, or was the medicinal use of human raw materials perhaps not entirely unproblematic after all? What outraged official practitioners, in particular the medical doctors, even more than executioners’ treatment of external injuries, was that executioners did not limit themselves to broken bones but regularly encroached on what the physicians considered their legal monopoly: internal medicine. In a petition to the Augsburg city council in , the medical doctors complained that the executioner was so impudent that he not only ‘‘writes prescriptions, but sometimes mixes the medicines himself, examines urine, gives advice, and distributes purgations and medicines, in private and in public (haimblich und offentlich), in and outside of his house.’’ The truth of the doctors’ complaint is confirmed both in patients’ letters and in executioners’ petitions. When Augsburg’s executioner Johann Adam Hartmann petitioned the emperor for a legitimation in , he wrote that he had ‘‘practiced not only surgery, but internal and external medicine as well.’’ Patients also described executioners’ practice of uroscopy. In  an eyeglass-maker from Fu¨rth brought a urine sample from his wife, who was suffering from ‘‘a growth in her body,’’ to the executioner in Nuremberg: ‘‘by looking at the urine, he told me so much about what was ailing my wife that I could not have described it better myself.’’ Apparently the eyeglass-maker gave the executioner the urine to inspect without elaborating on his wife’s symptoms – perhaps as a kind of test of the executioner’s skill. The executioner passed this test to his satisfaction and began treating his wife. Executioners treated almost any imaginable complaint. In the s and s the Nuremberg executioner Johann Michael Schmidt treated patients for fever, hemorrhaging from the vagina, broken bones, gangrenous limbs, ‘‘weakness in the head,’’ and epilepsy. Balthasar Hirschfeld, an executioner in Mainz who practiced in the s, treated rheumatism, consumption, burns, paralysis, cancerous growths, and broken bones. The letters contain a fascinating example of one woman’s gynecological complaint and the executioner’s treatment. In  Barbara Bo¨hm, wife of a Nuremberg comb-maker, described how she was overcome by a ‘‘gruesome, evil disease’’ which brought her ‘‘monthly and womanly condition’’ to     

HHuStA, Restitutiones, Fasz. /S, Johann Michael Schmidt, . StadtAA, CM, Apotheker von –, Tom. , correspondence January–February, . HHuStA, Restitutiones, Fasz. /H, Johann Adam Hartmann, .  HHuStA, Restitutiones, Fasz. /S, Johann Michael Schmidt, . Ibid., . HHuStA, Restitutiones, Fasz. /H, Balthasar Hirschfeld, .



The executioner’s healing touch a stop. This illness was brought on by anger, which in turn caused her such a fright that her ‘‘monthly flow’’ finally erupted from the top of her head. She consulted medical doctors and barber-surgeons who went to great lengths to stop the bleeding, but to no avail. Finally she consulted executioner Schmidt who gave her ‘‘good medicines’’ to strengthen her and applied poultices to her head to stop the bleeding. In no time the bleeding stopped (she did not say whether her periods returned). Barbara Bo¨hm’s condition very much resembles the complaints of female patients of Dr. Johann Storch, who practiced medicine in Eisenach in Saxony around . His practice has been painstakingly reconstructed by Barbara Duden, who showed that the doctor and his female patients shared a similar interpretation of bodily experiences: health depended on the free flow of liquids from the body. This flow could be blocked by an external influence, a draft, a sudden fright, and become misdirected within the body and break out in some place it did not belong – as in the case of Barbara Bo¨hm. Worse yet, the flow could become stuck within the body, causing stagnation and putrefaction, a life-threatening condition. The fact that Barbara Bo¨hm and executioner Schmidt came up with the same interpretation of her condition as Dr. Storch did for his patients means that the executioner and the university-educated physician operated within the same medical frame of reference – perhaps the medical practice of executioners resembled that of the physicians more than the doctors liked to acknowledge. The letters also make it clear that executioners did indeed touch their patients. This does not go without saying, since early modern practitioners frequently treated their patients without ever laying hands on them. Barbara Duden describes how Dr. Storch treated some of his patients for years without ever seeing them, let alone touching them, by analyzing urine samples the patients had sent and making long-distance diagnoses. Duden goes so far as to write of a ‘‘touch taboo’’ of physicians in relation to their female patients. Considering the vulnerability of an artisan’s honor to physical contact with the executioner during a criminal interrogation, this question of touch is of crucial importance in our attempt to explain the latency of dishonor in the medical context. A touch taboo did not exist between the executioner and his patients of either sex. In  a councilor to the archbishop of Mainz specifically referred to the executioner’s healing touch: he attested that executioner Hirschfeld had cured his daughter by ‘‘taking [her] under his skilled hands’’ [meine Tochter unter seine geschickte Ha¨nde nahm]. The councilor’s wording is remarkable, because the expression to come ‘‘under the executioner’s hands’’ was more commonly used to describe being subjected to judicial torture or corporal punishment at the hands of the executioner.  

Barbara Duden, The Woman beneath the Skin: a Doctor’s Patients in Eighteenth-Century Germany  (Cambridge, Mass., ), pp. –. Ibid., pp. –. HHuStA, Restitutiones, Fasz. /H, Balthasar Hirschfeld, .



Punishment and healing           ’       Who were the executioners’ patients? Our evidence for Augsburg executioners is fragmentary. Caspar Behem complained in  that most of his patients were impoverished, ‘‘perhaps because the rich do not want to entrust themselves to me.’’ But Behem’s experience was atypical. Other executioners treated patients from various social classes. In  Veit Malsch, a transient foreign executioner accused of theft, testified that he had cured a nobleman for  gulden, no mean sum considering that the annual salary for a municipal midwife was just  gulden. He had also treated a cook for the same amount. Stonemasons and other artisans regularly consulted the executioner for medical advice. In , Marx Philipp Hartmann had a ‘‘duke of Lorraine,’’ a territorial lord, in treatment. Johann Adam Hartmann treated a merchant’s daughter in . In  Hartmann counted ‘‘peasants and local common people’’ and ‘‘Swabian country- and townsfolk’’ among his patients. In  a vagrant weaver was arrested outside the Augsburg city walls. He told his interrogators that he was on his way to the executioner to seek treatment for the open wounds on his feet; he had heard that Augsburg’s executioner cured such injuries well and cheaply. Johann Georg Trenkler cured the daughter of a lawyer and syndic to the cathedral chapter in . In a petition from  Trenkler wrote that his treatment was helping many people, both Catholics and Protestants. It is clear that Augsburg executioners had quite a mixed clientele. Impoverished residents, country folk, vagrants, middling artisans, Catholics and Protestants, members of the upper classes, a merchant, a lawyer, a nobleman, a territorial lord – all used the executioner’s services. Executioners’ petitions for legitimation and their patients’ letters afford a more detailed view of the kind of patients particular executioners could attract. In  Nuremberg’s executioner Franz Schmidt included a list of patients ‘‘of high and exalted estate’’ with his petition. The list included imperial councilors, cathedral canons, aristocrats, patricians, and members of the city council, forty-one people in all. Johann Michael Schmidt, Nuremberg’s executioner from  to , served a humbler clientele. His patients included the wife of an eyeglass-maker, a journeyman brewer, a goldsmith from a neighboring village, the wife of a comb-

       

 StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /. Wiesner, Working Women, p. . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Veit Malch, c, , , . I would like to thank B. Ann  Tlusty for pointing this case out to me. StadtAA, HWA, Maurer , December , . StadtAA, CM, Schedarum quarum in Actis Collegii Medici mentio sit, Fasz. dus, ad Prot. Vol.  pertinens . . . –. StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Christeiner, , , testimony of Johann Adam Hart mann. StadtAA, CM in genere, –, July , . StadtAA, Zuchthaus, Buchloe , list of vagrants, March , . StadtAA, RP , p. , July , . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, March , . HHuStA, Restitutiones, Fasz. /S, Franz Schmid, .



The executioner’s healing touch maker, a retailer, a peasant, a baker, and a journeyman miller. The patients of Balthasar Hirschfeld, executioner in Mainz in the s, were of considerably higher status. Four were clearly aristocratic. Hirschfeld presented letters by a cathedral canon, the choirmaster at the cathedral, a baron, a baroness, a Jesuit, two members of the archbishop’s council, and two army officers. The executioners obviously requested letters from their most illustrious patients, so these lists hardly constitute representative samples of executioners’ clientele. The patients’ letters do amply demonstrate, however, that medicine enabled executioners to gain access to the highest reaches of society. Furthermore, executioners’ high-class patients seem to have felt some measure of obligation towards them, since they were willing to write letters on their behalf. The social boundary between laity and clergy had no effect on executioners’ drawing power. Rich and poor, clerics and lay people, city folk and peasants, men and women – all felt no compunction in consulting the executioner in medical matters. Dishonor never became an issue in medical contacts between executioners and their patients. Much to the contrary, an executioner’s treatment could actually restore a patient’s honor. In  a male patient, whose reputation was damaged by the claim that he had syphilis, requested a certificate of health from executioner Marx Philipp Hartmann. The executioner attested that the man had suffered from smallpox, not syphilis. Hartmann declared that he had ‘‘completely cured him from this affliction, so that no impurity remains in him, and no one has any reason to shun him. This I attest by my signature and seal . . .’’ Executioners practiced openly, and their patients consulted them openly. ‘‘It is only the imagination of our own time which has the hangman’s visitors secretly sneak through the alleyways by night,’’ a legal historian has commented on this phenomenon. If anything, executioner medicine seems to have been particularly public. Executioners, like other medical practitioners, placed great emphasis on their reputation as healers. They boasted of their popularity in their petitions, and even local governments attested to the medical renown of their executioners with apparent pride. In , for instance, the government of Cologne reported that the ‘‘fame’’ of their executioner Johann Georg Hoffmann had spread throughout the region. Barbara Duden has described how a doctor’s reputation spread by word of mouth and how sick people found the healer of their choice by relying on an extensive network of family, friends, and acquaintances from whom they heard about particular practitioners and whose recommendations they followed: ‘‘Patients make a practice; in order to survive, one had to be introduced.’’ The same     

HHuStA, Restitutiones, Fasz. /S, Johann Michael Schmid, . HHuStA, Restitutiones, Fasz. /S, Balthasar Hirschfeld, . StadtAA, CM, Schedarum quarum in Actis Collegi Medici mentio sit, Fasc. dus, ad Prot. Vol.  pertinens . . . –. Joachim Gernhuber, ‘‘Strafvollzug und Unehrlichkeit,’’ Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fu¨r Rechtsgeschichte, Germanische Abteilung  (), –, .  HHuStA, Restitutiones, Fasz. /, Johann Georg Hoffmann, . Duden, Woman, p. .



Punishment and healing held true for the executioner. Patients found their way to the executioner through a variety of social connections. In  a Nuremberg goldsmith consulted executioner Schmidt on the ‘‘insistent recommendation of various people and good friends.’’ In the same year, the woman who suffered from monthly bleedings from her head ended up in the executioner’s practice because ‘‘good people finally advised me that I should go to our executioner Johann Michael Schmidt. He is supposed to be very learned . . .’’ The public nature of executioner medicine was not exceptional compared with other types of medical practice, by both licensed and unlicensed healers. Indeed, healing relationships and the healing process in general were quite public in early modern Europe. Robert Ju¨tte argues that early modern medical practice constituted a ‘‘particular type of public sphere’’: the physician was called to the sickbed where he interacted with his patient before an audience consisting of the patient’s relatives and visiting friends. Barbara Duden comments on the public nature of the therapeutic process and the public context in which communication between doctor and patient took place. Patients did not hesitate to have blood and urine samples delivered to their doctor, publicly and openly, by their friends, neighbors, or messengers. These intermediaries could also report to the doctor about the patient’s ‘‘flows, bleeding, color of urine, the sliminess of the blood drawn – everything that emanated from the body’’ in exquisite detail. This communication network linking doctor and patient was characterized by the ‘‘publicness of bodily phenomena we today carefully conceal.’’ In her discussion of medical ‘‘charlatans,’’ Alison Lingo argues that the public setting of street healing was an essential part of the therapeutic process: ‘‘Public healing was a kind of social ritual which contributed to the spiritual, if not the physical health of the sick.’’ The public context of the healing relationship contributed to ‘‘the totality of the whole experience.’’ Executioners’ public practice and the public nature of the interaction with their patients correspond to the common pattern of healing relationships in early modern Europe.                        In contrast to the unproblematic interaction with their patients, executioners were in a state of perennial conflict with licensed medical practitioners, the barbersurgeons and university-trained physicians. The issue here was not executioners’ legal infamy or the problem of pollution. These conflicts centered around division of labor and market share. Licensed medical practitioners strongly resented executioner medicine as an encroachment on their legal monopoly. Licensed practi  

 HHuStA, Restitutiones, Fasz. /S, Johann Michael Schmidt, . Ibid.  ¨ rzte, pp. –. Ju¨tte, A Duden, Woman, pp. –. Alison K. Lingo, ‘‘Empirics and charlatans in early modern France: the genesis of the classification of the ‘Other’ in medical practice,’’ Journal of Social History  (), –, .



The executioner’s healing touch tioners rarely made an issue of the executioner’s dishonor. Instead, they challenged his competency and medical training. Executioners defended their medical practice by presenting themselves as qualified medical professionals. In  the medical doctors in Augsburg complained that the executioner and his family members were usurping their prerogatives more than ever, ‘‘healing not only broken legs, but old and new injuries, and mixing all kinds of medicines.’’ The executioner could afford to provide the service more cheaply than they, because he also received his executioner’s wages. This competition by the executioner caused them ‘‘great ridicule, contempt, and humiliation . . . as if we had not learned our trade.’’ It is not clear how the government responded to this petition. In , however, the government issued a decree to protect the medical doctors from unlicensed competition. The decree forbade ‘‘quacks, such as the local executioner . . . and other such cow doctors who do not read Latin’’ to examine urine or mix purgatives, since their potions were often so strong that their patients died from them. The barber-surgeons’ ordinance even included an article intended to protect their medical monopoly: ‘‘Should the executioner, or women, or other such unqualified persons dare to bandage a wounded person . . . or do a bloodletting . . . then they should be brought before the Punishment Lords . . .’’ Guild ordinances took the form of governmental decrees, so this article demonstrates at once the barber-surgeons’ fear of the executioner’s competition and the government’s intention to protect the legal monopoly of licensed medical practitioners. The chronic conflict between executioners and medical professionals became acute during the tenure of executioner Marx Philipp Hartmann. Master Marx had a remarkable career. He came to Augsburg from the neighboring free imperial city of Ulm in , moved into executioner Dietrich Metz’s household as his assistant, and married Metz’s daughter Barbara. When his father-in-law resigned his post in , Marx succeeded him as master executioner. He did not wait to start up his medical practice. In  and  the Collegium Medicum petitioned the authorities to forbid Marx’s practice of internal medicine. It is unclear whether the government acted on these appeals; in  the Collegium Medicum was again involved in a conflict with Master Marx. Outraged to learn that one of his patients had consulted the executioner, one medical doctor stormed into the apothecary to determine what Marx had prescribed – only to find the executioner’s servant in the shop collecting ingredients for his master’s potions. Beside himself, the doctor attacked the executioner’s servant, throwing all his herbs and oils on the ground. The Collegium Medicum then petitioned the city government to suppress medical quacks, ‘‘pure idiots’’ ignorant of Latin who did not know the fundamental principles of medicines. The executioner ‘‘among all the idiots knows Latin the   

 StadtAA, CM, Pfuscher, –, December , . Ibid., decree from . StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere , Barber-surgeon ordinance, . StadtAA, HAP –, fo. r, September , ; Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /,  employment contract, June , . StadtAA, AHV, CM Prot. , pp. –, .



Punishment and healing least.’’ With his quackery, they asserted, he had destroyed the health of many patients and even killed some. To buttress their case, the medical doctors inquired into the public health policies of other free imperial cities. Frankfurt reported that its medical ordinances forbade the executioner to practice medicine, and Nuremberg responded that its executioner was allowed to treat only external injuries. If Augsburg allowed such abuses to continue, the doctors argued, it would harm the reputation of this ‘‘world-famous republic,’’ undermining the authority of the council and demeaning the Collegium Medicum. Master Marx’s response reveals much about the executioner’s self-understanding as healer. He defended himself vigorously against this attack on his medical competence, expressing pride in his medical talents and executioner medicine in general. Even though he had not studied his medical art at the universities, Marx argued, he had learned medicine from early youth in ‘‘long, continual, and daily practice’’ under the tutelage of his parents and grandparents. He had studied with his father-in-law, Dietrich Metz, his predecessor in office, who had been a famous ‘‘doctor.’’ Marx was not exaggerating here; a chronicle recorded Metz’s death in  with the comment, ‘‘He was a good medicus. When doctors and barbersurgeons gave up on a patient, he managed to cure them.’’ The medical practice by executioners was nothing new, Hartmann continued, but dated back to the distant past. His treatments were based on long experience and study. He had inherited voluminous manuscripts from which he took the recipes for his medicines. (Indeed, Marx’s last will and testament indicates that he owned twenty-one medical texts.) He obeyed the local apothecary ordinance, Marx continued. He bought the ingredients for his medicines in local apothecaries and had his prescriptions filled there. His opponents, he claimed, would be unable to find any patients whose health he had ruined. But he could readily produce thirty to forty patients whom the medical doctors had abandoned, whom he had cured. Marx was presenting himself as a sober, educated professional. Executioners petitioning for legitimations pursued similar strategies. They consistently emphasized their ‘‘learning’’ (Wissenschaft) and the training they had received from their predecessors. Their training was both artisanal and theoretical. Executioners provided their sons with hands-on medical training and at the same time encouraged them in their studies. Several executioners’ sons planned to study medicine at the university – pending imperial legitimation, a necessary precondition for matriculation. Executioner medicine appears very ‘‘male’’ in such petitions, since appeal was made to male models of training and education. Executioners never mentioned that the women in their households practiced medicine as well. Executioners’ attempts to obscure the participation of women in their practice was almost certainly a reaction to the strategic use of gender by their opponents. It was a standard feature of medical regulations and of the diatribes of authorized practi 

StadtAA, Chroniken Nr. , December , . See, e.g., HHuStA Vienna, Fasz. /S, Franz Schmidt, , or Fasz. /B, Johannes Bast, .



The executioner’s healing touch tioners against empirics to associate executioners and other unlicensed practitioners with women. Augsburg’s barber-surgeons’ ordinance, as we saw, associated executioners, women, and other ‘‘unqualified persons.’’ In a similar vein, the Frankfurt medical ordinance of  named ‘‘selfish women’’ alongside executioners and Jews in a list of illegitimate practitioners. Executioners also attempted to fend off any suspicion of superstitious practices. We have already discussed the consensus among authorities, executioners, and their patients that executioner medicine worked by ‘‘natural’’ means. In order to maintain this consensus, executioners had to be discreet about one aspect of their practice. Ironically, this was the one area where official practitioners would most likely have acknowledged the executioner’s expertise, namely, the detection and treatment of supernatural afflictions. This does not appear in executioners’ petitions, but we do find clues in other sources. In  an Augsburg merchant consulted executioner Johann Adam Hartmann because his small daughter was suffering from cramps and a swollen stomach. After examining the girl’s urine, which he found to be healthy, Master Johann Adam concluded that the child was the victim of witchcraft. His treatment consisted of infusions of ‘‘witches’ powder.’’ As late as  executioner Johann Georg Trenkler claimed that he had cured the young daughter of a lawyer of maleficium. It is not surprising that people consulted the executioner to identify and ward off the effects of harmful magic. After all, if he could identify a witch’s mark in the course of a judicial investigation, should he not also be able to discern the symptoms of maleficium in daily life? However, executioners’ treatment of supernatural complaints was obviously more problematic than their treatment of ‘‘natural’’ complaints by ‘‘natural’’ means. Prudently, patients and executioners played down this aspect of their practice. Instead, executioners constantly reiterated that their medicine was based on work. Marcel Mauss has emphasized the distinction between magic and work. Magic performs ‘‘with words and gestures what technology must accomplish through work . . .’’ Magic ‘‘avoids exertion.’’ Contemporaries made a similar distinction between effortless magic and arduous labor. In their polemics against unlicensed empirics, sixteenth-century French physicians praised knowledge based on study and work, while condemning the diabolical knowledge of empirics. Perhaps it was to fend off such accusations that executioners belabored the diligence and effort required in their practice. Executioner medicine was no easy, ‘‘magical’’ quick fix. And, of course, whenever executioners cured a patient successfully, this happened with ‘‘God’s help’’ and to ‘‘God’s greater honor.’’    

SStBA ° Med , Reformation oder Ernewerte Ordnung des Heil. Reichs Stadt Frankfurt a.M., die Pflege der Gesundheit betreff (Frankfurt a.M., ). StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Christeiner, , , testimony of Johann Adam Har tmann. StadtAA, RP , p. , July , .  Quoted in Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , p. . Lingo, ‘‘Empirics,’’ p. . See, e.g., HHuStA, Restitutiones, Fasz. /S, Christian Strauch, .



Punishment and healing Augsburg’s executioner Marx Philipp Hartmann lost his case against the medical doctors in . The city government was unimpressed by their executioner’s rhetorical strategy. Previous medical ordinances had forbidden the free practice of medicine by executioners. Indeed, by forbidding the executioner and other ‘‘cow doctors who do not read Latin’’ to practice, the ordinance of  had already focused on the same issue the medical doctors emphasized in their petition. In  the government again agreed with the doctors: since Marx did not know Latin – ‘‘much less Greek’’ – he could not know the fundamental principles of medicine. Marx was ordered to abstain from ‘‘internal medicine.’’ He was allowed, however, to continue treating external injuries, such as broken bones. ‘‘It remains to be seen whether he will obey the order,’’ a medical doctor commented on these proceedings. Marx did not obey. The magistrates issued new decrees forbidding the executioner’s medical practice in , , and . In  the Collegium Medicum complained to the city council that the decrees against Master Marx were not being enforced. He could continue his quackery because he benefited from the protection of ‘‘one or another gentleman, and we have been forced to suffer it.’’ Despite all governmental interdictions, the executioner remained a part of the medical marketplace.

          :     ,        ,       Executioners presented themselves as sober, learned, hard-working medical professionals. There was nothing ‘‘magical’’ or miraculous about their medical practice. The issue of their legal infamy did not arise, either in their relations with their patients or in their conflicts with licensed practitioners. Executioners petitioning for legitimations to practice medicine full-time distanced themselves from their duties in criminal justice. They claimed to be too old to perform the physically demanding task of beheading, or they hired someone else to perform executions, while they devoted themselves to medicine. This line of argumentation was part of their strategy for achieving upward social mobility through medicine. Their dishonor, after all, derived from their functions in criminal justice. A legitimation could take effect only if the executioner discontinued performing criminal executions. But as executioners distanced themselves from criminal justice, they distanced themselves from the original source of their healing powers. In popular perception, the executioner’s gift as healer was not simply the result of learning and hard work. 

 

StadtAA, CM, Apotheker von –, Tom. , correspondence January–February, ; AHV, CM Prot. , pp. –; CM, Pfuscher, –, correspondence with Frankfurt and Nuremberg from March  and May , . StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere . A petition from July ,  lists earlier decrees from September , , September , , and October , . StadtAA, CM, Pfuscher, –, March  and June , .



The executioner’s healing touch Executioners’ medical gifts depended on their functions in criminal justice. Ultimately, we can resolve the paradox of executioner medicine only by understanding executioner medical practice in the context of criminal executions. So far we have established that executioners practiced medicine because it was a required skill in the context of their duties in criminal justice (evaluating what torture to apply, mending the tortured delinquent), and because they had privileged access to cadavers of executed criminals, a source of highly efficacious raw materials for the medicines they mixed. But this means only that we have compounded the paradox of the executioner’s dual role as killer and healer with yet another paradox. Why did doctors, governmental authorities, executioners, and their patients believe that human cadavers, in particular the cadavers of executed criminals, held such potent healing powers? Why should the body of an executed criminal, who had committed heinous crimes, who had become dishonorable under the executioner’s hand during judicial torture, who was subjected to the infamy of public execution, and whose corpse could also become a source of pollution, have healing powers? Artisans felt profoundly ambivalent toward the corpses of criminals. Touching the cadaver seems to have been permissible for medical purposes only. All other contacts with the cadaver bore the risk of infamy. In  the Augsburg tanners guild declared dishonorable a master who had tanned a human skin. For a pregnant woman to wear the tanned skin of an executed criminal posed no threat to her honor; for an artisan to tan the skin in the first place did. Dissecting the criminal’s body for the sake of gaining medical raw materials was unproblematic as far as the city government was concerned. However, in  when the weaver Leonhard Nadler cut the toe off the corpse of a criminal who lay broken on the wheel to improve his gambling luck, his guild expelled him as dishonorable for touching the infamous cadaver. Apothecaries, medical practitioners of all kinds, and patients handled medical raw materials derived from criminals’ cadavers on a regular basis. However, in  when grave-diggers buried the body of an executed criminal, they were labeled as dishonorable for that reason. How can this ambivalence be explained? Resolving this problem will take us a long way in understanding the executioner’s dual role as healer and killer and in explaining why his dishonor was inactive or indeed inverted into its opposite in the context of his medical practice. We have to understand executioner medicine not in opposition to executioners’ function in criminal justice, but as a logical consequence of that function. The underlying logic of executioner medicine derives from the execution ritual itself. The condemned criminal underwent extensive preparation for the ceremonial role he or she would play in the execution ritual. Once the sentence was announced,   

¨ ffentlichkeit und Autorita¨t’’, p. . See also Evans, ‘‘O StadtAA, HWA, Gerber , November , . StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgicht Leonhard Nadler, a, I, , ; Strafbuch –,  January ,  fo. v. StadtAA, Gottesa¨cker, ‘‘Acta, die Totengrebel betreff,’’ June –April .



. Illustration from execution pamphlet from . This shows the intimate involvement of the clergy in the ritual of public execution. A murderer receives spiritual council from two clergymen during the procession to the execution site.

The executioner’s healing touch the defendant was called the ‘‘poor sinner.’’ The execution was set for three days after the trial. These three days were intended as a period of reconciliation for the poor sinner, both with worldly authorities and with God. The authorities allotted three days for ‘‘repentance and reconciliation with God,’’ the same length of time Christ spent in the tomb between crucifixion and resurrection. The condemned was moved to a cleaner, lighter cell and provided with whatever foods he or she desired. The prisoner was never alone. Two ‘‘comfort men’’ kept the condemned company, locked into the same cell day and night. The sources do not show whether Augsburg’s poor sinners partook of a ‘‘last meal’’ with judges and executioner, as was customary in other parts of Germany. By accepting special food, however, whether during the three days preceding execution or at a ceremonial last meal, the condemned expressed that he or she was at peace with the judges. This was an indication that the execution might run smoothly. While undergoing such worldly reconciliation, the condemned simultaneously became the object of intense clerical attention. The participation of the clergy was indispensable in the days leading up to the execution. The central focus of these last three days was the poor sinner’s spiritual state. Two or three Catholic or Lutheran clergymen were appointed to minister to the condemned, taking turns visiting for hours every day, instructing the poor sinner in the basics of the faith, inducing repentance, and explaining Christ’s sacrifice. Finally, the clergyman would hear the poor sinner’s confession, grant absolution, and offer the Eucharist. This procedure did not vary significantly according to confession. A Protestant received the Eucharist under both kinds. Clergymen of both confessions granted absolution, sometimes with the laying on of hands. An Augsburg execution pamphlet from  presents a stylized account of the last days of the Protestant murderer Samuel Keck. The poor sinner describes this ritual in the first person: ‘‘I gave my humble and heart-felt confession. I was absolved by God’s servants . . . as they laid their hands on my head.’’ Such execution pamphlets often took the form of confessional polemics, as the poor sinners became objects of intense confessional competition. Samuel Keck was visited in prison by Catholic friars who encouraged him to convert. The pamphlet casts the condemned murderer in the role of defender of the Lutheran faith, recounting triumphantly how Keck spurned the friars’ advances and remained in the Lutheran fold. Clerics of both confessions exhorted the poor sinners to meditate on the agonies of Christ and, if the prisoner was Catholic, on the 

  

StadtAA, Scha¨tze a, Eidbuch, fo. –; Strafamt, Modus Procedendi in Malefizsachen; SStBA ° cod Aug . The execution ritual remained essentially the same from the sixteenth through the  StadtAA, RP , June , , pp. –. eighteenth centuries. StadtAA, Scha¨tze Nr. , Hans Mair Memorial Buch, fo. , for . ‘‘Drostmener.’’ On the ritual of the last meal, see Hans von Hentig, Vom Ursprung der Henkersmahlzeit (Tu¨bingen, ). SStBA, ° Aug , Des auf dem Rad ligenden Samuel Keckens Erzehlung seines Mords, Bekehrung, und Todes, nebenst aufrichtigen von ihm, in dem Gefengnus, aufgesetzten Buß-Gedanken . . . (Augsburg,  ), pp. –. Ibid., p. .



Punishment and healing

. Execution in . The criminal is being broken on the wheel. Six clergymen are on the scaffold praying for the ‘‘poor sinner’’ as the execution is in progress.

martyrdom of the saints, encouraging them to see their own impending deaths as a re-enactment of such holy deaths. Jesuits, in particular, promoted the cult of St. Dismas, patron saint of the condemned. This was the ‘‘good thief ’’ who repented as he was crucified to the right of Christ, and to whom Christ spoke the words Hodie mecum eris in paradyso (‘‘Today shalt thou be with me in paradise’’). Jesuit confessors encouraged the condemned to believe that, like Dismas, they too could expiate their sins as they underwent the torment of execution and thus circumvent purgatory entirely. Broadsheets established parallels between the sufferings of the condemned criminal and the agonies of Christ or the martyrdom of the saints by 



The repentant thief remains unnamed in the gospels, but the name Dismas was attributed to him in apocryphal literature and popular legend. Hiltgrad Keller, Reclams Lexikon der Heiligen und der biblischen Gestalten. Legende und Darstellung in der bildenden Kunst (Stuttgart, ), p. . Pater Jacob Schmid, S.J., Trauben der Heiligkeit aus den Do¨rnern der Bo¨sheit, oder verwunderliche ¨ belta¨tern . . ., welche . . . vor Bekehrungen allerhand Mo¨rdern . . ., auch viler zum Tod verurtheilten U ihren Tod herrliche Buss gewu¨rket. Zu besonderem Nutz der Gefangenen . . ., sambt einer Weiss fu¨r die Seelsorger, die arme Su¨nder zu einem guten Tod anzuleiten (Augsburg, ), pp. –.



The executioner’s healing touch styling the poor sinner, regardless of gender, as the ‘‘bride of Christ.’’ Pamphlets described the condemned as nursing in the ‘‘Five Holy Wounds’’ of Christ. These pamphlets described the last days and hours of condemned criminals using the same imagery as late medieval female saints used to describe their ecstatic religious experiences. In the days leading up to the execution and on the day of execution itself, the clergy played a role secondary only to that of the poor sinner. As a last vestige of the early medieval opposition of the Christian church towards capital punishment (‘‘The church loathes the spilling of blood’’), the clergy played the symbolic role of opponent to the secular authorities, acting as intercessor and advocate for the poor sinner with the judges who dispensed the death sentence. The magistrates pronounced the sentence of death according to a highly formalized procedure. Moments before the council voted on what form the execution would take (beheading, hanging, etc.), a councilman emerged from council chambers to receive formal petitions on behalf of the poor sinner ‘‘from the community’’ (aus der Gemeind). In addition to such petitions, or in their place if none were forthcoming, the clergymen assigned to the poor sinner formally pleaded for a merciful judgment. On the day of execution, the clergymen played the role of best men who led the bride to the bridegroom, Christ. They accompanied the condemned in the procession, mounted the scaffold, and held a cross close to the poor sinner’s face at the very moment of execution, so that the last thing he or she beheld in this world was the cross. There was a tension between honor and grace in the execution ritual. The scaffold, a site of horror and infamy, was at the same time a holy place. A Jesuit author described an ecstatic vision in which the gallows was enveloped in shining light as angels ministered to poor sinners undergoing execution. The ignominy of death by execution was offset by the glory of resurrection. In a Lutheran church ordinance, ministers were instructed to reassure the condemned that ‘‘the disgrace will be completely transformed in one moment. While the body hangs or lies there in infamy, the angels of God will be carrying your soul towards God with the  

     

SStBA ° Aug , Des auf dem Rad ligenden Samuel Keckens Erzehlung . . ., p. . SStBA, ° Aug : Trauergeschichte und schro¨ckliches Lebensende des nebst vier anderen Malefikanten sub sten May  zu Augsburg durch das Schwert vom Leben zum Tod gebrachten Missethaters, Johann Woelfle (Augsburg, n.d.) Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, ), p. . Canon law ruling imposing irregularity on clerics who shed human blood, quoted in Pouchelle, Body  StadtAA, Strafamt, Modus Procedendi in Malefizsachen. and Surgery, p. . Ibid., pp. –. This metaphor occurs in various execution pamphlets. See, for example, SStBA ° Aug , Des auf dem Rad ligenden Samuel Keckens Erzehlung . . . This is seen in numerous seventeenth- and eighteenth-century broadsheets depicting executions. See SStBA, Graphik /–, Verbrecher, etc. Schmidt, Trauben der Heiligkeit, pp. –.



Punishment and healing

. The holy executioner, St. Apollinaris, in a Jesuit handbook advising clergymen how to minister to condemned criminals, published in Augsburg .



The executioner’s healing touch 

greatest honor.’’ Contrary to the anthropological assumption that in traditional societies the state of the body was seen as a reflection of the state of the soul, the obliteration of the body in the early modern execution ritual did not preclude salvation. Samuel Keck, for instance, was beheaded and then his head and body were exposed on the wheel for the birds to feed on. The same pamphlet that describes the destruction of his body then praises Keck for the ‘‘faith and joy’’ with which he endured it. This ultimate secular defilement went hand in hand with the greatest spiritual purity. The contrast strengthened the meaning. The poor sinner was at once more defiled and more pure, because the two conditions were paired. Death by execution was infamous in the eyes of the world, but the poor sinner’s death was a good death, even a blessed death in Christian cosmology. The condemned died, as one execution sermon put it, ‘‘with all possible help and means of salvation.’’ Since the poor sinner knew the moment of death ahead of time, he or she could confess, receive absolution and the Eucharist and thus enter eternity cleansed of sin, unlike other Christians, who had to fear a hasty and untimely death. Public executions took the form of religious ceremonies, of sacrificial ritual. The white dress sometimes worn by the condemned criminal expressed the purity of the poor sinner during this last trial. In the execution ritual the criminal was transformed from an infamous villain into a saint. A chronicle entry recording a botched execution in Munich in  refers to this transformation explicitly. A hanged delinquent was taken down from the gallows, only to be found still breathing. The chronicler comments, ‘‘Since he became holy on the gallows, they let him go.’’ This analogy between poor sinner and saint is substantiated by some distinct parallels between the medicinal use of criminals’ bodies and the healing power of relics. Ground human skull was an efficacious treatment for epilepsy. Sufferers of epilepsy also drank wine from hanged men’s skulls, a practice similar to drinking hallowed wine from the skulls of saints officially recognized by the church.    



 

Emil Sehling, ed., Die evangelischen Kirchordnungen des XIV. Jahrhunderts, vol. XIV (Tu¨bingen, ), p. . Richard Huntington and Peter Metcalf, Celebrations of Death: the Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (Cambridge, ), p. . SStBA ° S , Kurzes . . . von dem armen Su¨nder in dem Gefa¨ngnis mit eigener Hand aufgesetztes . . . Christlich-standhaffte Todes-Verfassung, Weil Samuel Keck . . . (Augsburg, n.d.) SStBA ° Aug : Zweyfache Glu¨ckseligkeit aus der von Rechts wegen vollzogenen Todesstrafe, in einer Sittenrede auf dem katholischen Gottesacker . . . von P. Bonaventura Lueger . . ., als einige Maleficanten, den  May des  Jahres zu Augsburg vom Leben zum Tode hingerichtet worden (Augsburg, n.d.) For a similar discussion of the execution ritual, see Gustav Radbruch, ‘‘Ars Moriendi. Scharfrichter – Seelsorger – Armersu¨nder – Volk,’’ in Gustav Radbruch, Elegantiae Juris Criminalis. Vierzehn ¨ ffentlichkeit und Studien zur Geschichte des Strafrechts (Basel, ), pp. –; Evans, ‘‘O Authoritita¨t,’’ p. ; and Park, ‘‘The criminal and saintly body,’’ p. . Louis Morsak, ‘‘Aus dem Rechtsleben bayerischer Wallfahrten,’’ in Forschungen zur Rechtsarcha¨ologie und rechtlichen Volkskunde, ed. Louis Carlen (Zurich, ), p. . Ibid., pp. –; Peacock, ‘‘Executed criminals,’’ p. .



Punishment and healing Richard Evans has commented on the Eucharistic symbolism of what was certainly the most dramatic aspect of executioner medicine: dispensing the fresh blood of the executed criminal to epileptics waiting at the scaffold. ‘‘Poor sinner’s fat’’ can be compared to the holy healing oils which exuded from the bodies of saints. When women in labor wore a belt of tanned human skin, this was similar to a Swabian religious ceremony involving St. Margaret. Pregnant women worshipped St. Margaret, who had the power of the ‘‘loosening belt;’’ tying a string or cloth around their waists in the name of St. Margaret guaranteed easy labor. The belt of human leather also resembled the popular belief in the curative powers of belts ‘‘the true length of Jesus.’’ Pregnant women wore a belt thought to be equal in length to Jesus’s actual height, again to ease labor pains. Like a saint’s body, or like the Eucharist itself, the body of the poor sinner acquired a kind of sacral power in the course of the execution ritual. It was from this sacral power that the healing efficacy of the criminal’s body derived. This did not vary according to confession. Richard Evans argues that the use of criminals’ bodies as healing relics, and in particular blood-drinking at the scaffold, was limited to Protestant areas of Germany. In Protestant folk culture, he suggests, use of criminals’ bodies served a substitute function for the cult of saints which had been suppressed by the Protestant Reformation. In contrast, the Catholic doctrine of purgatory made it difficult for Catholics to use criminals’ bodies in the same way. However, we have seen how the Catholic cult of St. Dismas promoted the belief that poor sinners were exempt from purgatory, entering paradise at the moment of their deaths. Even if blood-drinking at the scaffold seems to have occurred more rarely in Catholic areas, it was not unheard of. In fact, Evans himself cites the example of epileptics drinking beakers of blood after the guillotining of the famous bandit Schinderhannes in  in Mainz, a Catholic archbishopric. Catholics, in Germany as well as in other Catholic regions of Europe, processed the criminal’s entire body in their medicines. We saw that apothecaries in Munich, a bastion of Counter-Reformation Catholicism, received regular deliveries of human fat. The French royal surgeon Ambroise Pare´, one of the few voices of opposition to this practice, condemned the use of mummy in , but to no avail. The official pharmacopoeia of Paris still listed mummy in the mid-eighteenth century. Piero Camproresi describes numerous instances of ‘‘anthropophagic pharmacology’’ including fat, skin, and bones in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italy. In    

 

Evans, Rituals of Retribution, pp. –. Bynum, Fragmentation, p. ; La¨mmert, Volksmedizin, p.  La¨mmert, Volksmedizin, pp. –. It is unclear whether belts of poor sinner’s leather were of any specified length. Evans, Rituals of Retribution, pp. –. See also Gordon-Grube, ‘‘Medicinal cannibalism,’’ p. , for a similar argument. She suggests that for Protestants ‘‘medicinal cannibalism fulfilled a substitute function to that of the transubstantiated flesh and blood of the sacrament.’’  Ibid., p. . Wiedemann, ‘‘Mumie als Heilmittel,’’ pp. , . Piero Camporesi, The Incorruptible Flesh: Bodily Mutation and Mortification in Religion and Folklore (Cambridge, ), pp. –; Camporesi, Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern



The executioner’s healing touch Catholic areas, consumption of criminals’ bodies did not replace the cult of saints; it merely supplemented it. Saints’ relics, after all, were of limited supply and carefully guarded. In contrast, executioners and their patients had access to a ready supply of criminals’ bodies to process and consume. The executioner was able to tap into the sacral power of the poor sinner’s body as he handled and processed the cadaver in his medical practice. It is this symbolic association that turned the executioner into a gifted healer in popular imagination. This symbolic association had an ambivalent impact on the status of executioners. On the one hand, the religious nature of the execution was the source of executioners’ gift of healing. Medicine provided a social space in which the executioners’ dishonor was latent and, as we shall see, it offered executioners their only exit out of the dishonorable milieu. On the other hand, the sanctity of the poor sinner contributed to the secular infamy of the executioner outside of the context of healing. In the s Friedrich Nicolai, an enlightened anti-clerical publicist, offered the following description of popular illustrations of execution scenes: ‘‘The physiognomies of the hangmen and executioners are far more repulsive than those of the malefactors; these latter, which should arouse the real abhorrence, look like those of martyrs by comparison.’’ Almost fifty years later, Karl Huss, executioner of Eger, echoed these sentiments almost exactly. In  Huss, who had served as executioner since , wrote a treatise on local folklore and superstition in which he offered a penetrating analysis as to why executioners were stigmatized as dishonorable. Whence this contempt from high and low? Why does one look at the executioner as a wondrous beast, as human refuse? With what contempt and condescension does one encounter him! With what arrogance people refuse to speak to him! Why is he excluded from convivial society? . . . The origin of such revulsion among the people is this: Is there any sermon on [Christ’s] passion, in which the preacher does not try . . . to arouse compassion for Christ by castigating the executioners and their servants, assailing their cruelty and rage? It there any prayer booklet on the stations of the cross which does not revile executioners and their henchmen?

In addition to sermons, most representations of executioners in Western art depicted them as Christ-killers and tormentors of saints. By extension, if poor sinners were cast in the role of saints in real-life executions, then the executioner could only be vilified as the torturer of saints. The religious framing of the execution ritual was undoubtedly one source of the executioner’s worldly dishonor.

 

 Europe (Chicago, ), pp. –. Evans, Rituals of Retribution, p. . Karl Huss, Die Schrift ‘‘Vom Aberglauben.’’ Nach dem in der fu¨rstlich Metternichen Bibliothek zu Ko¨nigswart befindlichen Manuskripte, ed. by Alois John (Prague, ), p. . Samuel Y. Edgerton, Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance (Ithaca, ), pp. –.



Punishment and healing      :            The deep-seated assumptions that, as I have argued, connected executioner medicine with execution ritual in popular imagination were never articulated by contemporaries, though they were expressed in their actions. The symbolic association of poor sinner and saint, and the transformation of the criminal’s remains into healing relics in the course of the execution, provided the social logic of executioner medicine. At the moment of execution, the codes of grace and honor, which normally functioned as two independent discourses, touched and reinforced each other. The execution ritual, and by extension the executioner’s practice, operated between the two poles of secular infamy and divine grace. This tension between opposites accounts for the ambivalent powers of the criminal’s cadaver. It held the power to heal, or to harm by maleficent magic, and to dishonor and pollute, so that the exploitation of the criminal’s body remained a precarious and perilous affair. Executioner medicine seems to be a particular expression of a larger complex of ideas which anthropologists and historians have identified in a variety of cultures and epochs: the ambivalent power of polluting matter and the life-giving power of filth. Anthropologists studying mortuary ritual have observed that ritual symbolism of growth and fertility often are linked with symbols of decay and putrescence. Much as physical destruction and secular infamy were juxtaposed to spiritual redemption in the execution ritual, anthropologists suggest that in funeral ritual ‘‘the symbolism of regeneration actually derives its force from its juxtaposition to the antithetical symbolism of decomposition.’’ Mary Douglas has described how pollution-conscious societies often attribute creative power to bodily refuse and employ intensely polluting substances in renewal rites. In the midst of a society where social conduct is hedged in by pollution prohibitions, suddenly we find that one of the most abominable or impossible is singled out and put into a very special kind of ritual frame that marks it off from other experience. The frame ensures that the categories which the normal avoidances sustain are not threatened or affected in any way. Within the ritual frame it is then handled as a source of tremendous power.

Early modern executioner–healers and their patients interacted within such a ritual frame. Within this frame, patients could ingest human flesh, an act which would otherwise be defined as cannibalism. Early modern Europeans considered cannibalism to be contrary to the law of nature, an expression of all that was demonic and savage. Accounts of witches’ sabbaths often included descriptions of the cannibalistic orgies that occurred there. Tales of man-eating Indians contributed to their    

 See above, chapter , p. . Huntington and Metcalf, Celebrations of Death, p. . Maurice Bloch and Jonathon Parry, eds., Death and the Regeneration of Life (Cambridge, ), p. . Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: an Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, ), pp. –, –. Brian Levack, The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe (London, ), p. .



The executioner’s healing touch dehumanization in European eyes. One sixteenth-century Italian practitioner even theorized that an unwitting act of cannibalism caused the first appearance of syphilis on the European continent. Cannibalism was clearly seen as an abhorrent practice, on the same level as sodomy and bestiality. Executioners’ patients, however, did not conceive of themselves as cannibals. The New England physician Edward Taylor, for example, wholeheartedly endorsed the medical use of mummy, while at the same time condemning the Catholic practice of transubstantiation as a form of cannibalism. Taylor recommended mummy as a ‘‘sovereign remedy’’ in his medical ‘‘Dispensatory,’’ compiled in the late seventeenth century, and lists extensive uses of human body parts under the heading of ‘‘Man, Homo, Anthropos.’’ And yet, Taylor objected to transubstantiation on the grounds that ‘‘feed[ing] on human flesh and blood’’ was ‘‘barbarousness.’’ The practice of medical cannibalism appears to be a particular manifestation of a larger pattern in the cultural history of medicine. Healing in general seems to have been a sphere where normal prohibitions and rules of pollution avoidance were suspended. The more foul the materia medica, the more defiled the healer, the more efficacious the treatment. Nowhere is this principle expressed more clearly than in the Salutary Apothecary of Filth, wherein almost all Diseases . . . are cured with Excrement and Urine, first published in  by the physician and professor of medicine Christian Franz Paulani. This work obviously resonated with the German public. It enjoyed enormous popularity, appearing in its fourth edition in . Christ himself, Paulani argued, had accomplished miraculous cures with filth. This stood to reason, for after all man himself was nothing but ‘‘a regular sack of filth from head to toe, a sow, wallowing in excrement . . .’’ Feces were ‘‘living putrefaction’’ permeated by subtle salts, indeed, ‘‘God and nature lie in excrement and urine.’’ Paulani gave prescriptions for various diseases, including the ‘‘falling sickness.’’ He mentioned burnt human skull and powdered human blood in passing, but his emphasis lay on the salutary effect of excrement of peacock. Paulani and his followers also recommended sweat, ear wax, nails, spit, afterbirth, semen, and menstrual blood, among many other body parts and effluvia. Such enthusiasm for the medical use of body refuse contrasts with the fastidious   

 

Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: the American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, ), pp. –. William Eamon, ‘‘Cannibalism and contagion: framing syphilis in Counter-Reformation Italy’’  (unpublished manuscript). Pagden, Fall of Natural Man, p. . Gordon-Grube, ‘‘Medicinal cannibalism,’’ p. . Christian Franz Paulani, Neu-vermehrte heylsame Dreck-Apotheke, wie nemlich mit Koth und Urin fast alle . . . Krankheiten . . . curieret worden . . . (Frankfurt a.M., ). For a brief biography of Paulani, see Hermann L. Strack, Das Blut im Glauben und Aberglauben der Menschheit (Munich, ), p. .  Ibid., unpaginated preface. Ibid., pp. . See, for instance, Curieuse . . . Hauß-Apothec, Wie man durch seine eigene bei sich habende Mittel, als dem Blut, dem Urin, Hinter- und Ohrendreck, Speichel und anderen natu¨rlichen . . . Mitteln, seine Gesundheit erhalten . . . ko¨nne . . . (Frankfurt a.M., ). For a survey of this literature, see Strack, Blut, pp. –.



Punishment and healing ness with which early modern Germans wrote about anything even slightly indecorous outside of the context of healing. As we saw in chapter , scribes and petitioners refused to use words designating a dishonorable person or object without first inserting apotropaic formulas, such as ‘‘without violation of honor’’ (salvo honore), or ‘‘without violation of shame’’ (salvo pudore). Anything dirty, smelly, infectious, or indelicate had to be similarly flagged. We are thus confronted with the paradoxical fact that early modern Germans did not hesitate to swallow the self-same substances in the name of health which they were otherwise afraid to even name without resorting to protective formulae. This brings us to the question of the status of healers generally. Not only did early modern patients ingest substances which they eschewed to name, they also consulted people as healers with whom they would otherwise not associate. Executioners and skinners were not the only dishonorable or otherwise marginal people whom early modern Germans considered to be endowed with the gift of healing. Shepherds, equally dishonorable and polluting as skinners, were popular folk healers. Sow-gelders, considered dishonorable in some regions of the empire, practiced medicine and midwifery.’’ Grave-diggers, marginally dishonorable, were frequently named in lists of illegitimate healers. We saw how Augsburg grave-digger Hans Luz confidently proclaimed his healing gift in . Beyond the group of defiled trades per se, Jews, frequently named together with executioners and prostitutes in sumptuary legislation, were sought-after healers among Christians of all walks of life. Though the church threatened damnation, this did not dissuade Christians from consulting Jewish doctors in time of illness. Conversely, just as groups who were defiled in one way or another seemed to exercise a particular attraction as healers, so licensed healers who practiced medicine as their regular profession were also tainted in some way. Bathmasters and barber-surgeons lived with the taint of dishonor. In fact, midwives seem to have been the only hands-on healers who were never labeled as dishonorable – an interesting indication of the role of gender in the attribution of dishonor. Patients of all social estates experienced this dynamic of attraction and repulsion in their healing relationships. The belief in executioners’ healing powers and in the medical efficacy of human raw materials was common to elite and popular culture, as well as to learned and popular medicine. Demand for executioner medicine transcended social boundaries. Learned doctors included human body parts in 

 



See above, chapter , pp. –; David Warren Sabean, ‘‘Soziale Distanzierungen. Ritualisierte Gestik in deutscher bu¨rokratischer Prosa der fru¨hen Neuzeit,’’ Historische Anthropologie  (), –. Wunder, Frauen, p. . Robert Ju¨tte, ‘‘Contacts at the bedside: Jewish physicians and their Christian patients,’’ in R. Po-Chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehmann, eds., In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish–Gentile Relations in Late-Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, ), pp. –. On the disreputable status of barber-surgeons beyond Germany, see Pouchelle, Body and Surgery,  pp. –. See below, chapter , pp. –.



The executioner’s healing touch their official pharmacopoeias. Executioner medicine in many ways resembled the medical practice of other healers, both licensed and unlicensed. The healing process was essentially public, and executioners established social relations with their patients much as other practitioners did. Executioners de-emphasized the participation of women in their practice and sought to distance themselves from any kind of superstition or magic and presented their practice and their medicines as based on natural principles. Even though executioners’ use of criminals’ body parts resembled the practices of magical healers frequently prosecuted as witches, executioners’ patients and the authorities chose to believe that executioner medicine was natural. If patients wanted to enjoy unhindered access to the executioner’s practice in the age of the witch-hunt, then it had to be defined as natural. The fact that executioners were so rarely accused of witchcraft is an indication that the spread of dishonor pollution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a social process that operated independently from the criminalization of magic and the European witch-hunt. Government authorities adopted an ambivalent position toward executioner medicine. On paper, governments supported the legal monopoly of licensed medical professionals, the barber-surgeons and medical doctors. From the sixteenth century on, the authorities regularly published decrees forbidding or limiting the medical practice of executioners and other unlicensed practitioners. These edicts echoed the arguments of the medical doctors, which attacked the lack of professional credentials: the executioner was a ‘‘cow doctor’’ who knew neither Latin nor Greek. But these decrees were never enforced. That the government allowed executioner medical practice to continue, despite all edicts to the contrary, is indicative of its tacit recognition of the executioner’s medical competence. We saw that the Augsburg Collegium Medicum complained in  that Master Marx’s practice continued to flourish in spite of all decrees issued against him, because he had support in high places. Patients’ letters demonstrate that when patricians, imperial councilors, and territorial officials became ill, they ignored local medical ordinances and consulted the executioner. Local governments supported executioners’ petitions for legitimations and emperors were willing to grant them, thus legalizing executioner medicine. As we shall see, only in the late eighteenth century did elites begin to lose their enthusiasm for executioner medicine.



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P AR T I V

Artisanal honor and urban politics

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

Guardians of honor: artisans versus magistrates

Uncompromising guardians of the boundary of honor, artisans pushed the social exclusion of dishonorable people to new extremes in the course of the early modern period. What was at stake for Augsburg’s honorable artisans in dishonor conflicts? What did they stand to gain by excluding dishonorable candidates from their guild? What did the authorities stand to lose if the stigma of dishonor spread? We have examined the symbolic logic of pollution and the ambivalent and paradoxical effects of dishonor in the contexts of punishment and healing. Now we turn to the role of dishonor in urban politics and economics, and in the social practices of daily life. The analysis of the politics of dishonor will proceed on several levels. First we will consider the feasibility of an economic explanation of the phenomenon of dishonor. Were artisans using their stringent honor requirements as a pretext to exclude as many people as possible from their guilds and thus limit economic competition, as many historians have argued? We then survey different types of dishonor conflicts to determine what sets of circumstances tended to trigger dishonor pollution. This typology of conflicts will illustrate that dishonor pollution did not depend on religious sanctions, and that confessional boundaries were not relevant in dishonor conflicts. It will also be shown that dishonor was malecentered. The wives and daughters of defiled tradesmen were less polluting than dishonorable men, and women from the artisan classes were less easily polluted than honorable men. The pollution anxieties of guildsmen must be analyzed in their larger social context. The key to understanding the significance of honor and dishonor for the artisans, and the meaning of dishonor in the society of orders as a whole, lies in examining social interactions within honorable society, between the different honorable estates. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, patricians and guildsmen repeatedly locked horns over how the boundary of honor would run – and over who would determine its course. What was the constellation of forces in such conflicts? The participants were honorable masters, journeymen, patrician magistrates, dishonorable people, and an artisan public that formed a crucial backdrop to these 

See for instance Fritz Blaich, Die Wirtschaftspolitik des Reichstages im Heiligen Ro¨mischen Reich. Ein Beitrag zur Problemgeschichte wirtschaftlichen Gestaltens (Stuttgart, ), pp. –; Roland Bettger, ¨ bergang der Stadt an das Ko¨nigreich Bayern. Sta¨dtisches Gewerbe unter Das Handwerk in Augsburg beim U dem Einfluss politischer Vera¨nderungen (Augsburg, ), p. .



Artisanal honor and urban politics disputes. What were the motivations and goals of these different social groups? Dishonor conflicts reveal much about the political and social relationships that structured the urban commune. How much power did Augsburg’s magistrates have over their artisanal subjects? Since the repeal of the guild constitution in  Augsburg was governed by an authoritarian regime. Augsburg’s aristocratic constitution effectively denied artisans political representation. But did artisans develop non-constitutional means to influence policy making? What was the role of journeymen? What pressure could they bring to bear on their masters – and on government? And finally, what role did dishonor conflicts play in relations between different honorable guilds? The discussion is based on the analysis of  cases documented in Augsburg’s guild records between  and . If  were the actual number of cases that occurred in these two and a half centuries, then Augsburg’s artisans would have been confronted with a new dishonor conflict just about every two years. The actual number of conflicts was probably much higher, however. I did not consult even half of Augsburg’s enormous collection of guild records, and even among those crafts whose papers I viewed in their entirety, it is not likely that documentation on all dishonor conflicts in these trades has survived. Only  of these  conflicts occurred in Augsburg, which means that on average a new dishonor conflict erupted in Augsburg every five and a half years. The other  cases occurred in cities and territories in the vicinity of Augsburg or as far away as Basel or Strasbourg. The guilds or governments of these cities or territories conferred with Augsburg about how to resolve dishonor conflicts that had erupted in their guilds. These frequent foreign inquiries confronted Augsburg’s magistrates and guildsmen with the issue of dishonor even when no dishonor conflict was currently in progress at home. Augsburg’s reports reveal the attitudes of patricians and guildsmen as they debated how they would handle the conflict in question if such a case were to occur in Augsburg. The inquiries also reminded Augsburg’s guildsmen that they were under constant scrutiny from abroad. Every dishonor conflict that occurred in Augsburg was played out before two artisanal publics. The first audience was made up of artisans in different guilds, i.e. the general artisanal public in Augsburg. The second audience consisted of guildsmen within the same craft in 

To arrive at this number, I consulted the papers of the goldsmiths, bookbinders, printers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, butchers, barbers and bathhouse-keepers, millers, stonemasons, carpenters, weavers, tanners, and soapmakers in their entirety. StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere –; Buchbinder –; Buchdrucker –; Schmiede –; Schlosser –; Goldschmiede –; Mu¨ller –; Maurer –; Zimmerleute –; Gerber –; Lederbereiter –; Seifen- und Garnsieder –. The correpondence of the weavers’ guild is not organized chronologically. I consulted correspondence from  to . Weber , , , , , , –, –, –, –, . The papers of many other guilds, including brewers, bakers, fishermen, calligraphers, embroiderers, glaziers, retailers, furriers, tailors, shoemakers, rope-makers, and coopers were sampled selectively. HWA, Metzger –, –, ; Bierschenken –; Briefmaler und illuministen ; Bortenmacher –; Fischer , –; Glaser ; Kramer ; Ku¨rschner ; Messerschmiede ; Schneider ; Schuhmacher –, ; Seiler –; Wagner .



Artisans versus magistrates other cities. Augsburg’s guildsmen and magistrates were distinctly aware of this second public and they usually consulted governments and guilds of other free imperial cities before they made any decision concerning local dishonor conflicts. Such advice was politically delicate. It was not given or taken lightly. Local authorities might be able to head off a dishonor conflict before it started, if they could convince their guildsmen that their fellow tradesmen in other cities had no objection to a potentially dishonorable candidate for guild membership. However, it was a risky affair for governments or guildsmen to let themselves be dragged into dishonor conflicts abroad. If the guildsmen judged an applicant to be dishonorable, then they might be attacked by the government in the neighboring city and by their own authorities for failing to respect imperial law. On the other hand, if the guildsmen stated that they supported the decision of their fellow tradesmen in another city to accept a questionable candidate, then they themselves were liable to be challenged by the artisans in yet another city, who considered the applicant unacceptable. Any dishonor conflict usually had ramifications beyond the local level. Most dishonor conflicts were initiated by dishonorable people. Conflicts resulted when a dishonorable person, or more often a son or daughter of a dishonorable person, sought to be incorporated in a guild. The experiences of the sons of the bailiff Tobias Frank who tried to learn the goldsmiths’ trade in  and  are typical. The masters rejected the boy in each case and used the specter of a journeymen’s strike to pressure the authorities to accept their decision. Conflicts involving the daughter or widow of a dishonorable man followed the same pattern.

             -     ? Historians have interpreted conflicts of this kind as cynical attempts by guild artisans to further their economic self-interest by rejecting as many applicants as possible in order to limit competition. But is economic self-interest a satisfactory explanation for the behavior of the artisans? There are several reasons to argue against this theory. Artisans first began to exclude groups they defined as dishonorable in the early fourteenth century. By the fifteenth century such exclusions had 

  

For example, during a dishonor conflict in the embroiderers’ guild in , the Augsburg city government consulted with Memmingen, Nuremberg, Munich, Cologne, Regensburg, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, and Ulm. Some of these cities gave only non-committal answers. Strasbourg complained that when their guildsmen had stated their position openly in past conflicts, they had been dragged into the conflict and suffered great inconvenience and expense. StadtAA, HWA, Bortenmacher , November ,  and February , . See above, chapter , and StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , December –February , and August–October, . See, for example, the conflict involving weaver master Vogel when he married a bailiff’s daughter. See above, chapter , and StadtAA, HWA, Weber , , , correspondence between  and . Blaich, Wirtschaftspolitik, pp. –; Bettger, Handwerk in Augsburg, p. .



Artisanal honor and urban politics become the general practice. However, in the hundred years after  guild masters were more interested in attracting apprentices and journeymen than in excluding them. The catastrophic demographic losses after the Black Death resulted in a crisis for agriculture, but the urban economy flourished. As the population shrank, food prices fell. This left country folk and city dwellers with more disposable income to spend on artisanal products. The second half of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries were times of economic growth and prosperity for urban artisans, limited only by a severe labor shortage. It would hardly have been in the guild masters’ interest to use dishonor as a pretext to bar apprentices from their guild. Was it the economic self-interest of the journeymen, then, that led to these exclusions? Journeymen’s organizations developed in Germany at about the same time that guilds first began to exclude dishonorable people. The first journeymen’s organizations in the empire developed in the early fourteenth century, and the first sources on journeymen’s organizations in Augsburg date from the mid-fourteenth century. While it is perhaps no coincidence that the exclusion of dishonorable people and the emergence of journeymen’s organizations happened at the same time – since journeymen played a dominant role in dishonor conflicts in the early modern period – it is very unlikely that journeymen tried to keep dishonorable people out of the guilds in order to limit economic competition. Journeymen were doing very well in the hundred years between  and . Due to the labor shortage real wages were rising during this period, which has led one historian to describe these years as a ‘‘golden age’’ for wage earners. If economic self-interest does not fully explain the exclusion of dishonorable people in the late middle ages, perhaps this theory will work better for the early modern period. At first sight this seems plausible. The artisans’ economic fortunes declined during the early modern period. The demographic growth of the sixteenth century adversely affected the artisanal economy. Agricultural prices rose disproportionately, and the common folk were forced to spend more on food, leaving them with little money to spend on artisanal products. Journeymen were especially hard pressed by this development. In contrast to the late middle ages, they were now plagued by unemployment. As the demand for artisanal products fell, masters laid off journeymen and real wages fell. By the eighteenth century, journeymen of  





Rudolf Wissell, Des Alten Handwerks Recht und Gewohnheit, ed. Ernst Schraepler, vol.  (Berlin, ), pp. –. Bronislaw Geremek, Geschichte der Armut. Elend und Barmherzigkeit in Europa (Munich, ), pp. –; Wilhelm Abel, Massenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorindustriellen Deutschland (Go¨ttingen, ), pp. –. Wilfried Reininghaus, ‘‘Fru¨hformen der Gesellengilden in Augsburg im . Jahrhundert,’’ ZHVS  (), pp. –; Reininghaus, Entstehung der Gesellengilden im Spa¨tmittelalter (Wiesbaden, ); Knut Schulz, Handwerksgesellen und Lohnarbeiter. Untersuchungen zur oberrheinischen und oberdeutschen Stadtgeschichte des . bis . Jahrhunderts (Sigmaringen, ), pp. –. Reininghaus, Gesellengilden, p. .



Artisans versus magistrates many crafts no longer earned a living wage and no police ordinance was complete without forbidding traveling journeymen to beg. Faced with economic decline, artisanal guilds tried to limit competition in a variety of ways. They limited the number of apprentices and journeymen a master might employ. Such restrictions were a common feature of guild ordinances during the early modern period. They were designed to ensure relative equality among guildsmen by preventing one master from expanding his production at the expense of the next. The guilds also raised apprenticeship fees and lengthened the training periods of apprentices and journeymen. In  an apprenticeship in the goldsmiths’ guild lasted four years, while journeymen trained for an additional ten years. By  apprentices and journeymen had to complete six and twelve years of training respectively. In  an aspiring barber-surgeon had to complete seven years of training; by  he had to complete ten years. Guildsmen limited the number of journeymen who could apply to become masters in a given year. In  the goldsmiths allowed eight journeymen to apply per year; in  this number was reduced to six. Those journeymen who were allowed to apply had to produce expensive master pieces. If they successfully completed the master piece they had to host elaborate meals for the masters before they were inducted into the guild. Guilds often accepted only masters’ sons or journeymen who married a guildsman’s daughter or widow as masters. Sometimes guilds limited the number of masters, so that no journeyman could apply until one of the present masters had died. As a result of such measures it became increasingly difficult in the course of the early modern period for a journeyman to become a master. For many artisans being a journeyman was no longer just a stage in the life-cycle; it had become a permanent condition. The authorities condemned some of these measures as ‘‘abuses,’’ in particular the expensive master pieces and the extravagant masters’ meals. But the magistrates did not believe in an unregulated economy or a free labor market any more than the guildsmen did. The prosperity of the guild masters and citizens was a 

   



Abel, Massenarmut, pp. –. On falling wages and structural unemployment in the eighteenth century, see Michael Stu¨rmer, ed., Herbst des alten Handwerks. Zur Sozialgeschichte des . Jahrhunderts (Munich, ), p.  and Andreas Grießinger, Das symbolische Kapital der Ehre. Streikbewegungen und kollektives Bewußtsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen im . Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, ), pp. –. On journeymen in police ordinances see for instance article  in the begging ordinance of the Swabian circle of May , . StadtAA, Ratserla¨sse –. Goldsmith Ordinances of  and  in StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , Ordnungen. Barber-surgeons’ ordinance of , and description of guild customs from , in StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere , Ordnungen. Goldsmith Ordinances of  and  in StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , Ordnungen. Bernd Roeck, Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden. Studien zur Geschichte der Reichsstadt Augsburg zwischen Kalenderstreit und Parita¨t (Go¨ttingen, ), vol. , pp. –; Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, ), p. . These developments are well known. See for instance Reinald Ennen, Zu¨nfte und Wettbewerb (Cologne, ), pp. –; Blaich, Wirtschaftspolitik, pp. –; Karl Heinrich Kaufhold, Das Handwerk der Stadt Hildesheim im . Jahrhundert. Eine wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Studie (Go¨ttingen, ), pp. –; Ekkehard Wiest, Die Entwicklung des Nu¨rnberger Gewerbes zwischen – (Stutttgart, ), pp. –.



Artisanal honor and urban politics higher priority for the city government than the fate of journeymen who had not yet established themselves in the city. The government guaranteed the economic monopolies of individual guilds, and for the most part, when the guildsmen wanted to pass measures to limit competition, the council supported them. Was the exclusion of dishonorable people just one among many such measures intended to limit competition? If so, it was not a very effective means to reach this goal. The number of people who might be excluded by such measures was really quite small. As we have seen, there were just about one hundred dishonorable or potentially dishonorable people in Augsburg at any one time. It is hardly likely that artisans set up their stringent honor requirements with the intention of limiting the number of applicants, for dishonorable people were simply too few in number for it to be worth all the fuss. Furthermore, artisans did not need a pretext to limit competition. Guildsmen were quite open about the need to limit guild membership, and they employed a variety of measures to exclude applicants with the support of the city government. Artisans were not cynical about questions of honor. The real reasons for the exclusion of dishonorable people were symbolic, not economic.                    What sets of circumstances tended to provoke dishonor conflicts? The majority of the dishonor conflicts,  of  cases, were initiated by dishonorable people trying to gain access to an honorable guild. However,  cases, just over a third of the conflicts between  and , followed a quite different pattern, one that would be quite baffling to historians looking for an economic explanation of the phenomenon of dishonor. These conflicts were not initiated by a dishonorable person trying to get into a guild. They occurred within the guild, between honorable guildsmen, when a member transgressed certain group rules. Conflicts of this kind resulted when an honorable artisan came into contact with an executioner or skinner – whether voluntarily, through sociability, or involuntarily, when an artisan was subjected to torture or punishment at the hands of the executioner. Artisans saw inappropriate social interaction with executioners or skinners as reprehensible violations of their honor code. Voluntary sociability did not cause the most serious dishonor conflicts, however. The guildsmen punished such offenders, but did not expel them permanently. In  three master rope-makers were boycotted, merely for setting foot in the skinner’s house. But after the dust had settled, the rope-makers continued to practice their trade. Guild correspondence over the next years refers to them as working masters. In  Hans Seidler, a master weaver, sealed a business deal with the skinner with a glass of wine.  

On the cooperation between guilds and city government in the effort to limit competition, see  Bettger, Handwerk, pp. –. See above, chapters  and , pp. –, –. StadtAA, HWA, Seiler , March , , February , .



Artisans versus magistrates Appalled, the weavers demanded his exemplary punishment. Such a case had not occurred in their trade ‘‘in human memory,’’ they claimed. But Seidler was not banished permanently from his guild. Indeed, he served as a government-appointed spokesman for the weavers in . When the journeyman stonemasons Hans Georg and Franz Mozart carried an executioner’s servant to his grave in , their fellow journeymen insisted on punishing such public association with the executioner. But this deviation from the ‘‘path of honor’’ did not prevent the Mozart brothers from, in time, becoming master stonemasons. Had the primary purpose of pollution rules been to limit competition, the guilds would never have permitted such reconciliation. But, in fact, the purpose of boycotts and fines in sociability conflicts was to correct an imbalance the transgressor had caused by his infraction of group rules. Fines were usually spent in common drinking bouts in which the offender was reintegrated into his corporate group, the journeymen’s association or masters’ guild. Paradoxically, involuntary contact with executioners or skinners had far more tragic consequences for honorable artisans. The plight of torture victims illustrates the extreme fragility of artisanal honor to the executioner’s touch. Artisans seemed to interpret honor in physical, somatic terms. A guildsman’s honor had to be unsoiled, pristine, immaculate. After being subjected to torture, a person’s honor had been damaged, his or her innocence notwithstanding, as the journeymen explained in their remarkable argument concerning Augustin Gerstecker: ‘‘If you get a stain on your clothing, you can wash it out. Nonetheless, you cannot say that the stain was never there.’’ The physical act of torture not only violated the body, it permanently altered the essential nature of the victim. A torture victim’s honor was no longer intact, and no governmental proclamation would ever be able to restore it in its integrity. Artisans expressed this materialistic sense of honor in their language. To insult someone was described as ‘‘touching’’ or ‘‘grabbing’’ his honor (an Ehren antatschen). By committing a dishonorable act, an artisan ‘‘besmirched’’ (besudelt) his honor; ‘‘a stain was sticking to him’’ (eine Makul klebete ihm an). Artisans saw the loss of male honor as analogous to the loss of a woman’s virginity. One dishonored artisan made this comparison explicitly; in language that strikingly evoked the loss of maidenhead, he told how he had been ‘‘seduced’’ and robbed of his ‘‘jewel of honor’’ (Ehrenkleinod). Honorable artisans could be involved in ritual pollution conflicts even when   

 

StadtAA, HWA, Weber , February –, . Hans Seidler served as Vorgeher (foreman) of the guild between  and . Weber a. StadtAA, HWA, Maurer , June–December . In  both Hans Georg and Franz appear in the guild records as masters. Maurer . Karl-Sigismund Kramer, Grundriß einer rechtlichen Volkskunde (Go¨ttingen, ), p. ; Kramer, ‘‘Bußen vertrinken,’’ in Adalbert Erler and Ekkehard Kaufmann, eds., Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, vol.  (Berlin, ), p. ; Grießinger, Das Symbolische Kapital, p. . StadtAA, HWA, Bortenmacher , April –September . For examples of such language, see StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , for December –February   and August–October . HHuStA, Restitutiones, Fz. , Hans Rantenberger, .



Artisanal honor and urban politics there had been no actual contact with an executioner or skinner. An artisan could transgress the boundary of honor by committing certain polluting acts by which he symbolically associated himself with the executioner or skinner. In such cases dishonor was transmitted through the materials with which the executioner or skinner worked. We saw that physical contact with the tools of punishment conferred dishonor. The wood and stone of the gallows initially were neutral materials that became permeated with dishonor by the executioner’s touch when they were used in the context of criminal punishments. Other materials were intrinsically polluting in themselves, regardless of whether the executioner or skinner had laid hands on them. Animal carcasses were intensely polluting. The skinner alone had the right to touch such matter. Any artisan who violated this prohibition likened himself to the skinner. In  the butchers’ guild expelled Jacob Glanz, a fellow master, because he had skinned three sheep that had drowned in a brook. When he removed the skins, he threw the carcasses back into the creek. This caused severe reactions by both government and guild. The magistrates ordered his arrest and banished him from the city. Their reasons were quite ‘‘rational.’’ They were concerned with hygiene and public health. By throwing the carcasses into the creek, Glanz might have contaminated the water and caused an epidemic. The city government soon pardoned him, however, and readmitted him to the city. His fellow guildsmen were less forgiving; Glanz’s ‘‘unrighteous act’’ fell within the responsibilities of the skinner. The patrician supervisors of the butchers’ guild tried to appease the artisans: the sheep in question had not died of some disease. They drowned during a violent storm. The meat was fresh and undiseased. But the supervisors’ argument made no impression on the butchers. In the past, the guildsmen argued, they had never been forced to accept a member unless he was of honorable ‘‘conduct, condition, and origin.’’ Glanz’s ‘‘skinner’s act’’ (schynders handel) disqualified him from membership. An interesting feature of this case is that the priorities of guild and government were so different. Motivated by utilitarian concerns, the city government feared physical contamination and disease. The guildsmen were concerned with the symbolic danger of ritual pollution. A conflict that occurred in Kaufbeuren in  illustrates the criteria according to which artisans distinguished between ‘‘butcher’s work’’ and ‘‘skinner’s work.’’ When a cow crushed her newborn calf, the owner beat the severely injured calf to death with a shovel and gave it to an impoverished weaver’s widow. The widow cut up the carcass and ate it together with her journeymen, one of whom informed the guild. The weavers decided to expel her from the guild for life, because she had done ‘‘work that only the skinner is allowed to do.’’ Kaufbeuren magistrates argued on the widow’s behalf: the calf did not die of a disease but had been beaten to death, so it was not really ‘‘skinner’s carrion’’ (schindermeßiges Aas). Its flesh was still white and blood still flowed ‘‘in its natural color.’’ The widow and her journeymen had 

StadtAA, HWA, Metzger , August–November .



Artisans versus magistrates eaten the meat ‘‘without disgust’’ and without damage to their health. These arguments convinced the Augsburg weavers, who had been asked to arbitrate the case, to rule in the widow’s favor. Her ‘‘offense and inappropriate act’’ was mitigated by her extreme poverty. The Augsburg guildsmen recommended that the widow be fined and temporarily suspended, but not expelled permanently. Another factor working in the widow’s favor was her gender. This is the only documented case of an honorable woman being punished for this type of ritual transgression. As we shall see, women in general played a peripheral role in dishonor conflicts. Guildsmen judged male transgressions more harshly and condemned this type of offense as especially reprehensible. Conflicts of this kind were perhaps the most threatening to artisanal honor. When an artisan committed such a polluting action ‘‘without thinking about his honor and without regard for his trade,’’ he demonstrated a willful disregard of group rules. The elaborate artisanal code of conduct could only be upheld if such delinquent guild members who were ‘‘hameless’’ and ‘‘forgetful of honor’’ were expelled.            :          . ‘ ‘   ’’ The disposal of suicides provoked ritual pollution conflicts in both urban and rural society. It was a traditional task of executioners and skinners to dispose of the bodies of suicide victims. Suicide was a mortal sin; both Catholic and Protestant churches refused to bury suicides in consecrated ground. In addition, secular law mandated certain ‘‘rites of desecration’’ in disposing of the body. In  Augsburg’s magistrates decreed that ‘‘the corpse should be nailed into a barrel and sent away, as is customary . . .’’ The skinner cast the barrel into the river Lech. Alternatively, the bodies of suicides were buried beneath the gallows. In Nuremberg the body was sometimes burned at a crossroad, in north Germany it was dumped into a swamp. Such defamatory rituals sometimes were accompanied by additional apotropaic measures. In the second half of the seventeenth century it was still customary in Nuremberg to lower the body from a window by night instead of carrying it over the threshold. The body was carried away face down, so its malevolent spirit could not find its way home. Such treatment was, of course, extremely dishonoring for suicide victims and their families. Authorities in cities and territorial states began to adopt a more liberal and    

 

StadtAA, HWA, Weber , July–September . StadtAA, HWA, Weber a, August , . StadtAA, HWA, Schlosser , August –February . Michael MacDonald and Terence Murphy, Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England (Oxford, ), pp. –; Ju¨rgen Dieselhorst, ‘‘Die Bestrafung der Selbstmo¨rder in der Reichstadt Nu¨rnberg,’’ Mitteilungen des Vereins fu¨r die Geschichte der Stadt Nu¨rnberg  (), –, pp. –. SStBA, ° Cod Aug , Bu¨rgermeister Amtsinstruktion, , , fo. . On burial beneath the gallows, see StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, petition from . Dieselhorst, ‘‘Selbstmo¨rder,’’ p. .



Artisanal honor and urban politics humane policy towards suicide in the late seventeenth century. Elites developed a ‘‘secularized’’ and ‘‘medicalized’’ view of suicide, and by the eighteenth century, authorities began to accept an ‘‘insanity defense’’ for suicides, and suppressed traditional rites of desecration. Augsburg’s magistrates distinguished between ‘‘malicious’’ suicides who committed suicide ‘‘on purpose’’ because they had lost faith in God, or in order to avoid punishment for a crime, and ‘‘melancholy’’ suicides who had killed themselves because of some mental disorder. ‘‘Melancholy’’ suicides could receive a Christian burial. By the eighteenth century, the government tended to give suicide victims the benefit of the doubt. Unless they were notorious sinners, all suicides were classified as ‘‘melancholics.’’ This new policy was fully implemented in , when the government decreed that all suicides be given an honorable burial in consecrated earth, unless they were criminals who killed themselves awaiting punishment. The government’s new approach resulted in endless petitions by executioners protesting the loss of income this policy change entailed. In addition to arousing the ire of executioners and skinners, this new humane policy towards suicides caused a particular type of dishonor conflict to occur more frequently. Honorable artisans who came in contact with the corpse of a suicide were excluded from their guilds, because they had committed an action that made them akin to the skinner. Such a case occurred in the Austrian town of Veldkirch in  when a citizen hanged himself. Upon questioning the man’s confessor and the barber-surgeons who examined the body – from afar, while it was still hanging – the authorities decided that he was ‘‘quite crazy.’’ In other words, he was not a ‘‘malicious’’ suicide and should not be denied an honorable Christian burial. The magistrates informed the family of the suicide victim of this decision, whereupon family members detached the body from the rope. In the case of a negative decision, this task would have fallen to the executioner or skinner. Various artisans participated in the wake and helped carry the body to its grave. After the burial, all the artisans who took part in the funeral procession – shoemakers, weavers, and cabinet-makers among others – were expelled from their guilds for this dishonorable action. In rural society, the disposal of suicides precipitated a different kind of ritual pollution. Bavarian peasants participated in ‘‘suicide riots’’ on at least eight occa





David Lederer, ‘‘The dishonorable dead: perceptions of suicide in early modern Germany,’’ in Sibylle Backmann, Hans-Jo¨rg Ku¨nast, Sabine Ullmann, and B. Ann Tlusty, eds., Ehrkonzepte in der fru¨hen Neuzeit. Identita¨ten und Ausgrenzungen (Berlin, ), pp. –, pp. –. MacDonald and  Murphy, Sleepless Souls, pp. –. StadtAA, RP , pp. –, November , . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, June , ; September , ; November , ; December , ; RP , July , , p. ; RP , December , , p. . The financial loss was significant. In  the executioner and skinner were paid at least  gulden, to be shared between them, for each corpse they disposed of. StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, petition from . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , June –June . For a similar case, see HWA, Weber , September–November .



Artisans versus magistrates sions during the seventeenth century. When the Bavarian high council classified individual suicides as melancholics, and ordered that their bodies be buried in consecrated ground within the churchyard, this ‘‘medicalized’’ attitude of the authorities clashed with popular culture, though in a different way than in cities. Peasants organized graveyard riots to prevent the burial of suicides in their village cemeteries. Villages constituted ‘‘sacral communities.’’ To desecrate the churchyard by burying a suicide in its hallowed ground, threatened to destroy the ‘‘metaphysical link between the sacral community and the hereafter,’’ and might incite divine retribution upon the collectivity. God’s wrath would wreak devastation in the form of hailstorms, famine, or other calamities. The peasants’ fear represents a ‘‘taboo’’ in the anthropological sense. Anthropologists define ‘‘taboo’’ as ‘‘supernaturally sanctioned law.’’ Transgression of such religious prohibitions would result in cosmological pollution, provoking direct divine sanction. Infringement of the ‘‘taboo’’ was made manifest in tangible physical consequences in the material world (e.g. hail). In contrast, urban dishonor was not hedged in by supernatural sanctions. Among honorable guildsmen, desecration of the cemetery was not the issue of contention. The problem lay in finding individuals willing to transport the corpse. Dishonor pollution did not threaten the urban community as a whole. Artisans who touched the dishonorable corpse suffered an individual loss of honor, and the social, economic, and political consequences that entailed. Dishonor had no religious impact on the individual or the community. Dishonor pollution did not provoke the wrath of God. In multi-confessional cities, the ‘‘sacral community’’ was more fragmented than in religiously unified Bavarian villages. This might offer an explanation for these different responses to suicide, the magical-religious fears of the peasants vs. the secular anxieties of urban artisans. But the differences might also be part of a larger cultural pattern that distinguished urban and rural societies. Bernd Roeck has found that the European witch-hunt was less bloody in free imperial cities than in territorial cities where cases originating in the countryside were tried. Witchhunts that did occur in free imperial cities were most often sparked by accusations by very recent rural immigrants. Residents prosecuted for white magic were almost 

  



Lederer, ‘‘Dishonorable dead,’’ pp. –, and ‘‘Aufruhr auf dem Friedhof. Pfarrer, Gemeinde und Selbstmord im fru¨hneuzeitlichen Bayern,’’ in Gabriela Signori, ed., Trauer, Verzweiflung, Anfechtung. Selbstmord und Selbstmordversuche in mittelalterlichen und fru¨hneuzeitlichen Gesellschaften (Tu¨bingen, ), pp. –. Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb, eds., Blood Magic: the Anthropology of Menstruation (Berkeley, ), p. . Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: an Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, ), pp. . I disagree with David Lederer’s suggestion that city folk shared peasants’ fear that burial of a suicide in consecrated ground posed an immanent danger. Lederer cites one chronicle entry that draws a connection between suicide and bad weather. See his ‘‘Dishonorable dead,’’ p. . I have found no mention of this belief in urban sources. Graveyard riots remained a rural phenomenon. R. Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe – (London/New York, ), pp. –, –.



Artisanal honor and urban politics invariably rural immigrants as well. Following Max Weber, Roeck interprets the rural nature of witchcraft accusations and white magic as evidence that a process of secularization, a ‘‘disenchantment of the world,’’ was already taking place in the cities at the height of the European witch-hunt. Peasants were more prone to magical beliefs than city folk, he suggests, because they were immanently confronted by the by the vagaries of nature (weather patterns, crop failures, etc.). City folk experienced such threats only indirectly, when their food prices rose. Of course, this argument cannot be taken too far. In , the Augsburg chronicler Georg Ko¨lderer speculated that there were , witches living in Augsburg alone. The fact that apotropaic measures to prevent the return of suicides were practiced in cities is a good indication that city folk were not immune to supernatural dread surrounding suicides. But such magical fears occupied a different sphere of relevance than the complex of dishonor. To the extent that an urban environment did promote a more ‘‘rational’’ belief system, this would help explain why a secular discourse on honor and dishonor flourished in cities.                We have surveyed a variety of circumstances that could precipitate a dishonor conflict. Honorable guildsmen excluded people who were born dishonorable and people who became dishonorable, whether by direct contact with the executioner or skinner, or by contact with executioners’ and skinners’ working materials, the tools of punishment, ‘‘skinner’s carrion,’’ or the corpse of a suicide. Very similar conflicts resulted when bastards tried to enter a guild. Guilds began to reject people of illegitimate birth at about the same time that they excluded dishonorable people. Guild ordinances first barred bastards in northern Germany in the early fourteenth century. By the sixteenth century this was the general rule in the Empire. It is likely that most Augsburg guilds required legitimate birth by , but we cannot know for sure, since few guild records from before  have been preserved. The guilds must have militated for the exclusion of bastards, because in  the city council decreed that the guilds could not be compelled to admit illegitimate applicants. A conflict in the goldsmiths’ guild from  gives the impression that guilds had been excluding bastards for some time. In that year, the goldsmiths expelled the journeyman Johann Schebel, whose illegitimate birth had recently come to light. When Schebel protested, the goldsmiths argued that their policy to reject bastards ‘‘is an honorable tradition, not just with the goldsmiths, but with all other artisans.’’ This had been the constant practice ‘‘in human memory, yes, for a  



Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , pp. –, vol. , pp. –. Wissell, Handwerks Recht, vol. , pp. –; Rolf Sprandel, ‘‘Die Diskriminierung der unehelichen Kinder im Mittelalter,’’ in Jochen Martin and August Nitschke, eds., Zur Sozialgeschichte der Kindheit (Munich, ), pp. –. StadtAA, GRP , Ratsprotokoll der XIer, fo. , May , .



Artisans versus magistrates 

hundred years.’’ The new guild ordinances that the patrician government promulgated in  generally required applicants to prove their ‘‘honorable and legitimate birth.’’ Conflicts involving applicants of illegitimate birth occurred periodically over the next two centuries. Illegitimacy did not only result in the exclusion of the child. Artisans who fathered bastards could be expelled as well, since honorable guildsmen punished members for sexual misconduct. In  the goldsmiths’ guild forbade a journeyman to complete his master piece because he was guilty of fornication. The goldsmiths could cite an article in their ordinance of : ‘‘The journeymen and apprentices must behave honorably and uprightly, as is appropriate. No master shall employ those who are scoundrels, wastrels, gamblers, or who associate with disreputable women.’’ In  Augsburg’s blacksmiths boycotted their fellow tradesmen in Kaufbeuren because they had not expelled a journeyman who had slept with his master’s daughter and married her when she got pregnant. In  the stonemasons tried to exclude an apprentice for fathering an illegitimate child. They cited their ordinance, which threatened expulsion for fornication. The apprentice married the girl and petitioned the city council to allow him to continue practicing his trade so that he could feed his family. The city government supported the apprentice and ordered the stonemasons’ guild to accept him. This precipitated a conflict that dragged on for at least nine years. The stonemasons adamantly refused to obey and even petitioned the emperor to uphold their decision. The journeymen were just as opposed to accepting the sexual offender as the masters and tried to force his exclusion in a series of strikes. The plight of ‘‘fallen women’’ and unwed mothers has attracted considerable attention from historians. Infanticide has been explained as a tragic consequence of the stigma attached to bearing a bastard. The negative social consequences of unwed fatherhood are less well known. A male guild member could be expelled from his guild and thus deprived of his livelihood for sexual misconduct. The disastrous consequences the unwed father might face could cause some desperate reactions. A particularly tragic case occurred in  when Samuel Keck, a twenty-one-year-old apprentice, stabbed to death a young woman who was preg  

    

StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , September , . See, for example, the spinners’ ordinance of . StadtAA, HWA, Ordnungen . For example, the carpenters excluded the journeyman Georg Fischer because of his illegitimate birth in : StadtAA, HWA, Zimmerleute . The bookbinders excluded the journeyman Leonhart Hasen for the same reason in : Buchbinder , June . In  the stonemasons rejected the illegitimate apprentice Georg Hag: Maurer , February . The tailors refused to accept the bastard Rudolf Gerl in : Schneider , October–December, . StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , February–March . StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , Ordnungen, Goldsmiths’ ordinance of . StadtAA, HWA, Schmiede , October –May . StadtAA, HWA, Maurer , October , and Maurer , September –September . For a similar case from , see StadtAA, HWA, Maurer , April–May . Richard van Du¨lmen, Frauen vor Gericht. Kindsmord in der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M., ), pp. –.



Artisanal honor and urban politics nant with his child because she threatened to name him as the father. The following day, he turned himself in. Samuel Keck was beheaded and his body was exposed on the wheel for four weeks. Such emphasis on the sexual conduct of male guild members is an indication that a double standard of sexual morality might have been less pronounced in Germany than in other European countries. According to Mediterranean honor code, for example, a woman’s honor depended almost exclusively on her sexual conduct, as it did in Germany. But in Mediterranean regions sexual immorality did not diminish a man’s honor. To the contrary, a man’s honor was enhanced through the spoliation of another man’s daughter or wife. How was the strict German sexual morality connected with the exclusion of dishonorable people? We saw in chapter  that there was little overlap between illegitimacy and legal dishonor in fact. They were associated, however, in the minds of honorable artisans. In  the printers’ society took their insistence on legitimate birth to new extremes, when they refused to accept a master’s son as an apprentice because he had been prenuptially conceived. When their patrician supervisors ordered the printers to accept the boy, an irate journeyman pasted an insulting broadsheet on the mayor’s door. The pasquill made some remarkable analogies between legal dishonor and illegitimacy. It insulted the patrician committee that had made this unpopular decision as a council of ‘‘skinners’ laborers’’ and condemned them for forcing the printers’ society to accept ‘‘beadles, bailiffs, and blackguards’’ (Schergen, Amtsdiener oder Stieglitzen). Even though this case did not involve a legally dishonorable person, the author used the references to the dishonorable occupations of beadle and bailiff to stand for illegitimacy or prenuptial conception, which he did not mention in the pasquill at all. The association of sexual immorality and legal dishonor also worked the other way around. When honorable artisans tried to exclude a dishonorable person they often bolstered their case by impugning the sexual morality of their opponent. When the fishermen excluded Andreas Anhauser for marrying the skinner’s daughter in , they emphasized that the couple had been caught fornicating in fishermen’s huts outside the city walls. They pointed out that Anhauser’s sister had slept with her husband before they were married and had been fined for fornication. For good measure, they added that his mother was evil-tongued and had not been in church in eighteen years. The fishermen sought to force Anhauser’s exclusion in this comprehensive assault on his moral integrity and that of his family. The most impeccable sexual conduct and moral virtue, however, could not  

 

SStBA,  S –. ‘‘Kurzes . . . Su¨ndenbekandtnus’’ of Samuel Keck. David D. Gilmore, ‘‘Introduction: the shame of dishonor,’’ in David D. Gilmore, ed., Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean (Washington DC, ), pp. –. On the dependence of female honor on chastity in Germany, see Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London, ), p. . StadtAA, HWA, Buchdrucker , August , . See also Adolf Buff, ‘‘Eine Geschichte aus dem Augsburger Buchdruckerleben des vorigen Jahrhunderts,’’ ZHVS  (), –. StadtAA, HWA, Fischer , August–October .



Artisans versus magistrates offset a dishonorable background. When the glaziers in the small neighboring town of Aichach expelled the master Hans Ho¨zl in  because he had married a bailiff’s daughter, Ho¨zl argued that his wife and her family were known for their virtue and piety. The guildsmen responded that his wife came from ‘‘bailiffs’ stock’’ (Amtmanns Stamm). Therefore, it was irrelevant if she and her father had led a pious life. Ho¨zl answered in desperation: ‘‘Why in God’s name should the pious and virtuous life that a person leads over years not help [to establish honor], even though the condition of honor itself springs from good morals and honorable conduct?’’ But Ho¨zl had missed the point. Virtue alone did not bring honor, though honor could not exist without virtue. Honorable guildsmen and their wives had to satisfy all three requirements: honorable family background, legitimate birth, and moral conduct. One did not spring from the other – together they formed an inextricable whole, which constituted the honorable estate (ehrlicher Stand).               -     Why was it so essential for honorable guilds to exclude anyone who did not live up to these requirements? Conflicts followed much the same pattern, whether they involved the exclusion of a bailiff’s son, a bastard, a fornicator, or an artisan who had been subjected to torture or had touched ‘‘skinner’s carrion.’’ The answer lies in the nature of the guild as a social organization. A guild was much more than a purely economic association. Guilds formed corporate groups within the commune, sub-communities that shaped the guildsmen’s lives – in politics, culture, and religion as well as economics. While guilds no longer had an official voice in government – under the patrician regime they no longer sent a set number of representatives to the city council as they had before  – guilds still conferred political identity on their members. Citizenship implied guild membership and vice versa. Only citizens could enter a guild, and all new citizens had to join one of the corporate groups within the city, either an artisanal guild or a patrician or merchant society. A citizen who was not integrated in such a corporate group really had no place in the commune. He fell between the cracks of the urban social structure. The political significance of guild membership is dramatically illustrated in a dishonor conflict that took place in Ulm in . In that year, the Ulm blacksmiths expelled Martin Eberwein, a fellow master, for cutting up three piglets that had died of a disease, thus likening himself to the skinner. Shortly thereafter Ulm’s annual oath day took place. This was the day when all citizens were required to swear an oath of obedience to the urban constitution. Citizens took this oath in guild formation.  

Stadtarchiv Munich, GA /. The expression ehrlicher Stand was regularly used in legitimations of bastards and dishonorable people. See, for instance, the legitimation of the beadle’s son Johann Georg Geissler of .  StadtAA, Markgrafschaft Burgau, Akten Nr. , June , . See above, chapter , p. .



Artisanal honor and urban politics Since Eberwein was banished from his guild, he was forbidden to swear the citizen’s oath, as if the rights and duties of citizenship no longer applied to him. Stripped of his guild membership, he lost his political identity as well. Guilds also structured the social and religious lives of their members. Integrated into the urban welfare system, guilds functioned as a kind of ‘‘safety net’’ for their members. When a guildsman died, fellow masters carried his body to the grave. Guilds cared for members’ families. Masters’ sons could enter the guild for reduced fees. Guilds accorded privileges to journeymen who married a master’s daughter or widow. Sociability was institutionalized in regular guild meetings at which members discussed guild affairs while they shared a common meal, and in seasonal guild festivities such as guild parades during carnival or participation in Corpus Christi day processions. Guild membership touched all aspects of an individual’s life, not just his economic interests. An honorable artisan could have isolated business dealings with a person whose honor was in question. But guild membership created such a close personal bond between guild members that a dishonorable person could never be incorporated without affecting the honor of all members. Birth certificates issued by the city government often used the expression ‘‘related to us through citizenship’’ (uns mit den bu¨rgerrechten verwant), thus making an analogy between the bonds of citizenship and the bonds of kinship. The fishermen made a similar analogy between kinship and guild membership, when they explained why they could not possibly allow Andreas Anhauser to remain in their guild after he had married the skinner’s daughter. The skinner’s daughter would herself be incorporated into the guild by marriage: ‘‘If we accept the skinner’s daughter, not only she but also the children they conceive together, and all their descendants will be constantly among us, to the everlasting ridicule [of the guild]. People will say ‘This fisherman or that fishwife is the daughter of the skinner . . . or the grandchild of the skinner, and so on.’’’ To accept the skinner’s daughter would be to incorporate bad blood into the guild that would taint all guild members. This conception of the bonds of guild membership explains why the printers’ guild chose to disband rather than incorporate an applicant who was prenuptially conceived. In  the city government ordered the printers’ guild to accept such an apprentice who was prenuptially conceived. After the dispute had   

 

StadtAA, HWA, Schlosser , March –March . Roeck, Stadt in Krieg, vol. , p. . Bernd Roeck, Ba¨cker, Brot und Getreide in Augsburg. Zur Geschichte des Ba¨ckerhandwerks und zur Versorgungspolitik der Reichsstadt im Zeitalter des Dreißigja¨hrigen Krieges (Sigmaringen, ), p. . For a description of guild celebrations in Frankfurt, see Heinz Lenhardt, ‘‘Feste und Feiern des Frankfurter Handwerks,’’ Archiv fu¨r Frankfurts Geschichte und Kunst, Fu¨nfte Folge  (), –. I have only been able to find one description of an Augsburg Corpus Christi day procession: in  fourteen separate guilds marched in the procession, each under its own banner. SStBA, ° S , Nr. , Beilage. StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtkanzlei, Urkundenkonzepte, Geburtsbriefe, /., –. StadtAA, HWA, Fischer , October , .



Artisans versus magistrates lasted a year, the printers petitioned the council for permission to dissolve their guild, so they would not have to be ‘‘in communion’’ (in communione stehen) with the unacceptable candidate.                  The characteristics of the guild as a social group and the close association between guild members was one factor that contributed to the social exclusiveness of the guildsmen. Equally important were the external relations of a guild with other honorable trades in the commune. Contemporaries were well aware of the significance of relations between different guilds in the city in the course of a dishonor conflict. In the dispute that resulted when the bailiff Frank tried to apprentice his sons to the goldsmiths’ guild in  and , the conflicting parties discussed the social dynamic that operated between guilds with exceptional clarity. When Frank tried to inscribe his son Hans-Jerg with the goldsmiths in , the goldsmiths refused. No bailiff’s son had learned their trade ‘‘in human memory.’’ The goldsmiths presented letters from fellow tradesmen in Nuremberg and Strasbourg: here too the goldsmiths had never incorporated a bailiff’s son. Frank retorted that other trades did not hesitate to apprentice bailiffs’ sons. If the goldsmiths got their way and excluded his son, other crafts would follow suit, for like the goldsmiths, other guilds had their ordinances, historical privileges, and customs. Other artisans did not think that they were worth any less than the goldsmiths. Frank also emphasized the rights of citizenship. He requested that the authorities protect him against the insults of the goldsmiths. By insinuating that bailiffs were dishonorable, the goldsmiths had ‘‘touched his honor.’’ Frank, like all bailiffs, was a citizen, and as a citizen the authorities were obligated to protect him against insult. To preserve peace within the city was the first function of government. Magistrates legitimized their authority by appealing to this cherished ideal. Insults constituted a breach of civic peace almost as serious as actual violence. Frank requested that the city government force the goldsmiths to make a formal apology. If the goldsmiths’ insult went unanswered, bailiffs’ sons would soon be barred from all crafts and would be unable to earn their livelihood. Not surprisingly, the goldsmiths rejected Frank’s arguments. It did not follow, they argued, that just because other artisans accepted bailiffs’ sons, the goldsmiths should do so too. Frank was obscuring distinctions within the artisanate by implying that all guilds were equal. In fact, there were great differences in status between crafts; other trades had lower standards. The goldsmiths occupied the highest rank among the artisans because they worked with gold, a very noble substance. Their trade was highly skilled and artful, and it was one of the oldest in  

StadtAA, HWA, Buchdrucker , August –November . The city government did not allow the printers to dissolve their guild. StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , December –February , August–October .



Artisanal honor and urban politics Augsburg. Their high rank and honor was clearly demonstrated by their close association with Augsburg patricians. To drive home this point, the goldsmiths presented a list of all patricians who had learned their trade since . Frank’s claim that the goldsmiths had insulted him was also false, the guildsmen argued. Frank had every right to demand protection against insult, but the goldsmiths had not called him dishonorable. If it constituted an insult to deny a citizen membership in a corporation, this would lead to an absurdum: ‘‘all artisans and subjects would be capable of joining the patrician society, because they are all citizens, and so fall under the protection of the authorities, and no one would be allowed to insult them.’’ This was a remarkable argument. The notion that common artisans should be granted access to the exclusive patrician society just because they were citizens would indeed have seemed absurd to Augsburg’s patrician magistrates. It was just as absurd, the goldsmiths implied, that a bailiff’s son be admitted to the goldsmiths’ guild. By drawing a comparison between the social exclusiveness of the patricians and of the guildsmen, they were implying that when patricians excluded non-patricians from their society and when artisans excluded applicants they defined as dishonorable, they were really doing the same thing. While this argument was sociologically astute, it might have backfired. Just as the goldsmiths objected when Frank compared them with other artisans, the patricians were perhaps not keen on hearing that their social exclusiveness was the equivalent to what they perceived as ‘‘abuses’’ on the artisanal level. Aside from such sociological questions, the magistrates also had to consider the potential economic impact of the dishonor conflict, whether it was resolved one way or the other. The goldsmiths warned that if the council forced them to accept the bailiff’s son, the journeymen would strike. If the magistrates made such an ‘‘unreasonable’’ decision, they would bring economic hardship to the entire guild for the sake of one man. On the other hand, the council had to bear in mind the advice of their own legal counsel, who echoed Frank’s argument: ‘‘the other trades do not think any less of themselves. They are all in one class (Klasse) and counted as artisans. None have any privileges above the rest.’’ This was an accurate assessment of constitutional reality in the city. In the Caroline reform of  the goldsmiths and all other artisans were classed as ‘‘commoners,’’ in contradistinction to the patrician ruling class. But while the constitution categorized the craftsmen as one political ‘‘class,’’ the artisanate was in fact strongly variegated socially and economically, a fact the authorities recognized in their sumptuary legislation. Augsburg’s clothing ordinances distinguished respected and artistic trades, middling trades, and common and lowly trades. The magistrates’ legal counsel recognized the basic dynamic that shaped relations among these different crafts. Artisanal corporations competed with each other for honor and precedence within the commune by means of social exclusiveness. If the goldsmiths were permitted to exclude bailiffs’ sons, 

See, for example, the Ernewerte Zierd- und Kleyder-Ordnung of . StadtAA, Ratserla¨sse, –.



Artisans versus magistrates lesser guilds really had no choice but to exclude them as well. This was an inexorable dynamic. If lesser guilds continued to tolerate groups excluded by high status guilds, they demonstrated that they were less sensitive to potential pollution by dishonor, laying themselves open to the charge of being indifferent to honor. Guilds that continued to incorporate groups labeled as dishonorable by high status guilds, were themselves at risk of losing honor in the eyes of their fellow citizens. If the goldsmiths began to exclude bailiffs’ sons, there would soon be no guild in Augsburg willing to accept them. This was a compelling argument. Bailiffs were not immigrant day-laborers who could be expelled when they were no longer needed. Bailiffs were citizens. As citizens, they and their families were entitled to social support, should they become impoverished. The magistrates’ legal advisor made another alarming prediction. If the goldsmiths succeeded in labeling the bailiffs as dishonorable, they would not stop there. Soon other municipal employees would be stigmatized. Guildsmen would begin to exclude guards at the city gates, customs officers, and nightwatchmen. Large numbers of Augsburg’s citizens might become ineligible for guild membership. Unable to earn a living, they and their families would become a burden on the urban welfare system. Dishonor threatened to spread like a social cancer. The magistrates could only contain it if they nipped artisanal pretensions in the bud. These were the arguments that persuaded the council to rule in favor of the bailiff Frank. Shortly thereafter his son Hans-Jerg was inscribed as an apprentice goldsmith. His father won his case, but Hans-Jerg’s trials were only beginning. The goldsmiths pointed out that the council could force their guild to apprentice a bailiff’s son, but the council’s authority did not extend beyond the borders of the city. When the boy became a journeyman and wandered in the empire, he might well lose ‘‘life and limb.’’                                The goldsmiths’ warning calls attention to the role of journeymen in such conflicts. The goldsmiths threatened that the journeymen would strike if the bailiff’s son were inscribed. In this case, the strike did not materialize, but journeymen’s strikes were a recurring feature of dishonor conflicts over the next two centuries. Local dishonor conflicts cannot be understood apart from their regional and imperial context. The goldsmiths presented letters from the goldsmiths’ guilds in Nuremberg and Strasbourg to support their case. In each dishonor conflict, guildsmen were aware that their every action was being observed and judged by fellow tradesmen in the empire. Guildsmen were well informed about traditions and customs of fellow craftsmen in the empire, and, as a general principle, they tried to 

StadtAA, HWA, Goldschmiede , December –February , August–October .



Artisanal honor and urban politics establish conformity between artisanal practices in different cities. Wandering journeymen played a crucial role in the development of such a common artisanal culture. They transferred information from city to city, but most importantly, journeymen were the enforcers of the artisanal honor code. Journeymen’s organizations first developed in Germany in the late middle ages. They emerged in Augsburg in the mid-fourteenth century. Journeymen of particular crafts formed sworn corporations that claimed legal jurisdiction over their members. Journeymen claimed the right to regulate disputes among themselves without the interference of the masters. They went beyond that, though. An early bone of contention developed between journeymen’s organizations and masters’ guilds, and between journeymen and city government, when journeymen claimed the right to discipline and fine not only their own members, but their masters as well, encroaching upon the jurisdictions of masters’ guilds and magistrates. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, masters’ guilds and city government made repeated attempts to suppress journeymen’s organizations, which met with little success. By the sixteenth century, guilds and magistrates accepted the existence of journeymen’s organizations, but they tried to domesticate them by integrating them into the urban hierarchy as an appendage of the masters’ guilds. The masters sent representatives to journeymen’s meetings and tried to limit the jurisdiction of journeymen’s organizations over their members to minor offenses. But the journeymen’s associations could never be completely integrated in the urban hierarchy, because journeymen’s mobility was the defining structural feature of their organizations. Whereas the masters’ guilds were organized locally, the journeymen’s associations were organized regionally, with local chapters in every city. The splintered political structure of the empire gave the journeymen considerable leverage. While the authority of Augsburg’s magistrates did not extend beyond the city wall, local journeymen were supported by a network of journeymen’s organizations that spread throughout the empire. Journeymen’s associations provided support for journeymen on the road. When a traveling journeyman arrived in a city, he reported to the tavern of his organization, the Herberge. There he received a ritualized welcome during which he would have to prove that he was a member of the journeymen’s association by demonstrating his knowledge of the customs and secrets of the organization. When the newcomer had successfully completed this rite of passage, he was integrated into the group by eating and drinking with his fellow journeymen. Then the journeymen would escort the newcomer to the shop of a master who needed labor or, if no jobs were available, they provided him with some financial assistance so that he could travel on. The journeymen’s organization functioned as mediator between   

 Reininghaus, ‘‘Fru¨hformen,’’ pp. –. Reininghaus, Gesellengilden, pp. –. Schulz, Handwerksgesellen, pp. –, –. On journeymen’s mobility and super-regional networking, see Grießinger, Das symbolische Kapital,  pp. –. Ibid., pp. –.



Artisans versus magistrates the new arrival and masters who needed workers. This monopoly on employment enabled the organization to exercise comprehensive control over the conduct of their members. There were exact prescriptions concerning what a journeyman might wear on the street, where he should eat, and how he should deport himself in public. The journeyman tanners’ ordinance of  required journeymen to wear a cloak and dagger when they accompanied a new arrival to a master’s shop. No journeyman was allowed to step outside his master’s workshop without wearing a hat, or if his face and hands were dirty. The journeymen’s ordinance of  forbade journeymen to eat on the street, nor were they permitted to enter a tavern unless they were ‘‘honorably clothed.’’ Journeymen observed a ceremonial procedure at their regular meetings. Those who arrived late or who did not maintain the proper decorum were fined. Journeyman tanners were to attend the meeting wearing a cloak and dagger. The organization fined members who cursed or fought with a fellow journeyman. If a journeyman insulted another as a ‘‘mousehead’’ or ‘‘dog’’ he had to hand over half a week’s wages to the association. On a more serious level, the journeymen’s association punished or permanently excluded those members who had committed a dishonorable act or who had become dishonorable in some other way. Journeymen had little choice but to submit to punishment by their organization, for they could not escape the jurisdiction of the journeymen’s association by leaving town. The organization blacklisted those members who left Augsburg without resolving their conflict. Their names were inscribed in a ‘‘black book’’ and the organization sent letters of denunciation to journeymen’s associations in other cities. The recalcitrant journeyman would be denied employment by associations in other cities until he returned to Augsburg to settle his affairs. Such blacklisting proved effective. The journeymen’s networks were able to keep track of the movements of individual journeyman and to maintain boycotts on a regional level. Thus, for example, in  a letter of denunciation from Munich informed Augsburg’s bookbinders that one of their masters employed a bailiff’s son named Franz Antoni Halmberger. The journeyman bookbinders mounted a boycott against this master’s shop until Franz Antoni finally left town. A letter from a traveling journeyman to the journeymen’s organization in Augsburg informed the Augsburgers what had become of the dishonorable journeyman. He had traveled to St. Gallen in Switzerland with false papers and under an assumed name in an attempt to shed his dishonorable identity. But when another journeyman who had worked in Augsburg arrived in St. Gallen, Franz Antoni’s cover was blown and his 

  

On journeymen’s association as mediator between new arrivals looking for employment and masters looking for labor, see Schulz, Handwerksgesellen, pp. –. Correspondence between the Augsburg bookbinders’ guild and the city government in  indicates that journeymen fulfilled this function with the consent of the masters and city council. StadtAA, HWA, Buchbinder , March–May, . StadtAA, HWA, Gerber , November , . StadtAA, HWA, Gerber , January , . StadtAA, HWA, Gerber , November , .



Artisanal honor and urban politics dishonorable background revealed. The St. Gallen journeymen ‘‘beat him half to death and chased him away as an infamous person.’’ What were the dynamics between masters’ guild, journeymen’s association, and city government in dishonor conflicts? Through the control of the labor supply, the journeymen’s organization was able to exert significant pressure on the masters’ guild. The journeymen saw themselves as the guardians of ‘‘artisanal law and custom’’ (Handwerksrecht und Gewohnheit) and claimed jurisdiction over the masters to enforce it. Thus when the three master rope-makers visited the skinner’s house in , it was the journeymen’s organization that insisted on fining them. One of the masters ‘‘begged the journeymen for mercy.’’ When the city government ordered the embroiderers to allow the torture victim Augustin Gerstecker to work in , the masters claimed that ‘‘as obedient citizens’’ they were willing to accept him; it was the journeymen who were disobedient. Several journeymen had already left town and spread the news of the conflict throughout the region. If the city government proceeded to force the guild to accept Augustin, the remaining journeymen would immediately go on strike and leave town. The masters had pleaded with the journeymen, the guildsmen claimed, but to no avail. A strike would bring financial ruin to the masters. Their own sons working abroad would be sent home. In an attempt to intimidate the journeymen, a committee of patricians called in the remaining journeymen and questioned each one individually and exhorted him to obey the council, but to no avail. The journeymen adamantly refused to accept Augustin. The magistrates’ guarantees that Augustin was honorable carried no weight beyond the city walls, the journeymen claimed. They were willing to be fined or imprisoned by the city government in order to avoid the sanctions of their fellow journeymen abroad. The boycott against Augustin continued until , when the authorities finally gave up. We do not know what became of Augustin after the authorities abandoned him. The city government had to admit defeat on several other occasions as well. When the governments of other cities conferred with Augsburg on the status of bailiffs’ children in artisan guilds, Augsburg’s magistrates recommended discretion, since decrees in favor of bailiffs’ children and other dishonorable people could not always be enforced. The city government was well aware that any attempt to control the journeymen could only succeed if Augsburg coordinated its efforts with other cities and territories. In  and , the council of cities in the imperial diet passed measures to develop a common policy towards journeymen. The decision of  stated that when journeymen went on strike and left town, the city government should send a list of their names to governments of other cities. These governments would then blacklist the journeymen, so they would be unable to find employment.    

StadtAA, HWA, Buchbinder , January , . On the expression see Wissell, Handwerks Recht, vol. , p. . StadtAA, HWA, Seiler , April , . StadtAA, Handwerksgerichtsprozeßakten, June –July , .



Artisans versus magistrates Such blacklisting would force the journeymen to return to the city they had fled and settle their conflict. In  the council of cities strengthened the original measure by adding that the names of striking journeymen would be publicly displayed in the city they were boycotting until they returned to face punishment. It is clear that these governmental measures were a direct imitation of the methods the journeymen’s organizations employed to discipline their members. It will come as no surprise that governmental blacklisting proved much less effective than the journeymen’s ‘‘black book.’’ When Augsburg’s journeymen weavers went on strike to force the exclusion of Master Johann Georg Vogel, when he married a bailiff’s daughter in , Augsburg put these new measures to the test. The magistrates wrote to authorities in twenty cities throughout the empire listing the names of the fugitive journeymen. Even though most of these cities agreed to cooperate, nothing ever came of these efforts. None of the journeymen ever returned, and in Augsburg the boycott against Master Vogel continued. In spite of such failures, the imperial government continued to exhort local authorities to coordinate their efforts against journeymen. The proposal of  suggested that local governments maintain close contacts with authorities in neighboring territories to develop a uniform policy against journeymen. The police ordinance of  repeated this recommendation. But until the end of the old empire such attempts at cooperation by city and territorial governments could not match the coordination, efficiency, and determination of the super-regional journeymen’s organizations. The geographic mobility of journeymen and the far-flung networks of their associations meant that journeymen wandered and worked in cities and territories where the dominant religious confession differed from their own. Journeymen’s organizations achieved their greatest power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, just when the process of confessionalization created greater cultural boundaries between the opposing religious camps. And yet journeymen did not allow confessional differences to undermine solidarity within their organizations. Confessional differences did create social boundaries within the artisanal milieu. After the Thirty Years’ War, for example, it was customary in Augsburg for wandering journeymen to take jobs only with masters of their own confession. But this rule was not etched in stone. Individual masters continued to employ journeymen of the opposing confession. Protestant master tanners especially, for reasons that remain unclear, frequently employed Catholic journeymen. Journeymen’s organizations incorporated both Catholics and Protestants, but the confessions formed subgroups within the larger association. The constitutional principle of confessional parity was applied to journeymen’s organizations, requiring the two confessional groups to each elect two representatives. These four journeymen, two Catholics, two Protestants, formed the institutional leadership of the journeymen’s  

 StadtAA, EWA . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , , , June –July . Hans Proesler, ed., Das gesamtdeutsche Handwerk im Spiegel der Reichsgesetzgebung von – (Berlin, ), pp. , –.



Artisanal honor and urban politics organization. Some trades set up separate craft hostels for Protestant and Catholic journeymen. But other guilds maintained a single hostel. In ‘‘bi-confessional’’ hostels confessional parity was maintained by ‘‘alternating’’ the position of tavernkeeper, the ‘‘hostel-father,’’ between Catholics and Protestants. When the ‘‘hostelfather’’ was a Catholic, he was obligated to feed Protestants meat on Catholic fast days. Confessional differences clearly had an impact in journeymen’s daily life. When conflicts arose that threatened journeymen’s collective interests, however, confession fell by the wayside. Confessional allegiance had no discernible impact on journeymen’s reaction to dishonor pollution. In guild correspondence on dishonor conflicts, the confession of litigants is never noted, in itself an indication that confession was not a factor. However, it is sometimes possible to deduce the likely confession of journeymen by their place of origin, which was usually noted in their interrogations. During the conflict over the expulsion of the embroiderer Augustin Gerstecker, for example, thirty-seven of his fellow journeymen were questioned. Twelve were local. Two came from neighboring free imperial cities such Dinkelsbu¨hl and Kaufbeuren, like Augsburg bi-confessional cities. Two came from Lu¨beck, one from Tu¨bingen, one from Hamburg (all Lutheran), two from Krakau (Catholic), three from Austria (Catholic), seven from Saxony (Lutheran), three from Bavaria (Catholic), three from Silesia (Lutheran), and one from Moravia (Catholic). Of course it is only possible to guess the confession of individual journeymen, but the varied geographic origins of the journeymen make it all but certain that this was a confessionally heterogeneous group. And yet the journeymen remained unified. Despite massive intimidation tactics by their patrician lords, no cracks appeared in journeymen solidarity. During dishonor conflicts, masters presented themselves as helpless victims of their journeymen, but these petitions were less than sincere. Certainly masters could not control the journeymen’s organizations any more than the city government could, but the interests of masters and journeymen overlapped in dishonor conflicts. The masters were just as opposed to incorporating a dishonorable member as the journeymen were. But their young unmarried transient journeymen were in a far better position to disobey the city government than the married masters and citizens with permanent residence. In a sense, the role of the journeymen in dishonor conflicts is comparable to the role of male youth groups in charivaris in rural society. Natalie Davis has pointed out that male youth groups used charivaris to enforce behavioral norms that the entire village held in common. As young men enforced community norms, they internalized them. The village ‘‘socialized [the young males] to the conscience of the community by making them  

Etienne Franc¸ois, Die unsichtbare Grenze. Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg, –  (Sigmaringen, ), pp. –. Ibid., –. StadtAA, HWA, Bortenmacher , November –, . On the migration patterns of journeymen see also Roeck, Stadt in Krieg und Frieden, vol. , pp. –.



Artisans versus magistrates the raucous voice of that conscience.’’ In the city the situation was somewhat more complicated; the young artisans were not enforcing norms shared by the entire community, only by the guildsmen. But like young men in rural society, the journeymen learned the artisanal code of conduct as they enforced it. When glazier master Hans Ho¨zl married a bailiff’s daughter in , his fellow masters taunted him: perhaps he had heard as a wandering journeyman that it was a uniform custom throughout the empire to exclude bailiffs and their children from honorable guilds? The years of journeymanship were a period of socialization in which young artisans learned the group rules of the guild. That masters and journeymen shared the same ideas on honor and dishonor is apparent in a number of dishonor conflicts. When the locksmiths of Ulm sought to exclude a master who had allegedly served his journeymen ‘‘skinner’s carrion’’ for dinner in , the masters actually paid the journeymen’s debts at their tavern, so that they could leave town before the city government arrested them. When the Augsburg bookbinders forbade the bailiff’s son Franz Antoni Halmberger to work as a journeyman in , the collusion between masters and journeymen was especially apparent. Under the guise of going on a pilgrimage, a group of masters and journeymen set off together to the Bavarian monastery town of Andechs, Franz Antoni’s home town, in order to expose his dishonorable background. After the journeyman bookbinders went on strike and left town, the masters petitioned the city government to exclude the bailiff’s son quickly since the labor shortage could drive them into bankruptcy. But the masters met with little sympathy from the council. The masters had paid their journeymen their back wages all too readily, the magistrates declared. They had allowed the journeymen to leave town without notifying the authorities. These examples make clear that in dishonor conflicts the journeymen generally were not striking against their masters. They were striking against the city government’s intervention in what they considered internal guild affairs, and often enough the masters had put them up to it.                Protecting guild honor also involved the exclusion of female interlopers in the workshop. In the course of the early modern period, guilds imposed a rigid sexual division of labor in craft production. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century guild ordinances mentioned female masters who trained both male and female apprentices. By the mid-fifteenth century, however, all mention of female masters or female apprentices had disappeared. Instead, guild ordinances introduced new restrictions on the right of masters’ widows to continue running the shop. Guildsmen limited the number of apprentices or journeymen widows might employ, or   

Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, ), p. .  Stadtarchiv Munich, Gewerbeamt /. StadtAA, HWA, Schlosser , April , . StadtAA, HWA, Buchbinder , May , , November , .



Artisanal honor and urban politics mandated that they work alone or only for a brief period after their husbands’ death. The exclusion of female labor was a sign of high status. In , Augsburg’s goldsmiths expressed their claim to honor by emphasizing the inability of women to comprehend the mysteries of their craft. Conversely, a high proportion of female labor among linen-weavers might have contributed to their dishonorable status in some areas of the empire. As guild masters tried to close down widows’ shops, journeymen militated for the exclusion of masters’ wives, daughters, and maidservants from the production process. To work next to a woman would taint a journeyman’s honor. In their efforts to expel women, journeymen resorted to the same boycotts they used to exclude dishonorable people. In , for example, Frankfurt’s hat-makers refused to employ journeymen from Fulda, because the guild there still used female labor. Journeymen avoided regions where women were not expelled from the workshop. German journeymen hat-makers, for example, did not wander to the Netherlands, because masters there still employed female servants in production. Journeymen distanced themselves from women socially as well as sexually. Contact with prostitutes is a case in point. Despite the fact that prostitutes were ‘‘dishonorable women’’ (unerbare Frauen), it was perfectly acceptable, indeed expected, for journeymen to frequent the city brothel in the pre-Reformation period. The civic brothel provided the only legitimate sexual outlet for unmarried journeymen. But the brothel offered more than sex. Like a tavern, it provided space where journeymen could eat, drink, gamble, and socialize with workmates. Just how important the brothel was to journeymen’s culture is illustrated in a petition by Basel guildsmen from . When Basel wanted to shut down its brothel as part of an evangelical morals campaign, the masters opposed the closure, for ‘‘otherwise we would not be able to practice our trade for want of journeymen, who would shun our city for this reason.’’ But the close relationship between journeymen and prostitutes was already changing several decades before the Reformation. As prostitutes became increasingly stigmatized in the last years of the fifteenth century, guilds demonstrated their claim to honor by limiting journeymen’s sociability with prostitutes. Late fifteenth-century guild ordinances forbade journeymen to dance or drink with prostitutes. The ordinance of the Schlettstadt tailors stigmatized the brothel as dishonorable space. Masters (though not journeymen) were forbidden to set foot in it, or in the house of a Jew or a skinner. These restrictions   

  

Merry Wiesner, Working Women in Renaissance Germany (New Brunswick, ), pp. –. Roper, Holy Household, p. . Jean H. Quataert, ‘‘The shaping of women’s work in manufacturing: guilds, household and the state in central Europe, –,’’ American Historical Review  (), –. See above,  Wiesner, Working Women, p. . chapter . Kurt Wesoly, Lehrlinge und Handwerksgesellen am Mittelrhein. Ihre soziale Lage und ihre Organisation vom . bis ins . Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a.M., ), p. .  Roper, The Holy Household, p. . Wesoly, Lehrlinge und Handwerksgesellen, p. . Beate Schuster, Die freien Frauen. Dirnen und Frauenha¨user im . und . Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a.M, ), pp. –.



Artisans versus magistrates did not yet prohibit sexual contacts for journeymen, but to have a prostitute ‘‘hanging about him’’ posed a threat to an artisan’s honor. In the second half of the sixteenth century, sexual contact was forbidden as well, which further illustrates the role male sexual conduct came to play in guild honor in the course of the early modern period. When brothels were closed down during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, journeymen no longer socialized in mixed company, but spent their free time in the all-male milieu of the craft hostel. This ‘‘masculinization’’ of work and sociability, as Merry Wiesner has argued, made ‘‘male bonding’’ a defining feature of journeymen’s organizations. Guild honor became ‘‘honor among men, an honor which linked men together and excluded women.’’ This homosocial nature of German guild culture may explain why so few of the dishonor conflicts documented in Augsburg’s guild records involved women. No case is preserved in which an artisan was labeled as dishonorable for working next to a woman, or for frequenting a prostitute. This is most likely due to the fact that the bulk of Augsburg’s guild records date from after . By this time the exclusion of female labor had already been accomplished in many trades, and legalized prostitution was a thing of the past. Lyndal Roper has shown that after the municipal brothel was shut down in , the city government no longer recognized prostitution as a trade, or saw prostitutes as a distinct class of women. Instead, prostitution was just an extreme form of sexual sin that all women were liable to commit. As government policies towards sex crime changed, prostitutes were no longer a clearly identifiable group. Guilds penalized masters and journeymen for fornication and adultery, but the women they were accused of sleeping with were not prostitutes; they were typically serving women, often themselves from the artisanal milieu. The women most frequently involved in dishonor conflicts in Augsburg and neighboring cities were women of dishonorable stock, i.e. the daughters, granddaughters, or widows of defiled tradesmen. Official correspondence did not refer to them as ‘‘dishonorable women’’ (unerbare Frauen), a term that specifically implied prostitution or sexual dishonor. Instead, they were simply called ‘‘the daughter of a bailiff,’’ or ‘‘the daughter of a skinner.’’ Occasionally, a guildsmen who married a woman of dishonorable stock argued that he, as a man, could not be defiled by a woman. After his marriage to a bailiff’s daughter in , weaver master Vogel contended that such a marriage did not dishonor the man, since the trade was not passed on in the female line, and women did ‘‘not desire to train apprentices, much less to wander in the trade.’’ In other words, Vogel claimed that the sexual     

Roper, Holy Household, p. . Schuster, Die freien frauen, pp. , . Merry Wiesner, ‘‘Guilds, male bonding, and women’s work in early modern Germany,’’ Gender and  History  (), –, . Roper, Holy Household, pp. –. For example, in  the blacksmiths wanted to expel a journeyman who had slept with his master’s daughter. StadtAA, HWA, Schmiede , October –May . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , October , .



Artisanal honor and urban politics division of labor insulated male artisans from pollution by women of dishonorable stock. In , glazier master Ho¨zl offered a similar, if more eloquent argument, after he had been expelled from his guild for marrying a bailiff’s daughter: ‘‘The woman does not dishonor the man. Instead, the man dishonors the woman, since he is the head . . . the woman receives honors and dignities from the man, just as the moon receives its light from the sun.’’ Predictably, this argument fell on deaf ears. The glaziers responded that according to Ho¨zl’s lunar logic, artisans could marry skinners’ daughters – an absurdum absurdissimum. Honorable guildsmen insisted that dishonor was transmitted by marriage and by blood in both the male and the female line. In all other contexts, however, women seemed to play only a peripheral role in dishonor pollution. Sociability with dishonorable men frequently sparked dishonor conflicts within guilds, but sociability with women of dishonorable stock seemed to pose little threat to artisanal honor. Of all dishonor conflicts documented in Augsburg guild records, only one was precipitated by inappropriate sociability with a woman of dishonorable stock. This case occurred in  when the retailer Georg Schmidt was banished for allowing a military preacher quartered in his home to drink in the company of the executioner’s wife Barbara Metz, without alerting him to her presence. Sharing wine with the executioner’s wife dishonored the preacher and his regiment. In this instance, sociability with a woman from an executioner’s clan did defile an honorable man. But Barbara Metz’s astonished reaction reveals that this case was the exception that proved the rule. ‘‘She is surprised that this affair has caused such conflict, especially since she is only a woman . . .’’ She was present at the invitation of Schmidt’s wife to join a group of women in a sewing circle. Another case illustrates how unproblematic even prolonged personal contact with a woman of dishonorable blood could be. In  a master glazier from Dinkelsbu¨hl was embroiled in a dishonor conflict because he wanted to marry his maidservant, the granddaughter of a beadle. The woman had served in his home for years before this case erupted. To employ the granddaughter of a beadle as a maidservant within his home did not defile the glazier’s honor. Only when he wanted to marry her did her dishonor became relevant. Clearly, the boundary of honor ran differently depending on the gender of the dishonorable person. It would have been unthinkable for the glazier to employ the grandson of a beadle as a journeyman. Why was sociability with female members of the dishonorable core group of so  



 StadtA Munich, Gewerbeamt /. ‘‘The greatest absurdity.’’ Ibid. StadtAA, Strafamt, Urgichtensammlung, Georg Schmidt, , , . See above, chapter . At first sight, another case seems to involve sociability with a woman of dishonorable blood as well. The case of three master rope-makers who were censured by their journeymen for entering the skinner’s house to speak with the skinner’s wife was discussed in chapter . However, their transgression was entering the dishonorable space of the skinner’s house. Contact with the skinner’s wife was mentioned only as an aside. StadtAA, HWA, Seiler , April , ; RP , fo. v, v. StadtAA, HWA, Glaser , July–November .



Artisans versus magistrates little import? Part of the answer is that female sociability in general had less public significance than male sociability. Men in groups demonstrated corporate and political identity and honor by means of sociability. They formed what Ann Tlusty has called a ‘‘drinking society of orders.’’ Membership in the ‘‘Lords’ Drinking Room’’ (Herrentrinkstube), for example, signified patrician status. Guilds that could afford to rent a private room in a tavern for their guild meetings had a greater claim to honor than those who held their meetings in the general public room of the tavern.  There was no female equivalent of the institutionalized sociability by which male corporate groups expressed their social identity. Women might form sewing circles, such as the one the executioner’s wife attended in . That such female gatherings had no public or political significance is revealed by the fact that the other women present, presumably also from the artisanal milieu, were not charged with inappropriate sociability. They were not dishonored by their association with the executioner’s wife. Dishonor pollutions sparked by ritual transgression – killing a dog, skinning carrion, etc. – almost never involved women. Either women did not commit these acts, or their transgressions were more likely to go unnoticed and unpunished. Dishonor conflicts were thus overwhelmingly played out among men. Dishonor pollution was produced by male transgressions in the male realms of sociability and work. Dishonor pollution had nothing to do with specifically female impurities, such as pollution associated with menstruation or birth. The ‘‘maleness’’ of German dishonor pollution presents yet another contrast to pollution beliefs in non-Western cultures. For example, caste pollution in India results, in Louis Dumont’s words, from ‘‘the irruption of the biological into social life.’’ Organic events such as death, excretion, menstruation, or birth confer temporary impurity on persons who experience them, and permanent impurity on professionals who specialize in handling these events, e.g. undertakers, latrine-cleaners, and midwives. Birth and menstrual pollution accounts for the untouchable status of washermen who clean the soiled linens. In early modern Germany, however, where women did the washing, impurities associated with birth and menstruation were not relevant to the pollution of defiled trades. Menstruation, pregnancy, and birth did put women in a polluted state, but these impurities seem to have been religious in nature. Drawing on Leviticus, church law forbade sexual intercourse with menstruating women. The medieval church forbade women to enter a church 



 

Such high status guilds were known as Geschenkte Handwerke, i.e. crafts with a Schenke, a drinking room. Lesser guilds were called ungeschenkte Handwerke. B. Ann Tlusty, ‘‘The devil’s altar: the tavern and society in early modern Augsburg’’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, ), pp. –, . In Chinese culture, for example, pollution associated with death and birth were associated with women. See Emily M. Ahern, ‘‘The power and pollution of Chinese women,’’ in Margery Wolf and Raxane Witke, Women in Chinese Society (Stanford, ), pp. –. Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications (Chicago, ), p. .  Ibid., pp. –. Wiesner, Working Women, pp. –.



Artisanal honor and urban politics or to receive Holy Communion during their period. Such official prohibitions were no longer in effect during the early modern era, but menstruation continued to inspire anxiety. According to popular belief, sex with a menstruating woman would result in a monstrous birth. The gaze of a menstruating woman might dim a mirror, and, according to Paracelsus, milk would sour in her presence. Such fears amounted to a ‘‘taboo;’’ contact with menstrual blood was believed to have tangible effects in the material world. It is unclear, however, to what extent such a ‘‘menstrual taboo’’ was observed in practice. The fact that brothel-keepers tried to force prostitutes to have sex during their periods, indicates that clients were not repulsed at the idea of sleeping with a menstruating woman. Giving birth also placed women in a state of impurity. New mothers were cleansed in the liturgical ceremony of ‘‘churching’’ in which the priest sprinkled them with holy water. Midwives participated in this purification ritual, another indication that in Germany, unlike India, midwifery was not considered a defiled trade. Femalespecific pollution had nothing to do with early modern German dishonor, which was male-centered and secular. No amount of holy water could cleanse a defiled tradesman of his dishonor. Women were thus peripheral to German dishonor, in ideology and symbolism, and in social practice. To say, however, that dishonor pollution was rarely about women, and that women were rarely the principal actors in dishonor conflicts, does not mean that women remained passive in such disputes. When a number of master tailors climbed onto the scaffold during an execution in , one of their wives managed to head off the dishonor conflict before it began. She stopped the guild foremen in the street and pleaded with them to punish her husband, ‘‘because her children were already hearing about it.’’ The foremen fined the offenders, who willingly submitted to the guild’s judgment. The guildsmen spent the fine in a common drinking bout; the offending masters were reconciled. The only reason any record of this incident exists, is that the magistrates saw the hefty fine the guild imposed as an infringement of governmental sovereignty. This case gives an idea of artisans’ discretion in handling such cases; dishonor pollution could be neutralized before it ever provoked a formal response. Such low-level conflicts left no trace in the archives, but most likely occurred far more frequently than the full-blown dishonor conflicts documented in the records. The fact that children of dishonored masters suffered harassment was typically not discussed in more formal  

   

Patricia Crawford, ‘‘Attitudes to menstruation in seventeenth-century England,’’ Past and Present  (), –, –. Ottavia Nicoli, ‘‘‘Menstruum Quasi Monstruum’: monstrous births and menstrual taboo in the sixteenth century,’’ in Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, eds., Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective (Baltimore, ), pp. –. Article ‘‘Auge,’’ in HDA, vol. , p. ; ‘‘Milch,’’ vol. , p. . Schuster, Die freien Frauen, p. . Susan Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: an Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (London, ), pp. –. StadtAA, HWA, Urgichtensammlung, Georg Erhard, , , .



Artisans versus magistrates proceedings. The case is also suggestive of a sexual division of labor in containing dishonor pollution in daily life. David Sabean has identified gendered networks of gossip and social control in rural society. A witchcraft accusation could circulate ‘‘in the village as ‘Weibergeschwa¨tz’ (female gossip), a form of public gossip that neither men nor the pastor would have to pay formal attention to.’’ But when a man made the accusation, ‘‘it went from mere Geschwa¨tz (gossip) to Sage (knowledge) . . .’’ When the denunciation had reached this level, it could only be resolved in court. The intervention of the tailor’s wife seems to reveal a similar pattern in the artisanal milieu. As long as dishonor conflicts remained at an informal level, it appears they could be discussed and resolved through the mediation of women.

     In this chapter we have surveyed the motivations and tactics of guild masters, journeymen, and their patrician governors. The goal of limiting economic competition does not provide a satisfactory explanation of guild artisans’ pursuit of ‘‘dove-like-purity.’’ Dishonor conflicts could be triggered by a variety of circumstances. A person could be disqualified from guild membership by birth, as the child of a dishonorable person or as a bastard, by voluntary association or involuntary contact with an executioner or skinner or their working materials, or by sexual misconduct. Artisans did not distinguish between conduct and condition. Honor formed a complex, an inextricable whole. Honorable family background, legitimate birth, and honorable conduct were indispensable requirements. Honorable conduct implied more than sexual morality and virtuous behaviour; honorable artisans had to be careful not to violate ritual pollution rules. Artisans seemed to interpret honor in materialistic, bodily terms. Honor was fragile and could be ‘‘broken’’ by a polluting touch, by physical contact with the executioner, the skinner, or their working materials. Once honorable artisans decided that a person had become dishonorable – whether by marrying a bailiff’s daughter or coming under the executioner’s hands during torture – that person’s motivation, guilt, or innocence were irrelevant. The polluting action was effective in and of itself, ex opere operato, regardless of moral intention. Dishonor was a form of secular pollution, not a ‘‘taboo’’ reinforced by supernatural sanction. The guildsmen who strove to preserve the ‘‘dove-like-purity’’ of their trade were confessionally mixed. Their religious differences were not a factor in dishonor conflicts. It seems likely that honor and the exclusion of dishonorable people were so central to artisanal culture, precisely because guildsmen were religiously divided. Guilds no longer formed sacral communities as they had before the Reformation, but artisanal honor offered 

David Warren Sabean, Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, – (Cambridge, ), pp. –.



Artisanal honor and urban politics a new unifying ethos, a point of connection between opposing confessional camps. The nature of the guild as a social organization, the close bonds between guild members analogous to the bonds of kinship, contributed to the social exclusiveness of guildsmen. Equally important were interactions of guildsmen with other corporate groups within the city, and with their fellow tradesmen in the empire. Guilds were engaged in constant competition for honor and precedence within the commune. Honor and prestige were not static or fixed characteristics. Artisans tried to move up or avoid moving down the prestige hierarchy within the artisanate by practicing social exclusiveness. The same competitive mechanism that governed relations between corporate groups within the city also shaped the relations between guilds in different cities. Conflicts between Augsburg’s guildsmen and their fellow tradesmen in different cities did not only affect the particular guild involved in the conflict, it affected the city as a whole. In their petition to exclude Anhauser for marrying the skinner’s daughter, the fishermen emphasized that this case did not concern them alone. The conflict put at risk ‘‘the reputation and good name of the entire city and all artisans who work within it.’’ If the fishermen were forced to accept Anhauser, artisans in other cities would say ‘‘in Augsburg skinners’ children are accepted into honorable trades.’’ The outcome of local dishonor conflicts was determined, in part, by their regional and imperial context. The city government was in an unenviable position when a dishonor conflict erupted within the city. The councilors had to balance competing interests in order to restore harmony and civic peace to the commune. They had to consider the economic interests of the guildsmen. If they forced the guild to accept a dishonorable candidate, the journeymen would almost certainly strike. A long-term strike had disastrous economic consequences for the guild. Honorable guildsmen appealed to the common weal: would the magistrates sacrifice the guildsmen, all of them citizens and heads of households, for the sake of one dishonorable individual? On the other hand, the magistrates were well aware of the dynamic of competition that operated between corporate groups and between cities, and the resulting tendency of dishonor conflicts to escalate. If the government did not succeed in containing dishonor to the core group of executioners and skinners, then artisans would apply the label of dishonor ever more widely. A growing number of people would become ineligible for guild membership. Unintegrated into the political and economic structure of the city, unable to earn their livelihood, these groups would present a growing social problem. However the councilors resolved such dilemmas, dishonor conflicts confronted Augsburg’s patrician governors with the limits of their own power. Their jurisdiction ended at the city walls. The high geographic mobility of journeymen and their network of associations throughout the empire made it impossible for the magistrates to control them, and masters and journeymen took full advantage of this 

StadtAA, HWA, Fischer , October , .



Artisans versus magistrates situation. They knew that Augsburg’s patrician regime could not rule by decree; the magistrates had to establish some sort of consensus with their guildsmen. The fragmented political structure of the empire allowed Augsburg’s guildsmen to assert their claims to honor aggressively. In Mack Walker’s memorable phrase, the empire was an ‘‘incubator’’ that allowed Germany’s distinctive artisanal culture to flourish more or less unchecked. 

Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, – (Ithaca, ), p. .





Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century In  the enlightened Prussian physician and journalist Christian Gottfried Gru¨ner published a pamphlet in which he lauded the humanitarian advances of his century, while lamenting the fact that executioners and skinners had not benefited from such social reforms: The history of modern times provides inspiring examples of humanitarianism towards the oppressed . . . Here in Germany, Jews have been given greater freedoms . . . In England . . . criminals are being transported to Botany Bay as useful colonists, instead of being hanged. In Hungary, attempts are being made to accustom vagrant, thieving, and lazy gypsies to a settled life and to turn them into useful citizens. Do not skinners have a claim to more humane treatment by their fellow citizens as well?

Social commentators in eighteenth-century Germany lamented that the ‘‘prejudice’’ of the dishonor of executioner and other defiled trades persisted ‘‘in our enlightened century.’’ But appeals to reason and humanity notwithstanding, the position of dishonorable people deteriorated in the course of the century. The development is paradoxical. The legal status of executioners and skinners gradually improved. The imperial police ordinance of  legitimated all defiled trades ‘‘except the skinner alone.’’ The imperial decree of  rehabilitated the children of skinners, and reaffirmed that executioners were already honorable. A number of territorial states also issued general mandates rehabilitating dishonorable trades. Austria and Prussia were the most forceful in this regard. But dishonor sparked more social conflict in the eighteenth century than ever before. Executioners and skinners lost many of the perquisites that had made their dishonorable status tolerable in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and increasingly challenged the social boundary that excluded them from honorable society. Guildsmen raised their honor requirements to new heights and applied the stigma of dishonor    

Christian Gottfried Gru¨ner, ‘‘Unehrlichkeit und das unehrliche Begra¨bnis,’’ Almanach fu¨r A¨rzte und Nicht A¨rzte (Jena, ), pp. –, p. . Johann Christian Quistorp, Kleinere Juristische Schriften. Erste Sammlung (Bu¨zow/Wismar, ), p. . Hans Proesler, ed., Das gesamtdeutsche Handwerk im Spiegel der Reichsgesetzgebung von – (Berlin, ), pp. , . See above, chapter , p. . Georg Jahn, Zur Gewerbepolitik der deutschen Landesfu¨rsten vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert (Leipzig, ).



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century more widely. Stubbornly resisting all attempts to ‘‘enlighten’’ them, artisans had, in the words of one exasperated bureaucrat, ‘‘nothing else in mind but their imaginary point d’honneur.’’ While enlightened public opinion was hostile towards artisanal exclusiveness and absolutist territorial states adopted a hard line towards guild ‘‘abuses,’’ in Augsburg and other free imperial cities, magistrates became more sympathetic to the social concerns of the artisans. The Augburg city government adopted a policy of appeasement towards the artisans and tended to give the guildsmen greater leeway in dishonor conflicts. Indeed, for the first time the magistrates themselves actively enforced the social discrimination of dishonorable people.                             We turn first to the changing status of executioners and skinners. What opportunities existed for them to move out of the dishonorable milieu? Medicine provided the most promising avenue of upward social mobility, as is exemplified by the remarkable career of Marx Philipp Hartmann. A chronicle recorded the execution of a thief on June ,  with the comment, ‘‘This was the last whom Master Marx Philipp Hartmann beheaded. He then received an imperial privilege allowing him to practice as other doctors, without objection.’’ That summer, after serving as executioner for twenty-eight years, Master Marx managed to obtain an imperial legitimation that placed him and his daughter ‘‘in the estate of honor.’’ Marx had also received an imperial privilege to practice medicine. He now planned to settle in Augsburg and continue his practice. He applied for citizenship for himself and his daughter, since he was confident that he could ‘‘make his living with honor.’’ In official documents Hartmann was now described as medicinae practicus (imperially privileged medical practitioner). The label of executioner disappeared, and no mention was made in official records of Marx’s past profession. Marx now moved in different circles. Abandoning the traditional endogamy among executioner clans, Marx managed to marry his daughter Maria to a medical doctor in . Marx himself made a less prestigious but still honorable match, marrying a stonemason’s widow in . When Marx died in , his name was recorded in the parish records preceded by the honorific Herr. Marx Philipp Hartmann’s spectacular social ascent was not unprecedented. 

   

This was a bureaucrat from the Prussian province of Neumark. Quoted in Hans-Ulrich Thamer, ‘‘On the use and abuse of handicraft: journeyman culture and enlightened public opinion in th and th century Germany,’’ in Steven L. Kaplan, ed., Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Berlin, ), pp. –, p. . SStBA, ° cod Aug HV , Maleficantenliste –, fo. v. StadtAA, Bu¨rgeraufnahmen, Fasz. a, Nr. , September , and October , . Petrus Stellner and Frantz Widemann served as witnesses. Archiv des Bistums Augsburg, Matrikelamt, Trauungsreg. Dompfarrei , p. , May , . Archiv des Bistums Augsburg, Matrikelamt, Sterbebuch, Dompfarrei , p. .



Artisanal honor and urban politics There are a number of examples of executioners who were legitimated by the emperor, their territorial lord, or a palatine count (comes palatinus), an imperial officer who was empowered by the emperor to grant such legitimations. These legitimations declared the executioners to be honorable and often granted them the privilege of practicing medicine in spite of the barber-surgeons’ and medical doctors’ monopoly. One such case occurred in the Swabian town of Donauwo¨rth in . Master Marx Da¨ubler, who had served as executioner in Donauwo¨rth for eighteen years, successfully passed an examination at the medical faculty of the university of Ingolstadt, whereupon he was legitimated by the Bavarian elector and granted permission to practice as a doctor and surgeon. This case is exceptional, not only because of the erudition that was required to pass such an examination, but also because the right of a person of dishonorable background to study at a university was contested. Most executioners who received medical privileges did so without professional accreditation. In , after twenty years of service as executioner, Marx Philipp Hartmann’s nephew, Johann Adam Hartmann, received an imperial legitimation that declared him honorable and allowed him to set up a medical practice. Like his uncle he was granted citizenship and now appeared in official documents as ‘‘citizen and imperially privileged medical practitioner and surgeon.’’ In  the tax records even entered him as ‘‘Doctor.’’ He was addressed with such honorific titles as Herr Doktor, Ihro Excellenz, and Ihro Gestreng. These were titles to which normally only university graduates were entitled. Johann Adam remarried in . Though the background of his new wife Anna Maria Straub is unclear, neither she nor the two witnesses were members of any known executioner clan. However, Johann Adam was not able to shake off his dishonorable past as easily as his uncle Marx Philipp apparently had. In spite of the honors he was accorded (Herr Doktor, Ihro Gestreng), his imperial legitimation was repeatedly challenged. In  the lackey of a local count accosted Hartmann in an apothecary shop, deriding him as ‘‘an unemployed executioner.’’ Hartmann sued for insult, and the lackey was ordered to recant in a ‘‘public act’’ in the shop where the insult had taken place. In , Hartmann faced a more serious challenge. Hartmann complained  

    

Lore Grohsmann, Geschichte der Stadt Donauwo¨rth. Vol. . Von  bis zur Gegenwart (Donauwo¨rth, ), pp. , –, fn. . Christian Thomasius discusses the difficulties executioners’ sons encountered at the university in his essay ‘‘Ob und wie weit Como¨dianten/Pickelheringe/item Scharfrichtersso¨hne ad Dignitates Academicas zuzulassen; item ob das Papiermachen denenselben praejudiciere?’’ in his, Ernsthaffte aber doch muntere und vernu¨nftige Thomasische Gedanken und Erinnerungen u¨ber allerhand auserlesene Juristische Ha¨ndel, vol.  (Halle, ), pp. –. See, for example, Manfred Stu¨rzbecher, ‘‘Johann Valentin Deusser, Scharfrichter und Chirurg,’’ Deutsches Medizinisches Journal  (), –. StadtAA, RP , p. ; Steueuramt Steuerbuch , fo. d. CM in genere, –, Fasz. , petition by Dr. Schißler, July , . Archiv des Bistums Augsburg, Matrikelamt, Trauungsregister Dompfarrei , p. , July , . StadtAA, RP , p. , June , ; CM in genere, –, Fasz. , petition by Hartmann, July , .



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century to the council that Dr. Schißler, a medical doctor and member of the Collegium Medicum, had ‘‘touched my honor insultingly in order to damage my honorable name and good reputation.’’ Dr. Schißler had publicly announced that he would no longer treat patients who consulted the hangman. When a patient died, Schißler claimed that he would still be alive, had he not consulted the hangman. Hartmann sued Schißler for such ‘‘atrocious insults’’, but the outcome of the conflict has not been preserved. Johann Adam Hartmann was the last Augsburg executioner to receive an imperial legitimation or official license for his medical practice. This might have been due to a variety of factors. The stigma of dishonor gained greater force in the eighteenth century. At the same time, university-trained physicians began to encroach on the executioner’s traditional practice. By the eighteenth century, Augsburg’s medical doctors were performing autopsies, a task they had scorned in the seventeenth century. The authorities had halfheartedly sought to suppress or at least limit executioners’ medical practice from the sixteenth century on; in the eighteenth century they implemented their decrees with new determination. Their efforts seemed to show at least some effect. Executioners and skinners were increasingly marginalized in the medical market. In  the city government decided to increase executioner Johann Scheller’s allotment of firewood, since unlike his predecessor he did not have an income from medical practice. The authorities were never able to suppress the executioner’s and skinner’s medical practice entirely, however. As late as  executioner Johann Georg Trenkler was able to write in a petition in  that weakness and old age no longer allowed him to practice the ‘‘various cures on human and (salvo honore) animals’’ that he had performed for decades. And executioners and skinners continued to use medicine as an avenue of upward social mobility. A small number of legitimated executioners’ sons managed to enter universities and become doctors of medicine themselves. At the Bavarian university of Ingolstadt at least nine sons of executioners were immatriculated in the medical faculty between  and . In  the granddaughter of Augsburg’s skinner Johann Georg Widemann, who had served from –, chose to emphasize her grandfather’s medical practice in her attempt to rise above her dishonorable status. Widemann’s descendants occu  

 

StadtAA, CM in genere, –, Fasz. , correspondence April–September, . StadtAA, RP , p. , May , ; Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, March , , March , . In  the decree of  forbidding the practice of ‘‘executioners, skinners, grave-diggers and other such unqualified people’’ was reconfirmed. In  the council issued a decree at the request of the Collegium Medicum that forbade the distribution of medicine by unqualified people, particularly by the skinner. The council, this latest decree declares, would now set out to enforce earlier decrees to this effect from ,  and . StadtAA, Ratserla¨sse –, March , . StadtAA, CM, ¨ rzte . . ., –, Tom. , Fasz. , August , . Fremde A  StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, September , . Ibid., April , . Johann Glenzdorf and Fritz Treichel, Henker, Schinder und arme Su¨nder,  vols. (Bad Mu¨nder am Deister, ), vol. , p. .



Artisanal honor and urban politics pied the skinner’s post in the small Swabian town of Reutlingen, and his granddaughter wanted to marry a master tanner. When the tanners’ guild objected, the Augsburg city government wrote a report on the young couple’s behalf. Augsburg attested that Widemann had ‘‘occupied himself mostly with cures, in which he was very skilled. He had his servants do the skinner’s work.’’ By proving that the woman’s ancestors had been mostly concerned with medical practice rather than with dishonoring skinner’s work, the young couple hoped to overcome the resistance of the tanners’ guild. Such attempts were less likely to succeed as the century progressed. Even though executioners and skinners continued to practice, executioner’s medicine was criminalized in the course of the century. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the authorities had recognized executioners’ medical competence in some areas at least, but in the eighteenth century criminologists and enlightened critics condemned medical treatments by executioners and skinners as pure fraud. In Bavaria executioners and skinners convicted of quackery were imprisoned in workhouses. Eighteenth-century lists of wanted criminals frequently named vagrant executioners and skinners who were hawking their medicines in the countryside. One such list named ‘‘Schinder-Hannes’’ (Skinner-John), a ‘‘medicine carrier,’’ and ‘‘Fuchs, a doctor, who claims that he is a skinner’s servant.’’ Criminologists warned the public of the deceptions executioners and skinners used to trick gullible peasants out of their money. In spite of such warnings, executioners’ and skinners’ medical services were still in great demand through the first half of the nineteenth century – in  a criminologist bemoaned the fact that the ‘‘reputation and practice of such executioners is very great, not only for their medicine, but also for their knowledge of secret sympathetic magic. Not only the raw uneducated mob, but also a great number of the so-called educated estates still turn to them for help.’’ Executioner’s medicine most likely was still quite profitable through the eighteenth century. But since the authorities no longer regarded executioner medicine as legitimate, their medical practice was less likely to provide executioners   

 



StadtAA, HWA, Gerber , September , . Jutta Nowosadtko, Scharfrichter und Abdecker. Der Alltag zweier ‘‘unehrlicher Berufe’’ in der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Paderborn, ), pp. –. This is not the famous robber ‘‘Schinderhannes,’’ who was executed in  in Mainz, though he was also a skinner’s son. See H. Bettenha¨user, ‘‘Schinderhannes,’’ in Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, eds., Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, vol.  (Berlin, ), pp. –. ‘‘Descriptio des u¨bel beruffenen Landstreichenden Ra¨uber- und Diebs-Gesindels . . .’’ issued in Nuremberg, August , . See StadtAA, Zuchthaus Buchloe . See for instance Georg Paul Hoenn, Betrugs-Lexikon worinnen die meisten Betru¨gereien in allen Sta¨nden, nebst denen darwider guten Theils dienenden Mitteln (Coburg, ), pp. –. Hoenn describes the tricks of travelling executioners and skinners. See also the extensive discussion in [Johann Ulrich Scho¨ll], Abriß des Jauner und Bettelwesens in Schwaben . . . (Stuttgart, ), pp. – . Friedrich Christian Benedict Ave´-Lallement, Das Deutsche Gaunertum in seiner social-politischen, literarischen und linguistischen Ausbildung zu seinem heutigen Bestande, vol.  (Leipzig, ), pp.–.



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century with a route of upward social mobility. Indeed, by the late eighteenth century, executioner medicine was often a symptom of an executioner’s or skinner’s social descent into the criminal vagrant underworld.             Augsburg’s executioners and skinners continued to intermarry in the eighteenth century as they had in the seventeenth. They formed extensive marriage networks throughout south Germany and continued to transfer positions and property by marriage. Executioners’ and skinners’ clans in Augsburg were perhaps even more intertwined than they had been in the previous century. When the Hartmann clan finally vacated the executioner’s post in , after they had filled it for three generations, Johann Scheller, the son of the local skinner, was hired as executioner. For the first time the executioner’s and skinner’s post were filled by the same family. A few months later, Scheller married Maria Elisabeth Deibler from Straubing in Bavaria, an executioner’s daughter from the Deibler clan that had filled the executioner’s position in Augsburg from  to . Like their seventeenthcentury predecessors, executioners and skinners in the eighteenth century served the city for many years, sometimes decades. The average tenure of executioners was just over twenty-four years; skinners served an average of twenty-eight years. But in spite of such continuity and job security, executioners and skinners experienced a steady decline in status in the eighteenth century. Executioners in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were often quite rich. Skinners, while less wealthy, were certainly not poor. Their low legal and social status was offset by their high economic status. In the eighteenth century a number of factors made these positions less profitable. There was a slight decline in the number of executions. Between  and , the executioner and his assistant, the skinner, performed an average of . executions per year. Between  and  the average number of executions dropped to . per year. This decrease corresponds to a European 



On the Deibler clan in Augsburg, see above, chapter , pp. –. For an example of transfer of position by marriage, see the marriage of executioner Johann Georg Trenkler to his predecessor’s widow, Maria Elisabeth Deibler in . StadtAA, HAP –, fo. v, August , . Augsburg’s executioners and their years of employment in the eighteenth century were Johann Scheller, –; Johann Georg Trenkler, –; Johann Adam Pfliegler, –; Anton Ho¨rmann,  until at least . The skinners were Johann Jacob Scheller, –; Johann Georg Widemann, –; Stephan Trenkler, –; Johann Michael Widemann, –. StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. / and /. A total of  executions took place in the  years between  and . See Helmut Schuhmann, Der Scharfrichter. Seine Gestalt – seine Funktion (Kempten, ), p. . Schuhmann compiled these figures on the basis of twelve volumes of punishment books covering the period –, with one interuption of three years from  to . These books were kept with varying thoroughness in different periods: in – six years are covered in one volume, from  to  forty-five years are covered in one volume. These lists are clearly incomplete. Nonetheless, the punishment books are the most accurate source available for the period before . The eighteenth-century numbers are drawn from Samuel Valentin, End-Urtheil und Verruf . . . derjenigen



Artisanal honor and urban politics wide trend. Execution rates went down as imprisonment became established as an alternative form of punishment. There are few sources available on the use of torture in Augsburg in the eighteenth century. However, Enlightenment ideology and legal reforms resulted in a reduction in the use of judicial torture in Europe generally, so it is probable that the use of torture in Augsburg declined as well. Criminal justice reforms clearly cut into executioners’ earnings, as we can see from executioner Johann Georg Trenkler’s efforts to offset this loss. In  he petitioned for the exclusive right to perform executions of those inmates in the prison of the Swabian circle located in Buchloe who were native Augsburgers. Criminal justice reforms most likely did not seriously threaten the economic status of master executioners who had secure employment, however. Even in the period preceding  executioners did not derive a large proportion of their income from criminal punishments, since on average fewer than two executions took place per year. Executioners obtained much of their earnings from ‘‘night-work’’ (emptying latrines) and medical practice. In the course of the century, executioners and skinners also lost their traditional exemption from the excise tax on meat and alcohol. In an effort to rationalize the tax system, administrators defined this custom as an ‘‘abuse,’’ and argued that ‘‘no one, no matter who he is, should be exempt . . .’’ The traditional exemption apparently was of considerable economic significance. In  the executioner Johann Scheller expressed his outrage at the tax reform: ‘‘Executioners and their families are excluded from artisanal guilds and the company of honorable people through no fault of their own, by fateful observance and custom (ex fatali observantia et consuetudine). To compensate us for this, we have been given special freedoms,’’ in particular the tax exemption. The executioner Johann Georg Trenkler protested that if such an innovation was introduced during his tenure his fellow executioners in the region would kill him; indeed, he had already received murder threats. Executioners also lost customary fees for the disposal of suicides, as authorities



 

  

. . . Persohnen so von einem . . . Rath . . . vom Leben zum Tod condemnieret (Augsburg, n.d.), StadtAA, Strafamt. Valentin records eighty-one executions between  and , or . executions per year. We are forced to rely on such unofficial compilations for the eighteenth century, because the series of punishment books ends in . For the eighteenth century there is only one official source on capital punishments, the ‘‘Book of Criminals’’ (Verbrecherbuch) covering the period –, but it is very fragmentary. For that entire period it lists only fifty-two executions. On declining execution rates, see Richard van Du¨lmen, Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, ) pp. , –. On imprisonment as an alternative to capital punishment, see Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and their Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick/London, ). Edward Peters, Torture (Oxford, ), pp. –. The Swabian circle was an administrative unit of the empire. See James Allen Vann, The Swabian Kreis: Institutional Growth in the Holy Roman Empire, – (Brussels, ). On the prison of the Swabian circle, the Zuchthaus Buchloe, see Beate Fuhl, ‘‘Randgruppenpolitik des Schwa¨bischen Kreises im . Jahrhundert. Das Zucht- und Arbeitshaus zu Buchloe,’’ ZHVS  (), –.  StadtAA, RP , p. . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, April , . StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, March , . Ibid., April , , August , .



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century implemented their new liberal policy of granting an honorable burial to almost all suicides. This policy change along with the declining number of executions, new restrictions on medical practice, and the loss of traditional privileges undoubtedly resulted in a painful cut in executioners’ and skinners’ earnings in the course of the eighteenth century. In contrast to the earlier period, executioners do not appear wealthy in eighteenth-century sources. Much to the contrary, petitions by executioners and skinners indicate that they were in serious financial straits.  Nonetheless, Augsburg’s executioners and skinners could consider themselves fortunate compared with their younger brothers and sons who were unable to find employment. In the course of the century, Augsburg’s executioners and skinners found it harder to place their sons in suitable positions. Executioners’ sons reacted to the tightening job market by demonstrating greater technical skill and professional qualifications. In  executioner Johann Georg Trenkler petitioned the council to allow his younger brother, whom he had trained for the past three years, to perform his master piece with the sword ‘‘since it is difficult to find a position in this occupation . . .’’ A year later Trenkler petitioned to let his brother, still unemployed, do a second master piece, ‘‘for nowadays at least two such master pieces are required from someone who aspires to the executioner’s post.’’ In  the skinner Johann Georg Widemann’s son Johann Michael had not found a position, even though he had already performed four masterpieces. With the ‘‘present supply’’ of young executioners, executioner Trenkler petitioned the council, young Widemann, ‘‘a local son,’’ should be allowed to do a fifth masterpiece, so that he might have an edge over other applicants. In  Johann Georg Leimer, an Augburg beadle and executioner’s son, who had already done three master pieces petitioned to do a fourth: the upcoming execution would present a special demonstration of his skill, since the delinquent had an unusually thick neck! Unemployed executioners and skinners turned to crime. Executioners and skinners had been a remarkably law-abiding group since the mid-sixteenth century, as we saw in chapter . This changed in the eighteenth century. Demographic pressures and economic dislocation increased the problems of poverty and vagrancy in society at large, and many younger executioners’ or skinners’ sons plummeted socially into the growing ranks of the vagrant poor. Transient executioners and skinners were stock figures in the profusion of published lists of wanted     

See above, chapter , pp. –. StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, October ; March , ; November , .  Petition by Trenkler, ibid., January , . Petition by Trenkler, ibid., August , .  Petition by Trenkler, ibid., May , . Ibid., June , , and May , . On poverty in the eighteenth century see Wilhelm Abel, Massenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorindustriellen Deutschland (Go¨ttingen, ), pp. –. On vagrant skinners see Carsten Ku¨ther, Menschen auf der Straße. Vagierende Unterschichten in Bayern, Franken und Schwaben in der zweiten Ha¨lfte des . Jahrhunderts (Go¨ttingen, ), pp. –, –, and Ernst Schubert, Arme Leute, Bettler und Gauner im Franken des . Jahrhunderts (Neustadt an der Aisch, ), pp. –.



Artisanal honor and urban politics criminals and execution chronicles that appeared in the eighteenth century. Many of these unemployed skinners, both men and women, were known in the vagrant underworld by nicknames such as ‘‘Schinder-Lisl’’ (skinner-Lizzy), ‘‘SchinderAnderl,’’ or ‘‘Schinder-Michel.’’ Police and begging ordinances warned of gangs of skinners terrorizing the countryside with large wild dogs. One list from  described an extended family of vagrant skinners who were making the roads around Augsburg unsafe. A highwayman had denounced them on the scaffold as his accomplices. This vagrant skinners’ clan consisted of eight individuals. Their leader was ‘‘skinner Hans Go¨rgl,’’ who tramped through the Swabian countryside under the pretext of selling cloth at local markets. His defining physical feature was that he was missing several fingers that he had accidentally hacked off while he was still working as a skinner. He was accompanied by his wife, Anna Maria, and their two children, a nine-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl. Also part of the group were Anna Maria’s older sister Appollonia and her husband, ‘‘skinner Michael,’’ and Anna Maria’s younger sister and her lover ‘‘skinner Mathias’’ who was Hans Go¨rgl’s younger brother. The entire group, with the exception of the children, was wanted for capital crimes. The topos of the ‘‘hanged hangman’’ does reflect the experience of vagrant executioners and skinners in the eighteenth century. Sometimes entire skinner families were wiped out in criminal executions. Schinder-Lisl, her twenty-four-year-old daughter, and seventeen-year-old son were beheaded in  in Buchloe in the workhouse of the Swabian circle. Her seventeen-year-old daughter was whipped and banished from the territory, while her eleven-year-old daughter remained in the workhouse. Other executioners’ and skinners’ sons who could not find employment in their fathers’ profession tried to enter artisanal guilds. Of the eighty dishonor conflicts documented in Augsburg sources in the eighteenth century, twenty were set off by executioners’ and skinners’ sons or grandsons trying to join honorable guilds, or by their daughters or granddaughters marrying honorable artisans. This is a new development. In the preceding centuries, almost all dishonor conflicts sparked by a dishonorable person trying to enter an honorable guild involved groups on the 





  

On the genre of wanted lists, see Karl Siegfried Bader, ‘‘Kriminelles Vagantentum im Bodenseegebiet um . Zu einer Jaunerliste des Reichenauer Obervogts Friedrich v. Hundbiss aus dem Jahre ,’’ Schweizerische Zeitschrift fu¨r Strafrecht  (), –. For ‘‘Schinder-Lisl,’’ see StadtAA, RP , pp. –, February , . For ‘‘Schinder-Anderl,’’ see StadtAA, RP , pp. –, August , . For ‘‘Schinder-Michel,’’ see Valentin, EndUrtheil und Verruf, p. . See, for instance, the Buchloeische . . . Verordnung betref die verbottene Lands fremde Bettler . . . und anders gefa¨hrliche mu¨ßige Gesind.  Teil (Dillingen, ), p. , article . StadtAA, Zuchthaus Buchloe . ‘Description des u¨bel berueffenen Land-streichenden Diebs- und Ra¨uber Gesindls . . . .’’ StadtAA, Zuchthaus Buchloe . Hans von Hentig, ‘‘Der geha¨ngte Henker. Eine kriminalhistorishe Studie,’’ in Schweizcrische Zeitschrift fu¨r Strafrecht  (), –. Lists of criminals punished or executed in Buchloe, December ,  and December , . StadtAA, Zuchthaus Buchloe  (.).



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century periphery of dishonor, most notably bailiffs’ sons and daughters. All other dishonor conflicts involving executioners or skinners before  were ritual pollution conflicts resulting from sociability or some other form of contact between executioners or skinners and honorable artisans. The boundary of honor that segregated dishonorable people from guildsmen was established in the course of the sixteenth century. By the late sixteenth century honorable guildsmen and the dishonorable core groups had developed certain conventions that minimized conflicts. The children of executioners and skinners did not try to enter the artisanate between  and . They occupied a privileged niche in the urban social structure that compensated them for their low legal and social status. This tacit acceptance of the boundary of honor by the dishonorable core groups as well as by artisans allowed this social system to operate smoothly from the late sixteenth through the seventeenth century. It was only in the eighteenth century when executioners and skinners lost many of the advantages of their position, that they challenged the social boundary separating them from honorable society. Dishonor conflicts involving the dishonorable core group multiplied, when executioners and skinners were no longer willing to abide by the artisanal honor code.                                 When executioners’ and skinners’ children and grandchildren attempted to join honorable guilds, they tried to neutralize artisanal opposition by obtaining a legitimation. The executioners Marx Philipp and Johann Adam Hartmann received legitimations declaring them honorable. Johann Adam Hartmann resigned his post in the summer of . A year later he petitioned the magistrate for a letter of recommendation from the city government attesting to his good conduct during his twenty-year tenure as executioner. He was applying for a legitimatio ad honores from his imperial majesty. His petition for imperial legitimation was granted, as Hartmann described years later: ‘‘it is well known to the entire citizenry . . . that by means of a gracious imperial privilege I have been placed in the estate of honors . . ., and because of my good experience in medicine and surgery, and my upright and decent lifestyle, I have been granted the free practice of medicine.’’ In the legitimation, the emperor decreed that the ‘‘infamy’’ that had previously attached to Hartmann and his wife should no longer ‘‘bring them any shame.’’ They should be eligible for ‘‘all privileges and freedoms and admission in honorable arts, crafts, guilds, and collectivities and whatever 



Before , only two cases involved members of the dishonorable core trying to gain admission to a guild. In  the skinner’s son, most likely Hans Gaisser the Younger, tried to begin an apprenticeship in the weavers’ guild. See above, chapter , p. . The second case involved the tragic love affair between the skinner’s daughter Barbara Leichnam and the fisherboy Andreas Anhauser. See above, introduction, pp. –. StadtAA, Reichsstadtakten, Stadtbed. /, July , , June , ; Beisitzaufnahmen, Fasz. , Nr. , September , .



Artisanal honor and urban politics other associations of this kind may exist . . .’’ The imperial privilege threatened anyone who dared to insult Hartmann because of his previous function or to hinder his medical practice with a fine of  marks in gold. Upon receiving this legitimation, Hartmann and his wife were granted Augsburg citizenship. The legitimations of Marx Philipp and Johann Adam Hartmann were successful, but most others were not. Marx Philipp and Johann Adam needed the legitimations to receive citizenship and the right to practice medicine. They did not try the strength of their legitimations any further by trying to gain admission to any guild or corporate group within the city. They did not test that part of the legitimations that declared their eligibility for ‘‘admission in honorable arts, crafts, guilds, and collectivities . . .’’ The fisherman Andreas Anhauser, however, hoped that such an imperial legitimation would help him be readmitted to his guild and allow him to fish again. In  Andreas went to Regensburg and successfully appealed to the emperor for a legitimation. It is not clear through what bureaucratic channels such a petition was processed. After paying a certain fee – we do not know how much, but he borrowed money for this purpose – Andreas was issued an imperial decree that placed him and his relatives in a ‘‘pristine estate of honor.’’ Andreas’s petition had not been altogether accurate, however. He had claimed that his fellow guildsmen attended his wedding and objected to the marriage only after the fact, which was manifestly untrue. When the fishermen challenged the validity of his legitimation on these grounds, Andreas explained it as an error of the Regensburg scribe whom he had hired to write the petition. This error did not affect the validity of the legitimation, because ‘‘his imperial majesty has the power in and of himself, to restore me and my relatives to integrity, even if no reason were given at all.’’ Andreas argued that just as the emperor had legitimated executioners on numerous occasions (‘‘examples from the neighborhood might be produced’’), so the emperor had the power to legitimate someone who married a skinner’s daughter. ‘‘To dispute his power is sacrilege.’’ In Andreas’s interpretation the imperial legitimation had a quasi-magical efficacy which derived from the sovereignty of the emperor, regardless of the circumstances under which the legitimation had been obtained. The fishermen’s guild and the city government did not see it that way. The city council informed the emperor that Andreas had received the ‘‘diploma of restitution of reputation and honor’’ under false pretenses, and thus the legitimation should be rescinded. The legitimation was not honored in Augsburg, and Andreas ended his days as a day-laborer. What was the legal basis of such legitimations? In theory, the efficacy of  



StadtAA, CM in genere, –, Fasz. , April–July, . On the legitimation of bastards see Gertrud Schubart-Fikentscher, Die Unehelichen Frage in der Fru¨hzeit der Aufkla¨rung (Berlin, ), and F. Merzbacher, ‘‘Legitimation durch nachfolgende Ehe,’’ in Adalbert Erler and Ekkehard Kaufmann, eds., Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, vol.  (Berlin, ), pp. –. I have not found any studies on the legitimation of infamous persons. StadtAA, HWA, Fischer , June–August , December , .



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century legitimations proceeded from the sovereignty of the emperor or territorial lord. Once again, we encounter the notion that persons of high honor had the power to counteract, to cleanse dishonor, an idea that illustrates the ideological foundation of the society of orders. This same conception of the high honor of persons of high estate and their resulting immunity to dishonor underlay the gallows-building ritual in which representatives of government neutralized the infamy of the gallows by their purifying touch. Legitimation was a legal procedure that came into use in German territories with the reception of Roman law. Originally the procedure applied to children of illegitimate birth, as the name would indicate. Various types of legitimation existed. We are not concerned here with the legitimatio per subsequens matrimonium, which stipulated that if the parents of a bastard married at a later date the force of the sacrament was so great that it produced the legitimacy of the child retroactively. Instead, we are concerned with the secular procedure of legitimatio per rescriptum principis, in which legitimation was granted by the state at the order of the prince. To issue such a legitimation was one of the sovereign rights of the prince. It fell within the rights of the emperor to raise the status of an individual by grants of nobility, academic degrees or titles, rights and privileges, or by legitimation. Territorial lords might pronounce legitimations as an exercise of their sovereign rights within their territories. Legitimations could be pronounced by certain officials appointed by the emperor, the palatine counts, or according to their German title, the Hofpfalzgrafen. Palatine counts pronounced legitimations by the authority vested in them by the emperor. The legitimation was intended to remove the taint of the bastard’s illegitimate birth and free the child of all the adverse social and legal consequences that resulted from it – the exclusion from honorable artisanal guilds, for example. A similar procedure, legitimatio ad honores or restitutio famae, was used to cleanse dishonorable people of their mark of infamy. This was not only used to free dishonorable people of the dishonor with which they were born, but also to restore the honor of persons who had lost it, by suffering an honor punishment, for example, or by sexual misconduct. The emperor, the territorial lord, or the palatine count could by pronouncement restore the honor of that individual in its entirety (in integrum restitutio). A case that occurred in Regensburg in  presents a rather peculiar example of this restitution of honor: a journeyman farrier wanted to marry a young woman who had been ‘‘brought to fall and impregnated’’ a few years     

 See above, chapter , pp. –. ‘‘Legitimation by subsequent matrimony.’’  Merzbacher, ‘‘Legitimation,’’ pp. –. ‘‘Legitimation by order of the prince.’’ Schubart-Fikentscher, Die Unehelichen Frage, pp. –; Hermann Conrad, Deutsche Rechts geschichte. Vol. : Neuzeit bis  (Karlsruhe, ), pp. –. ‘‘Legitimation to honors.’’ ‘‘Restitution of reputation.’’ Conrad, Rechtsgeschichte, p. . Eberhard Dobler, ‘‘Das kaiserliche Hofpfalzgrafenamt und der Briefadel im alten deutschen Reich vor  in rechtshistorischer und soziologischer Sicht.’’ (Ph.D.  dissertation, Universita¨t Freiburg, ). ‘‘Restitution in entirety.’’



Artisanal honor and urban politics before. When her child died shortly after birth, the young woman was ‘‘freed of the taint (macula) which attached to her’’ by a palatine count. When the farriers’ guild refused to recognize this restitution of honor and threatened to exclude the journeyman if he went through with this dishonorable marriage, the journeyman brought the case before the imperial aulic council (Reichshofrat), which decided in his favor and upheld the restitution by the palatine count. When Augsburg artisans were questioned how they would react to this case they declared that, as devoted subjects, they would honor the imperial order. By far the majority of legitimations, of both bastards and infamous persons, were pronounced by the palatine counts, who were more readily accessible to the general public than the imperial bureaucracy. These palatine counts were persons to whom the emperor had delegated the right to name notaries, to bestow academic titles and dignities, or to grant legitimations. Usually they were members of the nobility or highly placed commoners, such as doctors of law. These officials first appeared in German territories in significant numbers in the fifteenth century. The first source on a palatine count legitimating an infamous person dates from . The number of palatine counts rose with the reception of Roman law, since these officials were necessary to the smooth functioning of the new law. Many legitimations of dishonorable people have been preserved in Augsburg’s guild records. These were usually not legitimations of infamous persons from Augsburg, but involved requests from magistrates in other cities for legal opinions on the validity of the legitimations. Legitimations were usually challenged when a legitimated person attempted to join an honorable guild. Augsburg’s old, large, and prestigious guilds were asked to arbitrate the resulting dishonor conflicts in the lesser guilds of smaller towns. One of these disputes involved the legitimation of Hans Geißler from the neighboring town of Gu¨ntzburg, the son of a beadle who participated in criminal executions. His father was thus a Blutscherge (‘‘bloodbeadle’’) in contrast to a simple Stadtknecht (bailiff). His legitimation was issued by a palatine count in Ulm in . It is worth quoting part of this legitimation, which presents a standard formula, in order to examine the language of such documents. The document first explained the privileges the palatine count had received from the emperor, allowing him to pronounce legitimations: I, Jacob Otto Ho¨gt, doctor of Roman and Canon law, imperial palatine count, do publicly declare that Leopold I . . . my most merciful Emperor and Lord, has conferred upon me . . . the mercy that I may free every and all disreputable and infamous persons of the taint, shame, and infamy that they bear by deed or by law. I may lift and remove the taint from them, and place them in their previous estate . . .

Since the palatine counts were theoretically only supposed to pronounce legit 

StadtAA, HWA, Wagner , February  and April , . Dobler, ‘‘Hofpfalzgrafenamt,’’ pp. –; Karl Siegfried Bader and Alexander von Platen, Das große Palatinat des Hauses Fu¨rstenberg (Allenbach/Bodensee, ), pp. –.



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century imations if the circumstances of the case warranted it, the documents always explained the particulars of the case and emphasized that the candidate was worthy: Hans Geißler, beadle in Gu¨ntzburg, and his wife have mournfully informed me that they accepted this post [of beadle] to earn their piece of bread in these hard times. During their service they conceived a son, who from his early childhood until the present always behaved piously, obediently, and industriously. But they fear that in spite of his innocence, the boy might have to suffer on account of his parents, now that he is twelve and wants to make his fortune by learning an honorable trade.

The count palatine then pronounced the legitimation and described its legal consequences: I therefore free Hans Geißler . . . of the alleged taint and infamy, in which, though innocent by deed, he may have fallen according to the law. I place . . . him in the complete estate of honor of other honorable and respectable people . . . This alleged taint may not . . . bring any shame or dishonor to him or his descendants, in or out of court, but he must be admitted to all honors, crafts, guilds, associations, business deals, and inheritances . . . He is eligible for all privileges, freedoms, advantages, and rights . . . He may acquire citizenship in cities, towns, and villages . . .

While the document never explicitly conceded that the beadle was in fact dishonorable and instead used the term ‘‘alleged taint’’ and the conditional tense, it implicitly admitted the dishonor by presenting the beadle’s need to ‘‘earn his piece of bread in these hard times’’ as justification for having accepted such a post in the first place. The document finally declared that in obedience to the emperor all local authorities were bound to ensure that the legitimation was honored in their territories. Any person who did not respect the legitimation was to be fined  gold marks. The ideas behind such legitimations can perhaps be further illustrated by a popular legend from Frankfurt, first recorded in written form by nineteenthcentury folklorists, and most likely told orally in the late eighteenth century, if not earlier. The legend is set in the twelfth century and tells of a costume ball emperor Frederick I Barbarossa held in honor of the empress, while he held court in the free imperial city of Frankfurt. At this ball, the empress danced repeatedly with a graceful young man whom she believed to be a local knight. Late in the evening the emperor demanded to know the identity of the stranger. He and his noble guests were horrified to learn that it was none other than Schelm von Bergen, the skinner from a nearby town, who had somehow intruded into this aristocratic gathering and had dared to taint the empress with his dishonoring touch. Aghast, knights and patricians waited for the emperor’s reaction. Would he kill the skinner on the spot to avenge this outrage and the potential dishonoring of his wife? But the quickthinking skinner pointed out that if the empress had been tainted by his touch, his 

StadtAA, Markgrafschaft Burgau, Akten Nr. , March , .



Artisanal honor and urban politics blood could not wash away the stain. In fact, her majesty was so exalted that his dishonor could not possibly affect her. Indeed, the empress’s touch had cleansed him of his dishonor. Now the emperor should acknowledge the truth of this, by declaring him honorable and knighting him. Trying to make the best of the situation, the emperor did just that. And this was the origin of the Schelme von Bergen, a noble family from the environs of Frankfurt. Certainly the events described in this legend never took place, not least because dishonor did not exist in this form in the twelfth century. But this tale illustrates the ideology of honor at the time the story was told, the idea of a dynamic flow of honor between orders in late medieval and early modern society. What took place in this legend was really nothing other than a legitimation, although it took a much more direct form than if it had been pronounced in a legal document or mediated through the person of a palatine count. Here the cleansing of dishonor was effected by the personal touch of the empress and then reinforced by the ennoblement that followed at the hands of the emperor. In the legend, the act of legitimation and the act of ennoblement are seen as similar procedures. The difference lay only in the degree to which an individual was elevated above his previous status in the society of estates. William Sewell has described the seventeenth-century legal theory that explained what happened in the act of ennoblement by the sovereign: The Prince ‘‘whom God (from whom all honor proceeds) has established as distributor in this world of this divine gift’’ could ennoble a roturier . . . ‘‘These ennoblements purge the blood and the posterity of the ennobled of all stain of roture, and give it the same quality and dignity, as if from all time his race had been noble.’’ The prince, using the powers given him by God, apparently transformed the new noble’s blood, making it by his action essentially equal in quality to that of the noblesse de race. This quasi-miraculous change was permanent . . .

What happened here was quite similar to what occurred in a legitimation, when the 



For this well-known Frankfurt legend see F. P. Usener, Beitra¨ge zu der Geschichte der Ritterburgen und Bergschlo¨sser in der Umgegend von Frankfurt a.M. (Frankfurt a.M., ), p. ; Karl Lyncker, Deutsche Sagen und Sitten in hessischen Gauen (Cassel, ), p. ; Else Angstmann, Der Henker in der Volksmeinung. Seine Namen und sein Vorkommen in der mu¨ndlichen Volksu¨berlieferung (Halle an der Saale, ), pp. –, among others. These events allegedly took place ‘‘countless years ago’’ (Beneke, p. ). Frederick Barbarossa reigned –. The legend is based on word association: The historic Schelme von Bergen were an aristocratic family who appear in local records from the twelfth century on. But the German word Schelm means skinner. The legend helped explain how the noble family came by such an abject name. Sewell is describing French legal theory, but his description also applies to the German situation where the sovereign was likewise ‘‘the fount of honor.’’ William H. Sewell, ‘‘Etat, corps, and order: some notes on the social vocabulary of the French old regime,’’ in Hans Ulrich Wehler, ed., Sozialgeschichte Heute. Festschrift fu¨r Hans Rosenberg zum . Geburtstag (Go¨ttingen, ), p. . See also Roland Mousnier, ‘‘Les concepts d’‘ordres,’ d’‘e´tats,’ de ‘fide´lite´’ et de ‘monarchie absolue’ en France de la fin du XVe sie`cle a` la fin du XVIe,’’ Revue Historique  (), –, . Both Sewell and Mousnier base their studies on the writings of the seventeenth-century jurist Charles Loyseau whose legal theory they see as a ‘‘blueprint’’ of the society of orders.



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century emperor, territorial lord, or palatine count lifted all ‘‘taint and infamy’’ from dishonorable persons and ‘‘placed them in the complete estate of honor.’’ In theory, then, when the sovereign elevated the status of individual subjects, whetherby a grant of nobility or by legitimation, this actionfitted perfectlyin the logic of the society of orders. In practice legitimations did not always work so smoothly. Territorial and city governments were legally bound to honor such legitimations. To refuse to recognize them would have constituted le`se majeste´ towards the emperor, a denial of his imperial privileges. Accordingly, authorities generally granted legitimated individuals those rights that resulted from a legitimation. We saw, for example, that Marx Philipp and Johann Adam were granted citizenship. Problems arose, however, when legitimated persons tried to enter honorable guilds. As the number of palatine counts multiplied in the early modern period and the prestige of their office declined, so did the value of the legitimations they issued. Since the palatine counts charged for their services, the office could be profitable, opening the door to corruption. Complaints of abuse of office by palatine counts were first voiced in the sixteenth century, when they were accused of naming unqualified notaries. The palatine counts were generally not charged with corruption for issuing legitimations. Nonetheless, the legitimations of infamous persons were usually contested, especially by honorable artisans. This placed the political authorities in a quandary. On the one hand, they did not want to insult the palatine count, and by extension the emperor, or become involved in a costly court case. In  the magistrates of the town of Wangen, for example, did not force their barber-surgeons to honor the legitimation of an executioner’s son who wanted to enter their guild. In response, the palatine count who had granted the legitimation demanded that the city government ‘‘maintain and protect the rights and privileges . . . of his Imperial Majesty, our highest Lord,’’ i.e. that they enforce the legitimation, or he would bring suit at the imperial aulic council. On the other hand, if the authorities forced their guild to honor such legitimations, they risked precipitating a dishonor conflict within the guild. The fates of the son and grandson of the Gu¨ntzburg beadle Geißler give an idea of the effectiveness of such legitimations. The legitimation of Geißler’s son Johann Georg by a palatine count in  was quoted at length above. Johann Georg was twelve at that time. Apparently this legitimation was not effective, for in , at the age of twenty-three, Johann Georg petitioned his territorial lord for a second legitimation. The document of legitimation recounted the circumstances: ‘‘Johann Georg Geißler . . . has informed us that he is being harassed and held contemptible and prevented from making his fortune because his father is a beadle in Gu¨ntzburg.’’ His lord found him worthy of legitimation ‘‘in the light of his honorable good behavior, and because he has learned to read, write, and do arithmetic and can play various musical instruments.’’ So the taint of infamy was lifted from Johann  

Dobler, ‘‘Hofpfalzgrafenamt,’’ p. ; Bader and von Platen, Das große Palatinat, pp. –. StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere , June , .



Artisanal honor and urban politics Georg for a second time. After his second legitimation, Johann Georg married and had several children. It is not clear how he earned his living. In  one of his sons, Franz Anthoni, wanted to begin an apprenticeship with the tailors’ guild in Gu¨ntzburg. This resulted in a dishonor conflict. The guild refused to accept him because he was the grandson of a beadle, who was still alive and ‘‘whose duties include chaining malefactors and handing them over to the hangman.’’ Two legitimations and the distance of one generation were not enough to erase the infamy attached to the office of a ‘‘blood-beadle.’’ The descendants of Johannes Volmayr, the executioner in the free imperial city of Isny, had a similar experience. Sometime before , Volmayr had slept with Anna Bach, a young unmarried woman and citizen of Isny, which resulted in the birth of a son, Johannes Bach. Anna did not marry Volmayr, but instead obtained a legitimation for herself and her son in , because, as her legitimation explained, ‘‘such a child, in light of his dishonorable birth, and his mother, in light of her crime, would be excluded from all respectable crafts, guilds, societies, and citizenship . . . They would be prevented from seeking their temporal welfare.’’ The legitimation lifted all taint of infamy from mother and son, according to the standard formula. At first the legitimation was recognized. She married a master weaver, Gordian Schmidt, who soon began to instruct his stepson Johannes Bach in his trade. All went well for seven years. Schmidt and the young Johannes passed unchallenged in the weavers’ guild. But in  the journeymen instigated a dishonor conflict and went on strike, forcing the exclusion of Gordian Schmidt, who had made himself dishonorable by marrying an infamous woman, and of Johannes Bach, twice dishonorable as a bastard and executioner’s son. In spite of the efforts of the Isny magistrate on behalf of Schmidt and Bach, the guild and journeymen now refused to honor the legitimation. Schmidt and Bach were forced to earn a tenuous living as independent weavers outside of the guild. Nonetheless, young Bach married and had two sons. When he died a few years later, his widow was married a second time to another master weaver in . This master weaver trained Bach’s two sons as weavers. Again, all went well for a time. But in , when the Bach boys had completed their apprenticeship and wanted to become journeymen, the conflict flared up again. Guild and journeymen challenged the boys as dishonorable and demanded that they obtain a legitimation by a palatine count and then repeat their apprenticeship. In spite of their father’s legitimation, even though more than forty years had passed since their father’s dishonorable birth, the taint of infamy had not faded. Legitimations cost money. Andreas Anhauser borrowed money to pay for his imperial legitimation, and in Innsbruck a legitimation by a palatine count cost  gulden. Despite limited success and chronic conflict, growing numbers of dis  

StadtAA, Markgrafschaft Burgau, Akten Nr. , June , . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , June–July,  and Weber , October , . StadtAA, Fischer , December , . Dobler, ‘‘Hofpfalzgrafenamt,’’ p. .



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century honorable people invested in legitimations. They really had no other choice. If dishonorable people, or their descendants, or individuals who had become infamous through contact with dishonorable people wanted to rise above their dishonorable status, their only option was to obtain a legitimation and hope that for once it would pass unchallenged. A case from  is particularly moving. A young Bavarian serving woman had slept with a farm laborer, unaware that he was a skinner’s son. She gave birth to a son, whom she placed under the care of her brother, a weaver, who began to train the boy in his craft. Inevitably a dishonor conflict erupted when the boy – twice dishonorable as a bastard and skinner’s son – was to be officially inscribed as an apprentice in the weavers’ guild in Moßburg. In order to gain admission for her son, the mother first obtained a letter of recommendation from a local administrator certifying that the skinner’s son had always worked as a farm laborer and had never done skinner’s work. With this letter she traveled to Munich where she obtained a legitimation for her son from a palatine count. Predictably, the Moßburg guild refused to recognize the legitimation. The mother then traveled to the ‘‘main guild’’ (Hauptlade) in Landshut to petition for her son’s admission. The main guild turned her down as well. Finally she petitioned the elector of Bavaria who decreed that the weavers should accept the boy, though he allowed the guild to appeal the ruling. The Moßburg guildsmen wrote to their fellow tradesmen in Augsburg to gain their support for their resistance to the elector’s commands. We can assume that the conflict festered for years. Embarking on this bureaucratic odyssey, hiking through Bavaria from government agency to guild office, was the only available recourse for this peasant woman, though it offered little hope.                    Guild artisans raised their honor requirements to new heights in the eighteenth century. There was an explosion in the number of dishonor conflicts which Augsburg’s guildsmen were called upon to arbitrate. Of the  dishonor conflicts documented in Augsburg’s guild records between  and , the majority,  cases, occurred between  and . Of course, these numbers might just be a reflection of improved source preservation in the eighteenth century. Taken alone, 



For further examples, see StadtAA, HWA, Bader und Barbiere , June–September ; Weber , June –, ; Gerber , August , , Maurer , February , ; Bader und Barbiere , January , . It appears that dishonorable people obtained legitimations in the eighteenth century more than ever before. I have found one legitimation (of a bastard) from the sixteenth century, and only a handful from the seventeenth. This might be due to better preservation of eighteenth-century sources. However, the judicial archive of the counts of Fu¨rstenberg, palatine counts and lords of the small principality of Fu¨rstenberg, presents a similar pattern. Almost all legitimations of dishonorable people preserved in this archive date from the eighteenth century. Between  and  this one office pronounced nineteen legitimations of infamous persons. See Bader and von Platen, Das große Palatinat, pp. –. StadtAA, HWA, Weber , November , .



Artisanal honor and urban politics they do not prove that the incidence of dishonor conflicts really increased. But there are additional indications that the guildsmen were applying the label of dishonor more widely. In the eighteenth century the stigma of dishonor seems to have been effective over more generations than in the previous century. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dishonor conflicts erupted when the son or daughter of a dishonorable person sought to be incorporated in a guild. I have not discovered a single case from before  that involved the grandchild of a dishonorable person. But in the early eighteenth century the weavers of Krumbach refused to accept the son of a peasant whose wife’s father had worked as a beadle in a Swabian village in the s. In other words, the applicant was the grandson of a beadle. The peasant’s lord inquired with Augsburg whether the stigma of dishonor was effective over two generations, especially considering that the applicant’s mother was already eight years old when her father accepted the dishonoring job. In  the shoemakers of Lindau refused to apprentice the grandson of a bailiff. In  the tailors of Gu¨ntzburg, as we saw above, rejected the grandson of a ‘‘blood beadle,’’ even though both he and his father had been legitimated. In  the city of Neuburg on the Danube conferred with Augsburg whether guildsmen could be forced to accept the great-grandson of a skinner. Neither his father nor grandfather had ever worked as skinners, and his father had received a legitimation. Augsburg pointed out that according to the imperial police ordinance of  the descendants of skinners were only excluded up to the second generation. But Augsburg’s magistrates recommended that Neuburg proceed with caution, because ‘‘we have had to learn from many a complaint’’ that imperial law was not uniformly enforced. Dishonor not only extended over more generations in the eighteenth century, artisans also labeled additional trades as dishonorable. No case involving the dishonor of millers is documented in Augsburg’s guild records before . Millers were dishonorable in north and northeastern Germany, but in the eighteenth century their dishonor spread to the south. In  the town of Lindau informed Augsburg that a dishonor conflict had erupted in their coppersmiths’ guild when a miller wanted to have his son learn the trade. Augsburg’s millers responded that    

 

This correspondence is undated, but it is bound with material from the early eighteenth century, and the handwriting resembles eighteenth-century script. StadtAA, HWA, Weber . StadtAA, Handwerksgerichtsprozeßakten, March , . StadtAA, Markgrafschaft Burgau, Akten Nr. , March , . StadtAA, Handwerksgerichtsprozeßakten, ‘‘Generalia, Handwerksgericht betref, Tom. ,’’ February , . Augsburg based its decision on the ‘‘Gutachten des Reichs-Tags, wegen der Handwerks-Mißbra¨uche’’ of , reprinted in Proesler, ed., Handwerk, p. . StadtAA, Handwerksgerichtsprozeßakten, ‘‘Generalia, Handwerksgericht betref, Tom. ,’’ February–March, . Andreas Pasing, ‘‘Mu¨ller. Ein Verarbeitungsgewerbe als Zielscheibe der Volksha¨me, der Kundenkritik und Zunftpolitik,’’ in Bernd-Ulrich Hergemo¨ller, ed., Randgruppen der spa¨tmittlealterlichen Gesellschaft (Warendorf, , nd rev. edn), pp. –, p. .



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century their sons could learn any trade they chose without difficulties. In  a dishonor conflict broke out in the coppersmiths’ guild of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, when a master who had married a miller’s daughter wanted to have his son learn the trade. Grave-diggers were challenged as dishonorable only once before , during the linen-weavers’ strike of –. But in the early eighteenth century Augsburg’s grave-diggers complained bitterly that ‘‘artisans have touched our honorable name several times, as if we belonged among the contemptible persons, such as executioners and skinners . . . Every day we hear insulting words. Great conflict, fighting, and bloodflow might result, because we are artisans, and have journeymen and apprentices, and cannot suffer such insult . . .’’ In  the city of Regensburg inquired whether a grave-digger’s son would be acceptable to the coppersmiths. Augsburg’s coppersmiths answered equivocatingly: ‘‘Such a case never happened here . . .’’ In the eighteenth century, artisans also began to label more lower-level municipal or governmental employees as dishonorable, in addition to beadles and bailiffs. In  Augsburg’s calligraphers refused to accept the son of a customs officer. The bureaucrats who administered Augsburg’s customs office protested vigorously, because the sons of customs officers had never before been excluded from honorable guilds. In  the coopers of Memmingen rejected the son of the municipal employee responsible for controlling beggars. In  the Swabian circle attempted to coordinate measures against the pavers’, carpenters’, and stonemasons’ guilds of the town of Dillingen, because they refused to accept the son of a forester. Presumably, the artisans considered the forester dishonorable because he was involved in law enforcement when he hunted down poachers. The discrimination against dishonorable people, which had been mostly an urban phenomenon, extended into the countryside in the eighteenth century. In  the Bavarian government condemned the development that ‘‘skinners and beadles or their children are no longer tolerated, not only among artisans, but even among peasants, day-laborers, and servants in the countryside, so that they are completely excluded from all human company . . .’’ New attributions of dishonor could crystallize around almost any criteria, as Augsburg’s magistrates were well aware. In the months preceding the passage of the imperial police ordinance against artisanal abuses in , the imperial diet        

StadtAA, HWA, Mu¨ller , April–June, .  StadtAA, HWA, Kupferschmiede , December , . See above, chapter , pp. –. The petition is undated, but it is in a binder with eighteenth-century material, and is written in eighteenth-century script. StadtAA, EWA . Hammer und Kupferschmiede , August , . StadtAA, HWA, Briefmaler und Illuministen , March , . StadtAA, RP , May , , p. . StadtAA, Handwerksgerichtsakten, , published decree from the Swabian circle, September , . Bavarian edict against vagrancy, August , , in Georg Karl Mayr, ed., Sammlung der KurpfalzBaierischen allgemeinen und besonderen Landesverordnungen, vol.  (Munich, ), p. .



Artisanal honor and urban politics requested counsel from city and territorial governments. In its report, Augsburg took exception to the wording of paragraph  that rehabilitated dishonorable trades. In addition to beadles and bailiffs, the paragraph declared linen-weavers, barbers, shepherds, millers, customs officers, pipers, trumpet players, and bathmasters to be honorable. Augsburg suggested that the law should instead refer only to ‘‘certain persons’’ (gewisser Personen). By listing the trades to be rehabilitated individually, the law might have the opposite effect. If these various crafts were named in the same paragraph as beadles and bailiffs, artisans would interpret the law to mean that they were of the same status. ‘‘Naming these persons would give the artisans cause to ridicule and defame them.’’ Reform legislation could become a cause of dishonor for such trades in areas where they were not dishonorable already. The imperial diet disregarded Augsburg’s suggestion and passed the legislation in its original wording. It is unclear whether the legislation contributed to the stigmatization of additional trades. The stigma of dishonor gained greater social force in the course of the eighteenth century, as the magistrates’ concerns illustrate. But when we take a closer look at the frequency of dishonor conflicts we are confronted with a startling development: while the total number of dishonor conflicts documented in the Augsburg guild records more than doubled in the eighteenth century, the incidence of conflicts occurring in Augsburg itself slowed to a trickle. Of the  dishonor conflicts that Augsburg’s guildsmen debated between  and , only fourteen took place at home, compared to nineteen dishonor conflicts that took place in Augsburg in the seventeenth century. Were Augsburg’s guildsmen more ‘‘enlightened’’ than their fellow tradesmen in the empire? Were Augsburg’s craftsmen becoming less sensitive to potential pollution by dishonor? The virulence of the conflicts that did occur in Augsburg in the eighteenth century demonstrates that Augsburg’s artisans did not develop any greater tolerance towards dishonorable people than their fellow tradesmen in neighboring cities and territories. The decrease in the number of cases in Augsburg did not result from any indifference to dishonor on the part of the artisans. Two of the conflicts in Augsburg were sparked by the dishonorable conduct of fellow tradesmen in other towns. In  some journeymen weavers in the neighboring free imperial city of Kaufbeuren participated in the funeral of the executioner’s twelve-year-old daughter. In response, Augsburg’s weavers organized a regional boycott to force the expulsion of these delinquent journeymen. This conflict dragged on until . The Augsburg weavers set off a similar conflict in , when they organized a boycott against the weavers of the Swabian village Mu¨nsterhausen, because some members of that guild had been seen drinking with  

StadtAA, Handwerksgerichtsprozeßakten, June , , Gutachten des Handwerksgerichts zum  Reichspatent von . Quoted in Proesler, ed., Handwerk, p. . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , , , October –June .



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century 

the executioner. In both of these cases, Augsburg weavers acted as the enforcers of the artisanal honor code in the region. Both conflicts were set off by the Augsburgers’ external intervention in the affairs of neighboring guilds. A conflict within Augsburg’s weavers’ guild in  thwarted the city government’s plans to discipline the vagrant poor who were arrested begging in the city. The city set up a workhouse, literally a ‘‘discipline house’’ (Zuchthaus), where such vagrants were imprisoned and forced to earn their keep by weaving. The master weaver Johann Friedrich was employed as ‘‘discipline house father.’’ He was supposed to teach the inmates to weave and supervise their labor. He also enforced discipline by corporal punishment. Predictably, the weavers’ guild objected. They did not want inmates, some of whom were ‘‘infamous’’ because they had been subjected to an honor punishment, practicing their trade. Friedrich himself had become dishonorable, the weavers claimed, because of his involvement in criminal punishment, particularly because he personally whipped the inmates: ‘‘Many local citizens, from trades other than our own, refuse to drink with him at the same table, because they no longer consider him honorable.’’ Augsburg’s guildsmen went so far as to make murder threats to force the exclusion of candidates they considered dishonorable. In  the bookbinders wanted to expel an apprentice who they claimed was the son of a ‘‘blood beadle’’ (Blutscherge). Since the boy’s father was actually a bailiff who did not participate in criminal executions, the city government ordered the guild to accept him. This precipitated a dishonor conflict that lasted until . In an attempt to intimidate the apprentice’s father, the bookbinders sent him an anonymous letter in which they insinuated that his son might not survive the conflict: ‘‘if the journeymen get hold of him, he has to fear not only for his limbs, but for his life . . . It would be a pity if something should happen to him, since he is such a fine young man . . .’’ The artisans’ sensitivity to dishonor is demonstrated not only by the virulence of these conflicts, but also by the care Augsburgers took to avoid pollution. For example, Augsburg’s city government had considerable difficulty implementing their new policy of granting all ‘‘melancholy’’ suicides an honorable Christian burial. In order to prevent dishonor conflicts resulting from contact with the corpses of suicides, the magistrates decreed that the honorable persons who removed and buried the body should wear masks so that their identity would remain concealed. In spite of such precautions, the authorities at times were hard pressed to find honorable persons who were willing to participate in such an act of Christian charity. By the time the mayor succeeded in finding two honorable men who were willing to bury a suicide victim in , ‘‘the body smelled foul and was practically flowing apart.’’ The two men only agreed under the condition that the    

StadtAA, HWA, Weber , October–December . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , July –May . StadtAA, HWA, Buchbinder, –, from . StadtAA, RP , November , , pp. –.



Artisanal honor and urban politics mayor keep their names secret and pay them a thaler each. As late as , the magistrates found it difficult to ‘‘find people who let themselves be used for the removal . . . of suicides.’’ The policy of having corpses removed by ‘‘unknown or masked persons’’ was still in effect. The same fear of pollution impeded the city government’s efforts to introduce new ‘‘first aid’’ practices to the public. Starting in the s the city government regularly issued decrees ordering citizens to give first aid to victims of accident or suicide. In  the magistrates instructed the public that people who were pulled unconscious from the water might still be revived if they were given the proper treatment. The authorities encouraged bystanders to get the body out of the water and get help from barber-surgeons. The government also ordered people who came across someone who had hanged himself to cut down the body and attempt to revive the person. But the public resisted the government’s humanitarian decrees. An edict from Munich from  used by Augsburg as a model for some of its decrees declared: ‘‘In our enlightened century many such unlucky persons who were thought lost can be brought back to life . . .’’ But many accident and suicide victims were left to die, because of ‘‘the prejudice, which brings great shame to the enlightened humanity of our enlightened century, that declares that the merciful rescuer of a hanged person is dishonorable, if he just touches him . . .’’ An edict from Wu¨rttemberg from  proclaimed that ‘‘every human being and Christian, but especially every member of civil society’’ had the duty to try and save a fellow human being. Augsburg published a decree in the same year that exhorted the public not to let ‘‘false prejudice’’ or fear of being challenged as dishonorable (aus Besorgnis eines ehrenru¨hrigen Vorwurfs) prevent anyone from doing his ‘‘Christian and social duty,’’ his ‘‘duty to humanity.’’ A Brandenburg edict from  attempted to combat such ‘‘prejudice’’ by threatening anyone who insulted a rescuer with imprisonment. Despite all efforts to educate the public concerning this issue, the Augsburg city government was unsuccessful in eradicating the ‘‘false prejudice’’ that such rescue attempts were dishonoring. As late as  and  the authorities bemoaned that the public still believed in this ‘‘vulgar madness.’’      



StadtAA, Handwerksgerichtsprozeßakten, ‘‘Ungeordnete Sachen, Prozesse.’’  StadtAA, ‘‘Ad Criminalia: Selbstmord.’’ Decree from , StadtAA, CM, Wunda¨rzte . . . ‘Kurze Abhandlung von den scheinbaren Todesarten Ertrunkener, Erhenkter . . ., nebst den . . . wirksamen Genesungsmitteln,’’ Munich, , in StadtAA, CM, Wunda¨rzte . . . Wu¨rttemberg decree from , in StadtAA, CM, Wunda¨rzte . . . StadtAA, CM, Wunda¨rzte . . . , October , . Decree issued by ‘‘Christian Friedrich Carl Alexander, Marggraf zu Brandenburg, in Preussen . . .,’’ October , , in StadtAA, CM, Wunda¨rzte . . . Executioners and skinners did their part to promote ‘‘false prejudice’’ and hinder rescue attempts. The Brandenburg edict ordered sharper penalties for executioners and skinners, ‘‘who have sinned most with such insults.’’ Similarly, the Wu¨rttemberg edict of  forbade executioners and skinners to interfere in rescue efforts, or to insult anyone who made a rescue attempt. Wu¨rttemberg decree from , in ibid. Printed public speech from  and governmental decree from August , , in StadtAA, CM, Wunda¨rzte . . .



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century   -            :             If Augsburg’s artisans were as sensitive to dishonor as ever, how is the decrease in the number of conflicts in Augsburg to be explained? A possible answer lies in changing policies of the city government in dishonor conflicts. In seventeenthcentury dishonor conflicts the authorities frequently had to admit defeat in the face of super-regional journeymen’s strikes. Dishonor conflicts were also a source of potential political unrest within the city. The city council had already learned this lesson in  when a crowd of journeyman weavers threatened to riot to force the exclusion of the skinner’s son from their guild. In the eighteenth century, outraged artisans questioned the legitimacy of the government when the magistrates intervened too aggressively in dishonor conflicts. In  the stonemasons’ guild expelled an apprentice for sexual misconduct. The council ordered the guild to readmit the apprentice and a conflict ensued that lasted until . The city government set out systematically to break the resistance of the guildsmen. When the stonemasons refused to accept the apprentice, the city government imprisoned the masters and journeymen for forty-eight hours. They forbade disobedient masters and journeymen to work or to write to their fellow tradesmen abroad concerning this conflict. Any master who wrote in defiance of this order would lose his citizenship. The city government also confiscated the stonemasons’ guild chest, the Handwerkslade, an object of great symbolic significance to the artisans. Mack Walker has described it as ‘‘a kind of ark of the guild covenant symbolizing the guild’s corporate authority and autonomy, repository of its official documents and secrets, ceremonially opened on the occasion of meetings of the membership.’’ The city government could afford to adopt such repressive measures in this conflict, because the stonemasons, in contrast to more highly skilled trades such as the goldsmiths or locksmiths, did not require their journeymen to travel as part of their craft training. The majority of the journeymen were local and many were married. Journeyman stonemasons could not escape the jurisdiction of the city government as easily as the more transient journeymen of other trades. In spite of the government’s strong-arm methods, the stonemasons refused to submit. If they could not write to fellow stonemasons in other cities, then they would write to the emperor, thus circumventing the city government and appealing directly to the ultimate authority in the empire. The artisans complained that their magistrates were governing ‘‘tyrannically’’: they were using violence to uphold an injustice. This petition reveals the political ideals of the guildsmen. One hundred and sixty-nine years after the guild government had been abolished and an authoritarian patrician regime had been set up, the guildsmen still clung to the notion that   

See above, chapter , p. . Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, – (Ithaca, ), p. . Andreas Grießinger, ‘‘Maurer, Dachdecker und Zimmerleute,’’ in Reinhold Reith, ed., Lexikon des alten Handwerks. Vom Spa¨tmittelalter bis ins . Jahrhundert (Munich, ), pp. –.



Artisanal honor and urban politics the government could not simply rule by decree, but had to reach some sort of consensus with their citizens. The stonemasons addressed their petition to the emperor in , at a time when the city government was very vulnerable. The patrician city government was being investigated by an imperial commission for financial mismanagement, corruption, and nepotism. This investigation resulted from factional conflict among the patrician elite, and did not concern the artisans. Nonetheless it must have been quite embarrassing for the magistrates that the quality of their government was being questioned just as the imperial commission began its inquiry. The stonemasons took full advantage of this situation and asked the imperial commission to investigate their conflict as well. In another dishonor conflict some forty years later, in , the artisans again accused the government of tyranny. This was the conflict in the bookbinders’ guild concerning the expulsion of a blood beadle’s son that was discussed above. In addition to making murder threats, the bookbinders also wrote various anonymous pamphlets attacking the city government and posted them in public places. One such sheet was attached to the city gate by night: Ho¨r Welt die dumme That, was hier ein weiser Rat umbs Gelt hat ausgesprochen. Ein Scherg soll ehrlich sein, doch dies nur auf den Schein. Glaub nur, es wird gerochen, es ist dem ganzen Land zu vil zu genug bekannt, daß Ihr wol schlechter seid, Ihr Handwerks Untertrucker und bettelarme Schlucker, dan Schinder und Schergenleuth. Listen world, to the stupid deed which a wise council here has proclaimed for the sake of money. A beadle is supposed to be honorable, but this is only appearance. Believe it, it stinks, it is all too well known in the entire land, that you are worse, you oppressors of artisans, you poor suckers, than skinners and beadles.  

Ingrid Batori, Die Reichsstadt Augsburg im . Jahrhundert. Verfassung, Finanzen, Reformversuche  (Go¨ttingen, ) pp. –. StadtAA, HWA, Maurer , –. StadtAA, HWA, Buchbinder . The placard was hung on May , .



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century The logic of the pamphlet is as bumpy as the rhyme. Its author insinuated that the council had been bribed to proclaim that the beadle’s son was honorable. The council’s infamous deed was known all over the land. As ‘‘oppressors of artisans,’’ the council members were no better than skinners and beadles. In the course of the eighteenth century the city government seemed to become more hesitant to take on the artisans and set off such acrimonious conflicts. The magistrates increasingly opted for appeasement rather than confrontation. In  the city government did nothing to prevent the weavers from organizing a boycott against their fellow tradesmen in Kaufbeuren, because their journeymen had helped carry the executioner’s daughter to her grave. The passive behavior of the city government in this case contrasts markedly with their active intervention when the stonemasons tried to expel the Mozart brothers for participating in the funeral of an executioner’s servant in . In that conflict, the government affirmed that the Mozarts had acted out of Christian charity and forced the guild to accept them. Also in  the town of Rainau conferred with Augsburg about two bailiff’s sons attempting to join the stonemasons’ guild. The patrician supervisors of Augsburg’s stonemasons reported that the guildsmen would refuse to accept the boys. Legitimations would not help, since experience showed that they could not be enforced. Augsburg gave increasingly equivocating and non-committal answers to foreign inquiries in order to avoid being entangled in dishonor conflicts abroad. When Zu¨rich inquired with Augsburg whether the linen-weavers could be forced to accept the legitimated daughter of an executioner, Augsburg responded that ‘‘similar cases have caused considerable conflict, confusion, and expense among the traveling journeymen. Therefore we hesitate to give a categorical answer, since this might cause evil consequences, which we have to be careful to avoid.’’ In , the Augsburg city government disregarded imperial law when they allowed the carpenters to expel a journeyman who had been subjected to judicial torture but found innocent. In the dishonor conflict in the bookbinders’ guild concerning the expulsion of the beadle’s son, the city government eventually gave in to the guildsmen’s demands. The council discreetly (unter der Hand) instructed the master of the dishonorable apprentice to tell the boy to get out of town. The city government’s new policy of appeasing the artisans seems to have resulted not only from a desire to avoid conflict with the guildsmen, but also from a change in attitudes among the patrician magistrates that contrast with their more liberal policies of the seventeenth century. This is illustrated dramatically in a dishonor conflict that erupted in the millers’ guild in  when Joseph Klugheimer, a master’s son, eloped with and married the skinner’s daughter     

StadtAA, HWA, Maurer , June–December . See also above, chapter .  StadtAA, HWA, Maurer , January–April, . StadtAA, HWA, Weber , June . StadtAA, HWA, Zimmerleute , February–March, . StadtAA, HWA, Buchbinder , March , . On the attitudes of Augsburg’s patrician elites towards executioners and skinners in the seventeenth century, see above, chapter , pp. –, –.



Artisanal honor and urban politics Josepha Trenkler. The circumstances of the case were very similar to the conflict sparked by fisherman Andreas Anhauser’s marriage to the skinner’s daughter Barbara Leichnam almost a century earlier. Of course, the millers’ guild expelled the master’s son immediately, just as the fishermen had excluded Andreas Anhauser. What was different in this case was the reaction of the government. In the Anhauser case the magistrates had taken no action at all, beyond allowing the fishermen to expel Andreas. After their marriage in , Andreas and Barbara remained in Augsburg and earned their living as day-laborers. In , however, the government responded with great severity, far exceeding the guildsmen’s demands. After the millers expelled Klugheimer, both he and Josepha were arrested and fined for fornication. The magistrates conferred with church officials about whether a marriage between two persons of such ‘‘disparate status’’ could be considered valid. Unfortunately, the clerics’ response has not been preserved. The city government denied Klugheimer his paternal inheritance, took away his citizenship, and banished him and his bride from the city. The magistrates threatened to fire skinner Trenkler if he did not prevent his daughters from being all ‘‘too familiar’’ with local citizens’ sons. In past conflicts the authorities had merely reacted to the artisans. In this case they actively enforced the social exclusion of dishonorable people. Augsburg adopted a similar conservative stance in negotiations concerning the imperial decree of  that rehabilitated the children of skinners. By ordering guilds to accept the children of skinners, this edict went beyond the previous ordinance of  that still excluded skinners’ descendants through the second generation. The decree of  might have been even more radical had it not been for the resistance of Augsburg and other cities. The territorial states, and in particular Austria, pushed for more comprehensive legislation that would rehabilitate actual working skinners, not just their children. The territorial states made a mercantilist argument: the present dishonorable status of skinners damaged the public interest. There was an oversupply of skinners. Dishonor prevented them from earning their living in any other way. The growing population of unemployed vagrant skinners was an economic burden to the state. Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia were completely overrun with vagrant skinners and this population threatened to spread to other territories as well. Indeed, ‘‘humanity (Menschlichkeit) demands that such persons without subsistence be given the possibility to earn their keep, especially since the state is enriched by the industriousness of its subjects.’’ The representatives of cities argued for the status quo. Rehabilitating skinners and their offspring would provoke unrest. Each local authority should determine for itself how to handle the problem. Most significantly, the proposed legislation threatened ‘‘the reputation and honor of all and every magisterial 

StadtAA, RP , February , , p. ; February , p. ; March , p. ; March , p. ; Strafamt, Ledigenstrafbuch –, p. .



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century authority of a free imperial city.’’ If the guilds were forced to incorporate skinners’ children, then the cities would have to grant them citizenship. As guildsmen and citizens, the skinners’ children would be eligible to sit on the large council. Under the patrician regime, the large council had served a merely symbolic and representative function. Nonetheless, by sitting on the council, skinners’ children would be incorporated in the city government itself. Augsburg instructed its representative at the imperial diet to argue against the rehabilitation of the skinners and their offspring. At the very least, the free imperial cities should be excused from implementing the new law until it was uniformly enforced in the large territorial states. In the end, the imperial diet ignored the objections of the free imperial cities and passed the legislation. In a slight concession, the decree did not mention the skinner himself. The children of skinners who had never done ‘‘this reprehensible work’’ were declared honorable. Those who had ‘‘actually practiced the contemptible work of their parents and ancestors’’ were to be admitted to guilds after receiving a legitimation. There is no indication that this legislation had any greater impact in social practice than the ordinance of . The magistrates’ new restrictive policy towards dishonorable people and their conciliatory stance towards guildsmen during dishonor conflicts presents a plausible explanation for the decrease in the number of dishonor conflicts in Augsburg itself, while the total number of cases increased. A dishonorable applicant’s attempt to enter an honorable guild would leave no trace in the records, if he was turned down at the onset and did not receive support from the city government. Most sources on dishonor were generated by the clash between guild and government, when a dishonorable person sought admission to a guild. But why did the city government take such a hard line towards dishonorable people, just at a time when such social discrimination was coming under increasing criticism? From the late seventeenth century on, legal scholars and social thinkers began to question the theoretical foundations of dishonor. Enlightened commentators and their bourgeois audience developed an internalized, individualized conception of honor that clashed with traditional corporate honor. Since dishonorable people became outcasts at birth, Unehrlichkeit could not be reconciled with the principles of natural law. Their dishonorable status in the society of orders did   



StadtAA, Kunst-, Gewerbs-, und Handwerksgericht, Kasten , January–February . StadtAA, Handwerksgerichtsprozeßakten, Generalia, Handwerksgericht betr., Tom. , February  , . Quoted in Proesler, Handwerk, p. . Friedrich Zunkel, ‘‘Ehre, Reputation,’’ in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reiner Kosselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, vol.  (Stuttgart, ), pp. –, . See for example an anonymous pamphlet from , which makes its agenda obvious in the title: Der redliche Nachrichter/ Das ist: Kurtzer/ So wohl aus der Heiligen Schrift als auch Juristischen, Historischen und chronologischen Bu¨chern/ wie nicht weniger aus der gesunden Vernuhftlehre genau hervor gesuchter Bericht oder bindiger Beweis/ Daß die Nachrichter nicht irregulares oder unehrliche Leute seyn/ wie sie vom gemeinen Po¨bel aus blossem Praejudiz und Vor-Urtheil dafu¨r zum o¨ffteren gehalten werden (Frankfurt a.M., ).



Artisanal honor and urban politics not affect their natural honor. Natural law theorists like Christian Thomasius insisted that ‘‘true,’’ ‘‘reasonable’’ honor was an expression of the inner essence of the individual and could only be revealed in moral conduct. Natural honor should take precedence over traditional legal dishonor, which was merely an external attribute and had no moral meaning. In other words, in their view, dishonorable people had been denied full membership in the human community on the basis of a bogus distinction. Mercantalist writers condemned artisanal notions of dishonor as an obstacle to economic growth. Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff saw the exclusionary policies of artisan guilds as a limitation on state efforts to promote population growth. Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi argued that attributions of dishonor inhibited economic growth. Augsburg’s new conservative stance towards dishonorable people in the eighteenth century clashed with both enlightened and mercantilist theory. The policies of the city government reflected the influence of the Enlightenment in other areas, for example, in the decrease in the number of executions, in the administrative streamlining of the tax policy, the secularized policy towards suicide, and in the active and interventionist approach towards death evident in the new first aid edicts. Why did Enlightenment ideas have no impact on the government’s social policy towards dishonorable people? Augsburg’s patricians, not suprisingly, were less receptive to those aspects of Enlightenment culture that tended to undermine the traditional distinctions and privileges of corporate society. In other areas of Germany, learned societies and reading groups provided a forum for the popularization of enlightened ideas where members of different social estates interacted as equals. But such societies were not established in Augsburg, where egalitarian sociability apparently held less appeal. In Augsburg and other free imperial cities social intercourse was characterized by a rigid formality, as the enlightened publicist Friedrich Nicolai observed in his travel journal. ‘‘. . . the estates are distinguished by a stiff etiquette and are more or less cut off from one another. The nobility, that is imperial officials, members of the cathedral chapter . . . do not socialize with the patricians . . . The patricians keep their distance from the merchants, and the merchants try to distinguish themselves from the common citizens . . . A man of talent can make little claim here.’’ Even though the patricians exercised sovereign authority in Augsburg, they were snubbed by members of the rural nobility who did not regard the urban nobility as social equals. Nicolai was not the only bourgeois commentator to critique patrician exclusiveness. While passing through Augsburg in , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was  

 

Zunkel, ‘‘Ehre,’’ pp. –. Christian Thomasius ridiculed the social discrimination of dishonorable people in his essay ‘‘Ob und wie weit Como¨dianten, Pickelheringe, item Scharfrichtersso¨hne ad dignitates Academicas zuzulas sen,’’ pp. –. Zunkel, ‘‘Ehre,’’ p. . Bernd Roeck, ‘‘Geistiges Leben –,’’ in Gottlieb et al., Geschichte, –, p. . Quoted in Pius Dirr, ‘‘Augsburg in der Publizistik und Satire des . Jahrhunderts,’’ ZHVZ  (), –, .



Honor and dishonor in the eighteenth century invited to perform in the home of the patrician magistrate von Langenmantel. The Langenmantel were an ancient family who had been members of the patriciate since the fourteenth century. Mozart described his visit to the magistrate in a letter to his father Leopold Mozart. ‘‘My uncle , . . . an honorable townsman, accompanied me and had the honor of waiting upstairs on the landing like a lackey until I should come out of the Arch-magistrate’s room. . . . [Langenmantel] addressed me in the second person, while I continued to address him as ‘Your Highness’ . . .’’ Leopold Mozart answered that his son should not to be surprised at the haughty conduct of Augsburg’s patricians. ‘‘Everyone knows about the beggarliness of the patricians and every honest man laughs about it. That is why they are in the pay of the rich merchants, who can get anything for money from their hungry superiors.’’ Nonetheless, patricians did not hesitate ‘‘to jeer at others, whenever an opportunity presents itself. Therein consists their great nobility.’’ Leopold Mozart was commenting on the notorious impoverishment of the patriciate. According to a satirical polemic published in , Augsburg patricians, having abandoned the commerce of their ancestors, ‘‘creep around in melancholy poverty, which exposes them to the contempt of the mob.’’ By the early seventeenth century most patricians had withdrawn from active trade. By the eighteenth century they were far less wealthy than the socially inferior merchants. They became completely dependent on well-remunerated lifetime appointments in city government which they treated as the sinecures of their estate. Paul von Stetten the younger, whose family dominated city politics in the eighteenth century, made this point quite explicitly, when he argued against the strict enforcement of rules against nepotism in city government. If blood relatives were prohibited from sitting on the council simultaneously, ‘‘most patrician families, which are often quite large, would be forced to leave the city and find their fortune elsewhere, or face utter ruin’’ at home. When von Stetten made this argument in , it had become unthinkable for a patrician to earn his living in any other way than by government service. The political competency of the patrician government came under fire a number of times during the eighteenth century. Infighting among patricians in the early eighteenth century provoked an investigation by an imperial commission, which took up residence in Augsburg from  to . As an outcome of this expensive inquiry, older rules against nepotism were reconfirmed, though with little effect. Laws against nepotism were so difficult to enforce because there were simply not enough patricians available to fill all the council seats and government offices that the Caroline constitution had reserved for them. A number of patrician families had died out. An expansion of the patriciate, as had occurred in , might have   

Emily Anderson, ed., The Letters of Mozart and his Family (London, ), pp. , . Dirr, ‘‘Augsburg in der Publizistik,’’ p. . Ingrid Batori, ‘‘Reichssta¨dtisches Regiment, Finanzen, und bu¨rgerliche Opposition,’’ in Gottlieb et al., Geschichte, pp. –, p. .



Artisanal honor and urban politics remedied the situation but was never discussed. Nepotism remained a chronic problem throughout the century. An opposition party made up of the politically disenfranchised merchant class emerged in the late eighteenth century, after patrician financial mismanagement had produced a catastrophic public debt. The merchants criticized patrician magistrates for arrogance, laziness, inefficiency, and excessive secrecy. City government in general was paralyzed by the ‘‘force of inertia.’’ Though this opposition never developed revolutionary demands or called into question patrician rule in principle, it occurred at the same time as the Enlightenment sparked a larger societal debate about aristocratic privilege. Enlightened critics championed equality before the law and extolled the ‘‘nobility of virtue’’ (Tugendadel) over nobility of birth, while cameralists questioned the social utility of the aristocratic estate. The same Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi who condemned artisans’ exclusion of dishonorable trades, recommended that aristocrats abandon the traditional principle of de´rogeance according to which ‘‘nobles are dishonored by engaging in commerce, manufacturing, or other activities that are useful to the state.’’ In this context it is not surprising the patrician magistrates abandoned earlier attempts to rehabilitate dishonorable people and even reinforced their social exclusion. Urban society was structured according to a hierarchy of corporate groups, each of which had its own degree of honor. The patricians, the estate with the highest honor, formed the ruling caste. The patrician government could allow the rehabilitation of dishonorable people to go only so far. To break the resistance of honorable guilds and to force them to accept the skinner’s children would mean annihilating their corporate privileges. But a frontal attack on the corporate exclusiveness of the guilds would have made the corporate exclusiveness of Augsburg’s patricians, on which their claim to political power was based, untenable. A full and consistent rehabilitation of dishonorable people would have undermined the ideology of honor that legitimated the society of orders.   

SStBA ° Aug , Johann Christoph von Zabuesnig, Vortrag des Ausschusses des großen Raths in Augsburg . . . u¨ber o¨ffentliche Administrationsgebrechen . . . (n.p., ). Zunkel, ‘‘Ehre,’’ p. . Quoted in Rudolf Endres, Adel in der fru¨hen Neuzeit (Munich, ), pp. –.



Conclusion: dishonor and the society of orders Executioners and skinners and their families, the core group of dishonorable people, occupied a symbolic position as outsiders in early modern German society. Jurists classified them as infamous and listed a multitude of legal, social, and religious disabilities that derived from their dishonor: the executioner or skinner lived ‘‘like a wild animal, . . . excluded from the community of honorable people.’’ These legal scholars vastly exaggerated the discrimination executioners and skinners suffered in social practice, however. Executioners and skinners were not absolute pariahs. In Augsburg the city government did deny executioners and skinners citizenship, but the patrician magistrates did not discriminate against them in any other way. Honorable guildsmen, the lowest honorable estate in the corporate hierarchy within the city, were the social group that most adamantly enforced the social exclusion of dishonorable people. From the early sixteenth century on, no honorable guild incorporated a member of the dishonorable core group. Artisans were also most concerned about the danger of ritual pollution by social or physical contact with the executioner or skinner. The exclusion from honorable guilds most likely had little practical impact on executioners and skinners in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, since they had little reason to want to join an artisan guild. Executioners and skinners were strongly stigmatized, but a social abyss separated them from criminals and the disreputable vagrant poor who were executed or made infamous at their hands. The early modern state persecuted other marginal groups – witches, vagrants, bandits, gypsies – sometimes to the point of extermination. But executioners and skinners enjoyed various privileges that compensated them for the social discrimination they faced, and made their social position tolerable, indeed advantageous. Executioners and skinners were of higher economic status than most guildsmen who discriminated against them. They had a reputation as skilled healers and they probably drew much of their income from their medical practice. In some cases medicine provided them with an avenue of upward social mobility. They were excluded from citizenship, but as a result of this exclusion they were exempt from a variety of taxes 

Tommaso Garzoni, ‘‘Discurs. ’’ in Piazza Universali, quoted in Paul Do¨pler, Theatrum Poenarum, Supplicorum, et Executionum Criminalium, der Schauplatz der Leib und Lebensstrafen (Sonderhausen, ), p. .



Artisanal honor and urban politics that citizens were required to pay. After the mid-sixteenth century they practiced social endogamy and formed a professional caste. This social endogamy is usually explained as a result of social discrimination. External coercion undoubtedly did contribute to the formation of this professional caste. The conflict concerning the marriage of the fisherman Andreas Anhauser and the skinner’s daughter Barbara Leichnam is an illustration of the social disaster that befell artisans who married across the boundary of honor. But executioners’ and skinners’ clans also chose to practice social endogamy in order to transfer executioners’ and skinners’ positions, to preserve family patrimonies, and to provide professional training for the young. In the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, executioners and skinners occupied a privileged niche in the urban social structure. The social boundary that separated the dishonorable core group from honorable society seems to have been maintained with the tacit consent of the executioners and skinners. Paradoxically, groups on the periphery of dishonor, though they were less polluting than executioners and skinners, suffered more from the effects of dishonor pollution in daily life. Since their dishonorable status was less clearly established than that of executioners and skinners, they attempted to join artisan guilds and were consequently embroiled in dishonor conflicts more frequently. Dishonor was a form of secular pollution. Sin was the defining characteristic of illicit trades in the middle ages; they were defined as spiritually defiled in canon law. In contrast, Catholic and Protestant churches in the early modern period did not discriminate against executioners, skinners, or other defiled tradesmen. The sons of bailiffs, excluded from artisan guilds, readily found employment as sextons and priests. Late medieval executioners sometimes were denied access to Holy Communion, but in the early modern period this type of discrimination ended. In Augsburg they attended church and suffered no lack of pastoral care. No one questioned the spiritual equality of executioners or other defiled tradesmen, but that did not mitigate the social and political discrimination they suffered in the material world. Ritual pollution is usually studied in the context of primitive religion, so it might seem counterintuitive to say that German dishonor was secular. However, the secularization of dishonor in the early modern period was part of a larger social development. R. Po-Chia Hsia has argued that ‘‘the desacralization of society’’ constituted ‘‘the most fundamental transformation in early modern central Europe.’’ This is not to say that early modern people developed a ‘‘disenchanted’’ worldview. But the formation of confessional identity in the second half of the sixteenth century undermined the ideology of sacral communalism that was the dominant ‘‘theologico-political discourse’’ of the early Reformation. Members of different confessions, Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists, were forced to cohabit the same urban space. ‘‘By creating different competing confessional groups and a fragmented Christian society,’’ Hsia suggests, ‘‘the process of confessionalization destroyed sacralization as a force of social 

Conclusion 

integration.’’ In multi-confessional cities and the confessionally splintered empire of the early modern period it was necessary to define honor and the boundaries of the political community in secular terms. Where religious homogeneity could no longer be the basis of community, honor defined in secular terms could serve as a new integrating principle. The boundary of honor was not clearly drawn; at times it was almost invisible. Artisans were absolutely intransigent and uncompromising once a dishonor conflict had erupted, but they could also be pragmatic and flexible in their dealings with executioners, skinners, and other defiled tradesmen in daily life. Artisans had business dealings with the skinner, and they went to the executioner for medical treatment with no adverse effect on their honor. Sociability with executioners and skinners caused severe dishonor conflicts in some cases, but was harmless and unobjectionable in others. Andreas Anhauser’s fellow fishermen did not hesitate to frequent the skinner’s house ‘‘like a tavern.’’ Pollution rules were not explicit or clearly defined. Dishonor was contextual. The fact that pollution beliefs could be suspended under certain circumstances should not be interpreted as a sign that artisans were opportunistic or cynical about dishonor. For a society to continue to function, pollution rules must be put into practice in such a way that social life does not grind to a halt. Artisans never allowed the boundary of honor to disappear completely, however. The fishermen did not object to drinking with the skinner, but they drew the line at marrying the skinner’s daughter. The guildsmen used dishonor conflicts periodically to reaffirm their pollution rules and the symbolic outsider status of executioners and skinners. Similarly, the city government never allowed the outsider status of executioners and skinners to be forgotten. The magistrates at times acted to soften the discrimination executioners and skinners faced from artisans – they guaranteed the executioner’s right to frequent public baths, for example – but they never allowed a working executioner or skinner to acquire citizenship. This exclusion from citizenship had no adverse effect on executioners and skinners in daily life, indeed it was to their economic advantage, but it was a symbolic expression of their marginal status within the city. In the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries legal dishonor had little practical impact on executioners and skinners, but their marginal status did hold great symbolic significance. The existence of dishonorable people stabilized the corporate hierarchy within the city. First, there was the issue of money. A person’s social and economic status was generally more or less congruent in the society of orders. A goldsmith typically had more honor and more wealth than a weaver. But there were significant exceptions to this rule. Among elites, patricians were less wealthy than merchants who were their social inferiors. And at lower social levels, the glaring status inconsistency of the executioner, dishonorable and yet wealthy, confirmed a 

R. Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe – (London, ), pp. –.



Artisanal honor and urban politics legitimizing myth of the society of orders that honor, not money, determined status. And secondly, dishonor played a significant role in the self-presentation of corporate groups. Guilds were engaged in constant competition for precedence and honor. Attempting to improve their position in the corporate hierarchy, guilds demonstrated their honor and their sensitivity to pollution in dishonor conflicts. The course of dishonor conflicts was similar, whether they were sparked by ritual pollution through contact with an executioner or skinner, or by the attempt of a potentially dishonorable person to enter an artisan guild. Dishonor pollution precipitated acrimonious clashes between fellow citizens and between guildsmen and their patrician rulers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but these conflicts had a limited focus and ultimately had the effect of preserving the social hierarchy. Artisans were exclusively concerned with their honor and their corporate privileges. The guildsmen did not challenge the social and political hierarchy itself, they were only concerned with their position in the established hierarchy. The social ascendancy of the patricians and their right to rule were never questioned. The criteria according to which honor was claimed or denied in such conflicts worked in favor of the patricians. When the goldsmiths were involved in a dishonor conflict with bailiff Frank in  and , for example, the goldsmiths argued that their trade was particularly honorable because they worked with a noble substance and their craft was artful. Their honor was demonstrated by patricians’ willingness to associate with them. The goldsmiths emphasized this point by providing a list of all patricians who had learned their trade since . Bailiff Frank also used the argument of association with patricians to prove that he was not dishonorable. Bailiffs were in close daily contact with patrician mayors, and persons of such high honor would not surround themselves with infamous persons. The logic of such arguments remained very much the same over the next two centuries. When the bookbinders expelled the beadle’s son Antoni Halmberger in , they supported their claim to honor by arguing that bookbinders were closely associated with academics and universities. Academics and university graduates had a high social status, second only to that of patricians. The clothing ordinance of  classed academics together with merchants incorporated in the exclusive merchants’ society, with non-patrician members of the city council, and with highly placed city officials. Just as the emperor or sovereign was the fount of honor, so persons of high estate were a source of honor for those beneath them in the corporate hierarchy. Artisans and governmental officials acted upon this ideology of honor in gallows-building rituals. This underlying logic of the ritual is perhaps one reason why authorities agreed to participate in these elaborate and costly ceremonies. Of course, there was a practical reason: if the authorities wanted the gallows to be built, they would have to humor the artisans. But on a symbolic level, the idea of the cleansing power of persons of high honor would certainly appeal to  

StadtAA, HWA, Buchbinder , . Ernewerte Zierd- und Kleyder-Ordnung of , StadtAA, Ratserla¨sse, –.



Conclusion the authorities, and could be instrumentalized to cement governmental authority. Dishonor was often associated with filthy and stinking work. This raises the question to what extent a ‘‘civilizing process’’ as it has been described by Norbert Elias contributed to the stigmatization of defiled trades. But the model of the civlizing process cannot explain attributions of dishonor. According to Elias, the process of civilization began among social elites and only gradually affected lower social classes. However, it was the artisans who were most concerned with dishonor pollution, while elites were more or less indifferent. For artisans, dishonor was a matter of social symbolism rather than sensibility. Working with dirty and base materials alone did not suffice to make a person dishonorable. In artisans’ analogical thinking, the dishonor of all defiled trades ultimately derived from association with the executioner or skinner. While the ‘‘night-workers’’ and gravediggers who worked with feces and corpses were of low status compared with the goldsmiths who worked with a noble substance, such low status did not equal dishonor. As striking journeyman linen-weavers explained in , night-workers and grave-diggers only became dishonorable by association with the executioner. The night-workers used the executioner’s horses to transport feces, and gravediggers became dishonorable when they buried an executed criminal, thus becoming involved in the execution process. Beyond explaining the infamy of different dishonorable groups by association with the executioner – in northern Germany linen-weavers were dishonorable because they allegedly supplied the ladder for the gallows – artisans offered no explanation of dishonor. Once they had traced dishonor back to the executioner, the rationale of dishonor was not articulated beyond this point. An early modern artisan most likely would have been perplexed by the question why the executioner was dishonorable. The executioner simply was dishonorable. To speak with Pierre Bourdieu, ‘‘in practice’’ German dishonor prohibitions were ‘‘lived rather than clearly conceived.’’ The half-articulated criteria that determined who was dishonorable were secondary to the fact that such a dishonorable caste existed which the artisans could use to support their own claim to honor. Artisans saw their honor and the honor of their patrician governors as interconnected. Augsburg’s goldsmiths made this argument explicitly in their conflict with bailiff Frank in  and . When they excluded a dishonorable candidate from their guild, the goldsmiths argued, they were following the same social logic as patricians did when they excluded common citizens from their exclusive drinking society. If it was ‘‘absurd’’ for patricians to incorporate commoners in their society, then it was equally absurd for the goldsmiths to incorporate a bailiff’s son. In  and  the magistrates brushed off the goldsmiths’ argument. But perhaps they found such reasoning more compelling in the eighteenth century, when their own  

Norbert Elias, The History of Manners: the Civilizing Process, vol.  (New York, ). Pierre Bourdieu, ‘‘The sentiment of honour in Kabyle society,’’ in J. G. Peristiany, ed., Honour and Shame: the Values of Mediterranean Society (Chicago, ), p. .



Artisanal honor and urban politics social position seemed more precarious. From  to  Augsburg’s patrician government was under investigation by an imperial commission for nepotism and corruption. The government’s financial mismanagement precipitated a second constitutional crisis in the s. The legitimacy of patrician rule per se was not challenged in either of these crises. However, Augsburg’s magistrates could not have been unaware that public debt and governmental corruption set off numerous urban revolts and constitutional crises in other free imperial cities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in which commoners demanded increased participation in government. Augsburg’s patricians also could not have been unaware of enlightened criticism of the corporate privileges of the aristocracy, criticism that was applied to urban patriciates as well. The argument of Christian Thomasius and other natural law theorists that true honor was revealed in moral conduct tended to undermine not only the legal discrimination against dishonorable people, but also the corporate honor and privileges of the aristocracy. Perhaps such developments encouraged Augsburg’s magistrates to try to preserve the traditional corporate hierarchy within the city. In her discussion of the relationship between ritual pollution and social structure, Mary Douglas suggests that ‘‘wherever the lines are precarious, we find pollution ideas come to their support.’’ This observation holds true for the history of dishonor in the eighteenth century. The legal status of executioners and skinners improved, but dishonor had greater impact in their daily lives. As their economic status declined and they lost the perquisites of their traditional position, they tried to rise above the dishonorable milieu by entering the artisanate. At the same time, artisans applied the label of dishonor more widely. Additional trades were stigmatized and the label of dishonor extended over more generations. As guildsmen’s pollution anxieties became more extreme, Augburg’s patrician government developed a new policy of appeasement towards their artisanal subjects. The magistrates became more tolerant of the social exclusiveness of the guildsmen and shrank away from taking on the artisans in dishonor conflicts. And for the first time the city  







Ingrid Batori, Die Reichsstadt Augsburg im . Jahrhundert. Verfassung, Finanzen, Reformversuche (Go¨ttingen, ), pp. –. Ingrid Batori, ‘‘Reichssta¨dtisches Regiment, Finanzen und bu¨rgerliche Opposition,’’ in Gunter Gottlieb et al., eds., Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart, ), pp. –. Peter Blickle, Unruhen in der sta¨ndischen Gesellschaft, – (Munich, ), pp. –. For an example of one such constitutional crisis, see Gerald Lyman Soliday, A Community in Conflict: Frankfurt Society in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Hanover, New Hampshire, ). Friedrich Zunkel, ‘‘Ehre, Reputation,’’ in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reiner Kosselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, vol.  (Stuttgart, ), pp. –; Jutta Nowosadtko, ‘‘Ehre in sta¨ndischer Gemeinschaft und moderner Gesellschaft,’’ in Soziologie der Ehre, Kurseinheit , ed. Fernuniversita¨t – Gesamthochschule – in Hagen (Hagen, ), p. . Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: an Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, ), pp. –.



Conclusion government actively enforced the social exclusion of dishonorable people, as is illustrated in the government’s extreme reaction to the marriage of the miller Joseph Klugheimer and the skinner’s daughter Josepha Trenkler in , and in the magistrates’ protests against the imperial police ordinance of  which admitted skinners’ sons to artisan guilds. This change in governmental policy towards artisan guilds and dishonorable people was in part the result of a learning process. When the locksmiths of Ulm expelled a fellow master for slaughtering three sickly piglets in , one of the guildsmen said ‘‘even if the emperor himself ordered them [to accept the offending master], there is no way they would obey him.’’ Such ‘‘insolence’’ was typical of guildsmen’s behavior in dishonor conflicts. Artisans instrumentalized honor to maintain autonomous spheres of corporate jurisdiction against the encroaching demands of the state. The expansion of dishonor pollution hampered governments’ social disciplining agenda and the administration of criminal justice throughout the empire, and several times during the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, Augsburg’s magistrates had to concede that artisans simply could not be coerced into accepting a dishonorable candidate. Super-regional journeymen’s associations enforced the artisanal honor code and the social exclusion of dishonorable people. The politically fragmented structure of the empire gave journeymen greater leverage than they would have had in a unified nation state. Even in the seventeenth century, when the Augsburg city government aggressively sought to rehabilitate the groups on the periphery of dishonor and to break the artisans’ resistance, the magistrates could not control the journeymen. The magistrates’ authority did not extend beyond the city government; disobedient journeymen could easily escape Augsburg’s jurisdiction by walking a few miles. All attempts at coordination between the governments of different cities and territories failed. Jacob Gottlieb Sieber, legal counsel to the government of the free imperial city of Goslar, described the difficulties free imperial cities faced in controlling their artisans in a treatise published in . Free imperial cities ‘‘indulged’’ their artisans, he argued, because they simply did not have the power to compel artisans to obey. Even in territorial states ‘‘where the necessary force is not lacking, there are great obstacles.’’ But insufficient state power was not the only reason the rehabilitation of dishonorable trades remained ineffective. Collusion was also a factor. In free imperial cities where guildsmen had a voice in government, the ‘‘authorities are not so strict and look the other way (durch die Finger sehen),’’ so that guildsmen did not vote for lowly candidates, since the ‘‘quality’’ of councilmen determined the respect the city government would receive by neighboring territories. Augsburg was a patrician regime, so the prospect of guildsmen voting undesirable candidates into   

StadtAA, HWA, Schlosser , March , . Jacob Gottlieb Sieber, Abhandlung von den Schwierigkeiten in den Reichsta¨dten das Reichsgesetz v. . Aug.  wegen der Mißbra¨uche bey den Zu¨nften zu vollziehen (Goslar, ), unpaginated preface. Ibid., pp. –.



Artisanal honor and urban politics office was not an issue. But in Augsburg, too, the authorities ‘‘looked the other way.’’ This new tolerance of guilds’ exclusiveness gives the impression that in the course of the eighteenth century Augsburg’s patrician magistrates came to perceive their own honor and the honor of the artisans as interconnected. When the city government acted to preserve the social boundary that excluded dishonorable people from the artisanate, the patricians seemed to be acting on the assumption that by protecting the corporate privileges of the artisans they were protecting their own. After the collapse of the Holy Roman empire during the Napoleonic invasions, the system of discrimination against dishonorable people slowly dissolved. When the political framework of the empire collapsed and many cities and principalities were incorporated into the larger territorial states, journeymen lost the leverage their super-regional network had provided under the old regime. Between  and  many governments abolished the journeymen’s organizations under their jurisdiction and the super-regional journeymen’s organizations dissolved. Augsburg was incorporated into the large and centralized territorial state of Bavaria in . Augsburg’s patricians, the traditional ruling caste, became subjects of the Bavarian king. Executioners and skinners continued to face discrimination in the early nineteenth century. A veterinarian writing on the disposal of carrion observed in  that guilds still refused to apprentice skinners’ sons. In  Karl Huss, executioner in Eger, complained that executioners were still ‘‘excluded from convivial society.’’ In  King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia issued a cabinet order that allowed executioners’ servants to perform military service. When a group of city councilmen in Berlin tried to prevent an executioner’s servant from buying property within the city in , the king condemned the traditional exclusion of executioners’ servant as a prejudice, and granted them full civil rights. By this time, the king claimed, the defiled status of other traditionally dishonorable tradesmen had been forgotten. In the modern world of centralized territorial states the artisanal honor code and the social exclusion of dishonorable people could not be maintained. When the structural conditions for the enforcement of honor rules were dismantled, pollution anxieties faded and the system of discrimination against dishonorable people came to a gradual end in the first half of the nineteenth century.     

Andreas Grießinger, Das symbolische Kapital der Ehre. Streikbewegungen und kollektives Bewußtsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen in . Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a.M, ), pp. –. Volker Dotterweich, ‘‘Die Mediatisierung der Reichsstadt,’’ in Gottlieb et al., Geschichte, pp. –. ¨ ber das Abdecker-wesen und die Folgen seiner Aufhebung. Die Arkana, sympathischen M. J. J. W. Lux, U Kuren und die geheime Sprache der Scharfrichter und Abdecker (Leipzig, ), p. . Karl Huss, Die Schrift ‘‘Vom Aberglauben.’’ Nach dem in der fu¨rstlich Metternichen Bibliothek zu Ko¨nigswart befindlichen Manuskripte, ed. by Alois John (Prague, ), p. . Ferdinand Frensdorff, ‘‘Das Zunftrecht insbesondere Norddeutschlands und die Handwerkerehre,’’ Hansische Geschichtsbla¨tter  (), –, –.



Selected bibliography

       Unprinted sources Augsburg, Stadtarchiv, Bestand ‘‘Reichstadt’’ Archiv des Historischen Vereins /–, Protokolle des Collegium Medicum, Bd. –. Baumeisteramt, Baumeisterbuch , . Beisitzaufnahmen a, . Bu¨rgeraufnahmen a. Collegium Medicum (Unregistered collection) Akten das evangelische Zucht und Arbeitshaus, ferners das heilige Almosenamt betref. Apotheker von –, Tom. . Deputation ad Collegium Medicum, Apotheker Ordnungen. ¨ rzte . . .,–, Tom , Fasz. . Fremde A Hebammen/Obfrauen, –. In genere, –, Fasz. . Medizinal und Apotheker Ordnungen. Pfuscher, –. Schedarum quarum in Actis Collegii medici mentio sit . . . Wunda¨rzte, Bader und Barbiere, in specie betr. von – . . . Chroniken, Nr. . Evangelisches Wesensarchiv, Nr. , . Geheime Ratsprotokolle Nr. – (Protokolle der XIIIer). Nr. –. Gottesa¨cker (unregistered collection): Acta, die Totengrebel betreff. Finstere Gret/Kath. u. Evang. Gottesa¨cker, . Akt. Totengra¨ber St. Stefan. Totengra¨ber. Handwerkerakten Ba¨cker, . Bader und Barbiere, –. Bier- und Weinwirte, , . Bierbra¨uer, , . Bierschenken, –.



Selected bibliography Bortenmacher, –. Briefmaler und Illuministen, , –. Buchbinder, –. Buchdrucker, –. Fischer, , –. Gerber, Fasz. –. Glaser, . Goldschmiede, –. Hammer und Kupferschmiede,  Kistler, . Kramer, , . Ku¨rschner, . Lederbereiter, –. Maurer, –. Messerschmiede u. Schwertfeger . Metzger, –, –, . Mu¨ller, –. Schlosser, –. Schmiede, –. Schneider, . Schuhmacher, –, . Seifen- und Garnsieder, –. Seiler, –. Wagner, . Weber, , , , , , –, –, –, , a, –, –, . Zimmerleute, –. Handwerker Ordnungen A–Z, . Verzeichnis sa¨mtlicher Handwerker . . ., Verschiedene Handwerksordnungen, . Handwerksgerichtsprozeßakten (unregistered collection) Generalia, Handwerksgericht betref, Tom. . Kunst, Gewerbs- und Handwerksgericht, Kasten , . Ungeordnete Sachen, Prozesse. Remaining unlabeled packets. Hochzeitsamt, Hochzeitsamtsprotokolle, –. Literalien . Markgrafschaft Burgau, Akten, Nr. . Militaria, , . Musterungsbu¨cher , , . Oberpflegamt Kleine Pflegschaftsbu¨cher –. Pflegschaftsbu¨cher, –, –. Ratserla¨sse, –. Ratsprotokolle, Nr. –. Reichsstadtakten



Selected bibliography Stadtbedienstete /; /; /; /; /; /; /. Stadtkanzlei, Urkundenkonzepte, Geburtsbriefe, /.. Scha¨tze, Nr. , , , a. Senatsdekrete, Nr. . Steueramt, Steuerbu¨cher , , –. Strafamt Ledigenstrafbuch, –. Modus Procedendi in Malefizsachen. Strafbu¨cher, –. Urgichtensammlung, –. Verbrecherbuch, –. Zucht- und Strafamtsprotokolle, –. Zuchthaus Buchloe, Nr.  (.); Nr. .

Archiv des Bistums Augsburg Matrikelamt St. Stephan, Bd. –. Taufbu¨cher Dom, Bd. –. Trauungsregister Dompfarrei –. Sterbebu¨cher Dompfarrei –.

Augsburg, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek ° cod Aug . ° cod Aug . ° cod Aug . ° cod Aug . ° cod Aug . ° cod Aug . ° cod Aug –. ° cod Aug . ° cod Aug . ° S , Nr. , Beilage. ° cod S –. ° cod Aug HV . ° Aug . ° Aug . ° Aug . ° Med . ° Med . ° Med . ° S –. Graphik /–, Verbrecher, etc.



Selected bibliography Augsburg, Staatsarchiv Lehen und Adel c (Herrschaft Babenhausen). Reichsstadt Kempten, Nr. . Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv ¨ rzte und Arzneiprivilegien, –. A Restitutiones natalium ac legitimationes, Fasz. –. Nu¨rnberg, Stadtbibliothek, Handschriftenabteilung Amb. . . Nor. H.  (). Nor. H.  (). Munich, Stadtarchiv Gewerbeamt /. Bu¨rgermeister und Rat  B ,  B . Printed sources Ains Erbern Rats der Stat Augsburg Zucht und Pollicey Ordnung. Augsburg, . Beier, Adrian. Allgemeines Handlungs-, Kunst-, Berg- und Handwerks Lexicon. Jena, . Brucker, J., ed. Strassburger Zunft- und Polizeiordnungen des . und . Jahrhunderts. Strasbourg, . Bu¨cher, Karl, and Benno Schmidt, eds. Frankfurter Amts- und Zunfturkunden bis zum Jahre . Vol. . Frankfurt a.M., . Carpzov, Johann Benedict. Ertheilter Untericht von den Scharfrichtern, in einer dem ehrsamen und mannhaften Meister Christoph Heintzen, in der Stadt Leipzig lange Zeit gewesenen Nachrichters, an desselben Begra¨bnis, . Feb., . Leipzig, . Des auf dem Rad ligenden Samuel Keckens Erzehlung seines Mords, Bekehrung, und Todes, nebenst aufrichtigen von ihm, in dem Gefengnus, aufgesetzten Buss-Gedanken . . . Augsburg, . Des Heiligen Reichs-Stadt Ulm Erneuerte Apotheker Tax. Ulm, . Die Chroniken der deutschen Sta¨dte vom . bis ins . Jahrhundert.  vols. Edited by the Historische Commission bei der ko¨niglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Leipzig, –. Do¨pler, Paul. Theatrum Poenarum, Supplicorum, et Executionum Criminalium, der Schauplatz der Leib und Lebensstrafen. Sonderhausen, . Eckardt, Karl August, ed. Sachsenspiegel, Land- und Lehnrecht. Hanover, . Schwabenspiegel. Langform M. Bibliotheka Rerum Historicarum, Studia . Aalen, . Erneuerte Gesetz, Ordnung und Tax Eines Edlen . . . Raths des Heil: Reichs Statt Nu¨rnberg, dem Collegio Medico, den Apothekern . . . gegeben. Nuremberg, . [Giese, Augustus]. Der weheschreiende Stein, u¨ber den Greuel, daß man die Diener der Justiz bis

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Selected bibliography anher nicht zu Grabe tragen, und nun auch Ihrer etlichen Frauen in Kindsnoth niemand helfen will. N.p., . Gru¨ner, Christian Gottfried. ‘‘Unehrlichkeit und das unehrliche Begra¨bnis.’’ Almanach fu¨r ¨ rzte und Nicht A¨rzte, pp. –. Jena, . A Hoenn, Georg Paul. Betrugs-Lexikon worinnen die meisten Betru¨gereien in allen Sta¨nden, nebst denen darwider guten Theils dienenden Mitteln. Coburg, . Ho¨rnigk, Ludwig von. Politia Medica. Frankfurt a.M., . Huss, Karl. Die Schrift ‘‘Vom Aberglauben.’’ Nach dem in der fu¨rstlich Metternichen Bibliothek zu Ko¨nigswart befindlichen Manuskripte. Edited by Alois John. Prague, . Kru¨nitz, Johann Georg. ‘‘Galgen.’’ In: Oeconomisch-technologische Encyclopa¨die, edited by Johann Georg Kru¨nitz, vol. , pp. –. Berlin, . Lersner, Achilles Augustus. Der weit-beru¨hmten Freyen Reichs- Wahl- und Handels-Stadt Frankfurt am Mayn Chronica, oder ordentliche Beschreibung der Stadt Frankfurt. Vol. . Frankfurt a.M., . Loersch, Heinrich von, ed. Die Ko¨lner Zunfturkunden nebst anderen Ko¨lner Gewerbeurkunden bis zum Jahre . Vol. . Bonn, . Luther, Martin. ‘‘Lectures on Deuteronomy,’’ :, ‘‘You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns,’’ In Luther’s Works, vol. , edited by Jaroslav Pelikan, pp. –, St. Louis, . Luther, Martin. ‘‘Temporal Authority: To what Extent it should be Obeyed?’’ In Luther’s Works. Vol. , edited by Walther I. Brandt, pp. –. Philadelphia, . Mayr, Georg Karl. Wegbuchlin der furnemesten wege und gebreuchlichesten Strassen. Augsburg, . Mayr, Georg Karl. Sammlung der Kurpfalz-Baierischen allgemeinen und besonderen Landesverordnungen.  vols. Munich, –. Meyer, Christian, ed. Das Stadtbuch von Augsburg, insbesondere das Stadtrecht von . Augsburg, . Mylius, Christian Otto, ed. Corpus Constitutionum Marchicarum, oder Ko¨niglich Preußische und Churfu¨rstlich Brandenburgische, in der Chur- und Mark Brandenburg auch incorporierten Landen, publicierte und ergangen Ordnungen, Edicta, Mandata, Rescripta, Von Zeiten Friedrich I. Churfu¨rstens zu Brandenburg, etc. biß ietzo unter der Regierung Friedrich Wilhelms, Ko¨nig in Preussen, etc. ad annum  inclusive.  vols. Berlin, –. Neue Apotheker Taxa der Stadt Basel. Basel, . Ordnung u¨ber die Milita¨rischen Krankenha¨user . . . nebst der Apotheker Tax, auf s[eine] . . . Churfu¨rst in Bayern verfasset. Augsburg, . Paracelsus, Theophrastus. Werke. Vol. : Philosophische Schriften. Edited by Will-Erich Peukert. Basel, . Paulani, Christian Franz. Neu-vermehrte heylsame Dreck-Apotheke, wie nemlich mit Koth und Urin fast alle . . .Krankheiten . . .curieret worden . . . Frankfurt a.M., . Proesler, Hans, ed. Das gesamtdeutsche Handwerk im Spiegel der Reichsgesetzgebung von –. Berlin, . Quistorp, Johann Christian. Grundsa¨tze des peinlichen Rechts. Vol. . Rostock/Leipzig, . Kleinere juristische Schriften. Erste Sammlung. Weimar, . Rudolf, F., ed. Quellen zur Rechts- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Rheinischen Sta¨dte. Kurtrierische Sta¨dte. Vol. . Trier. Bonn, .

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Selected bibliography Schmid, Jacob, S.J. Trauben der Heiligkeit aus den Do¨rnern der Bo¨sheit, oder verwunderliche Bekehrungen allerhand Mo¨rdern, Ra¨ubern, Zauberern, auch viler zum Tod verurtheilten ¨ beltatern . . . welche . . . vor ihren Tod herrliche Buss gewu¨rket. Zu besonderem Nutz der U Gefangenen . . ., sambt ciner weiss fu¨r die seelsorger, die arme Su¨nder zu einem guten Tod anzuleiten Augsburg, . Schmidt, Franz. Das Tagebuch des Meister Franz, Scharfrichter zu Nu¨rnberg. Edited by Ju¨rgen Carl Jacobs and Heinz Ro¨lleke. Nuremberg, ; reprint, Dortmund, . [Scho¨ll, Johann Ulrich]. Abriß des Jauner und Bettelwesens in Schwaben nach Akten und andern sichern Quellen, von dem Verfasser des Konstanzer Hans. Stuttgart, . Sehling, Emil, ed. Die evangelischen Kirchordnungen des XIV. Jahrhunderts. Vol. . Tu¨bingen, . Gottlieb Sieber, Jacob. Abhandlung von den Schwierigkeiten in den Reichsta¨dten das Reichsgesetz v. . Aug.  wegen der Mißbra¨uche bey den Zu¨mften zu vollziehen. Goslar, . unpaginated preface. Stetten, Paul von. Geschichte der Heiligen Ro¨mischen Reichs Freyen Stadt Augspurg. Aus bewa¨hrten Jahrbu¨chern und tu¨chtigen Urkunden gezogen.  vols. Augsburg, –. Thomas, D. B., ed. The Book of Vagabonds and Beggars with a Vocabulary of their Language and a Preface by Martin Luther. London, . Thomasius, Christian. ‘‘Ob und wie weit Como¨dianten/Pickelheringe/ item Scharfrichtersso¨hne ad Dignitates Academicas zuzulassen; item ob das Papiermachen denenselben praejudiciere?’’ In Christian Thomasius, Ernsthaffte aber doch muntere und vernu¨nftige Thomasische Gedanken und Erinnerungen u¨ber allerhand auserlesene Juristische Ha¨ndel, vol. , pp. –. Halle, . Trauergeschichte und schro¨ckliches Lebensende des nebst vier anderen Malefikanten sub sten May  zu Augsburg durch das Schwert vom Leben zum Tod gebrachten Missethaters, Johann Woelfl. Augsburg, n.d. Valentin, Samuel. End-Urthel und Verruf Nach Kayser Caroli Vti Majesta¨t glorreicher Geda¨chtnis, Peinliche Halß-Gerichts-Ordnung verfaßt; Aller derjenigen Manns- und Weibs-Persohnen, so von Einem Hoch-Edlen und Hochweisen Rath, des H. R. Reichs Freyen Stadt Augsburg Von Anno  bis Anno  vom Leben zum Tod condemnieret und justifizieret worden . . . Augsburg, n.d. Vollkommener rechter ausfu¨hrlicher Bericht, Relation und Beschreibung des der allhiesigen heiligen Ro¨m. Reichs Kays. freyen Wahl-Cro¨nung Kauff- und Handels-Stadt Frankfurt am Mayn vorder Sanct-Gallen-Pforten oder Galgen-Thor aufgebauten Hochgerichts . . . Frankfurt, . Welser, Marcus, and Achill Pirmin Gasser. Chronica der weitberuempten Keyserlichen Freyen und deß Heiligen Reichs Statt Augspurg in Schwaben. Frankfurt a.M., . Zabuesnig, Johann Christoph von. Vortrag des Ausschusses des großen Raths in Augsburg . . . u¨ber o¨ffentliche Administrationsgebrechen . . . n.p., . Zangen, Carl Georg von. Abhandlung von der Zunftfa¨higkeit der Scha¨fer. Gießen/Marburg, . Zoepfl, H., ed. Die Peinliche Gerichtsordnung Kaiser Karls V nebst der Bamberger und Brandenburger Halsgerichtsordnung. Leipzig, . Zweyfache Glu¨ckseligkeit aus der von Rechts wegen vollzogenen Todesstrafe, in einer Sittenrede auf dem katholischen Gottesacker . . . von P. Bonaventura Lueger . . ., als einige Malefican-

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Selected bibliography ten, den  May des  Jahres zu Augsburg vom Leben zum Tode hingerichtet worden. Augsburg, n.d.

         Jahre Augsburger Stadtrecht. Ausstellungskatalog. Edited by Stadtarchiv Augsburg. Augsburg, . Abel, Wilhelm. Massenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorindustriellen Deutschland. Go¨ttingen, . Ahern, Emily M. ‘‘The power and pollution of Chinese women.’’ In Women in Chinese Society, edited by Margery Wolf and Raxane Witke (Stanford, ), pp. –. Aigner, Heribert. ‘‘Zur gesellschaftlichen Stellung von Henkern, Gladiatoren und Berufsathleten.’’ In Soziale Randgruppen und Außenseiter im Altertum, edited by Ingomar Weile, pp. –. Graz,. Althaus, Paul. ‘‘Die Todesstrafe als Problem der christlichen Ethik.’’ In Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, pp. –. Munich, . Amira, Karl von. Die Germanischen Todesstrafen. Untersuchungen zur Rechts und Religionsgeschichte. Munich, . Anderson, Emily, ed. The Letters of Mozart and his Family. London, . Angstmann, Else. Der Henker in der Volksmeinung. Seine Namen und sein Vorkommen in der ¨ berlieferung. Halle an der Saale, . mu¨ndlichen U Arie`s, Philippe. The Hour of our Death. New York, . Asad, Talal. ‘‘Notes on body pain and truth in medieval Christian ritual.’’ Economy and Society  (): –. Ave´-Lallement, Friedrich Christian Benedict. Das deutsche Gaunertum in seiner sozialpolitischen, literarischen und linguistischen Ausbildung zu seinem heutigen Bestande. Edited by Max Bauer. Vol. . Munich/Berlin, . Bader, Karl Siegfried. ‘‘Kriminelles Vagantentum im Bodenseegebiet um . Zu einer Jaunerliste des Reichenauer Obervogts Friedrich v. Hundbiss aus dem Jahre ,’’ Schweizerische Zeitschrift fu¨r Strafrecht  (): –. Bader, Karl Siegfried, and Alexander von Platen. Das große Palatinat des Hauses Fu¨rstenberg. Allenbach/Bodensee, . Baer, Wolfram. ‘‘Die Entwicklung der Stadtverfassung, –.’’ In Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Gunther Gottlieb et al., pp. –. Stuttgart, . Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World. Bloomington, . Batori, Ingrid. Die Reichsstadt Augsburg im . Jahrhundert. Verfassung, Finanzen, Reformversuche. Go¨ttingen, . ‘‘Reichssta¨dtisches Regiment, Finanzen und bu¨rgerliche Opposition.’’ In Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Gunther Gottlieb et al., pp. –. Stuttgart, . Baur, Veronika. Kleiderordnungen in Bayern vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert. Munich, . Behringer, Wolfgang. Mit dem Feuer vom Leben zum Tod. Hexengesetzgebung in Bayern. Munich, .



Selected bibliography Beneke, Otto. Von unehrlichen Leuten. Cultur-historische Studien und Geschichten. Hamburg, . Berreman, Gerald D. ‘‘Structure and function of caste systems.’’ In Japan’s Invisible Race: Caste in Culture and Personality, edited by George De Vos and Hiroshi Wagatsuma. Berkeley, . Betternha¨user, H. ‘‘Schinderhannes.’’ In Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, edited by Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, vol. , pp. –. Berlin, . ¨ bergang der Stadt an das Ko¨nigreich Bettger, Roland. Das Handwerk in Augsburg beim U Bayern. Sta¨dtisches Gewerbe unter dem Einfluss politischer Vera¨nderungen. Augsburg, . Bisle, Max. Die o¨ffentliche Armenpflege der Reichsstadt Augsburg mit Beru¨cksichtigung der einschla¨gigen Verha¨ltnisse in anderen Reichssta¨dten Su¨ddeutschlands. Paderborn, . Blaich, Fritz. Die Wirtschaftspolitik des Reichstages im Heiligen Ro¨mischen Reich. Ein Beitrag zur Problemgeschichte wirtschaftlichen Gestaltens. Stuttgart, . Blendinger, Friedrich. ‘‘Die Zunfterhebung von .’’ In Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Gunther Gottlieb et al., pp. –. Stuttgart, . Blickle, Peter. Unruhen in der sta¨ndischen Gesellschaft, –. Munich, . Bloch, Marc. The Royal Touch: Monarchy and Miracles in France and England. New York, . Bloch, Maurice and Jonathon Parry, eds. Death and the Regeneration of Life. Cambridge, . Bourdieu, Pierre. ‘‘The sentiment of honour in Kabyle society.’’ In Honour and Shame: the Values of Mediterranean Society, edited by J. G. Peristiany. Chicago, . Breuer, Stefan. ‘‘Sozialdisziplinierung. Probleme und Problemverlagerungen bei Max Weber, Gerhard Oestreich und Michel Foucault.’’ In Soziale Sicherheit und Soziale Disziplinierung. Beitra¨ge zu einer historischen Theorie der Sozialpolitik, edited by Christian Sachße and Florian Tennstedt, pp. –. Frankfurt a.M., . Broadhead, Philip. ‘‘Politics and Expedience in the Augsburg Reformation.’’ In Reformation Principle and Practice: Essays in Honor of A. G. Dickens, edited by P. N. Brooks, pp. –. London, . ‘‘Popular pressure for reform in Augsburg, –.’’ In Stadtbu¨rgertum und Adel in der Reformation, edited by Wolfgang J. Mommsen et al., pp. –. Stuttgart, . Brockbank, William. ‘‘Sovereign remedies: a critical depreciation of the th-century London pharmacopoeia.’’ Medical History  (): –. Buckley, Thomas and Alma Gottlieb, eds., Blood Magic: the Anthropology of Menstruation. Berkeley, . Buff, Adolf. ‘‘Eine Geschichte aus dem Augsburger Buchdruckerleben des vorigen Jahrhunderts.’’ Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins fu¨r Schwaben  (): –. ‘‘Verbrechen und Verbrecher in Augsburg in der zweiten Ha¨lfte des . Jahrhunderts.’’ Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins fu¨r Schwaben  (): –. Burke, Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. London, . The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy. Cambridge, . Bynum, Caroline Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York, .

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Selected bibliography Camporesi, Piero. Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe. Chicago, . The Incorruptible Flesh: Bodily Mutation and Mortification in Religion and Folklore. Cambridge, . Clasen, Claus-Peter. ‘‘Armenfu¨rsorge in Augsburg vor dem dreißigja¨hrigen Krieg.’’ Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins fu¨r Schwaben  (): –. Die Augsburger Steuerbu¨cher um . Augsburg, . Die Augsburger Weber. Leistungen und Krisen des Textilgewerbes um . Augsburg, . Cohen, Ester. The Crossroads of Justice: Law and Culture in Late Medieval France. Leiden, . Cohen, Thomas. ‘‘The lay liturgy of affront in sixteenth-century Italy.’’ Journal of Social History  (): –. Compagnoni, Francesco. ‘‘Capital punishment and torture in the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church.’’ In The Death Penalty and Torture, edited by Franz Bo¨ckle and Jacques Pohier, pp. –. New York, . Conrad, Hermann. Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte. Vol. : Fru¨hzeit und Mittelalter. Karlsruhe, . Vol. : Neuzeit bis . Karlsruhe, . Crawford, Patricia. ‘‘Attitudes to menstruation in seventeenth-century England.’’ Past and Present  (): –. Danckert, Werner. Unehrliche Leute. Die verfemten Berufe. Bern/Munich, . Danker, Uwe. Ra¨uberbanden im alten Reich um . Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte von Herrschaft und Kriminalita¨t in der fru¨hen Neuzeit. Frankfurt a.M., . Dannenfeldt, Karl H., ‘‘Egyptian mumia: the sixteenth century experience and debate.’’ Sixteenth Century Journal  (): –. Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and and other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York, . Davis, Natalie Zemon. Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford, . ‘‘Women in the crafts in sixteenth-century Lyon.’’ Feminist Studies  (): –. Dieselhorst, Ju¨rgen.‘‘Die Bestrafung der Selbstmo¨rder in der Reichsstadt Nu¨rnberg.’’ Mitteilungen des Vereins fu¨r die Geschichte der Stadt Nu¨rnberg  (): –. Dinges, Martin. ‘‘Michel Foucault, Justizphantasien, und die Macht.’’ In Mit den Waffen der Justiz. Zur Kriminalita¨tsgeschichte des spa¨ten Mittelalters und der fru¨hen Neuzeit, edited by Andreas Blauert and Gerd Schwerhoff, pp. –. Frankfurt, . ‘‘Die Ehre als Thema der historischen Anthropologie. Bemerkungen zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte und zur Konzeptualisierung’’ In Verletzte Ehre. Ehrkonflikte in Gesellschaften des Mittelalters und der fru¨hen Neuzeit, edited by Klaus Schreiner and Gerd Schwerhoff, pp. –. Cologne, . Dirr, Pius. ‘‘Augsburg in der Publizistik und Satire des . Jahrhunderts.’’ ZHVZ  (): –. Dobler, Eberhard. ‘‘Das kaiserliche Hofpfalzgrafenamt und der Briefadel im alten deutschen Reich vor  in rechtshistorischer und soziologischer Sicht.’’ Ph.D. Dissertation, Universita¨t Freiburg, . Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: an Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London, . Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology. New York, .

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Selected bibliography Duden, Barbara. The Woman beneath the Skin: a Doctor’s Patients in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Cambridge, Mass., . Du¨lmen, Richard van. Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany. Cambridge, . ‘‘Der infame Mensch. Unehrliche Arbeit und soziale Ausgrenzung in der fru¨hen Neuzeit.’’ In Arbeit, Fro¨mmigkeit und Eigensinn. Studien zur historischen Kulturforschung, edited by Richard van Du¨lmen, pp. –. Frankfurt a.M., . Frauen vor Gericht. Kindsmord in der fru¨hen Neuzeit. Frankfurt a.M., . Kultur und Alltag in der fru¨hen Neuzeit. Vol. . Munich, . Dumont, Louis. Homo Hierarchicus: the Caste System and its Implications. Chicago, . Eamon, William. ‘‘Cannibalism and contagion: framing syphilis in Counter-Reformation Italy.’’ Unpublished manuscript. Ebel, F. ‘‘Sachsenspiegel.’’ In Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, edited by Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, vol. , pp. –. Berlin, . Ecker-Offenha¨ßer, Ute. ‘‘‘Pest, Frantzosen, Scharbock’-Krankheitserfahrung und medizinischer Alltag des . Jahrhunderts im Spiegel der Werke des Augsburger Wundarztes Joseph Schmid.’’ MA thesis, Universita¨t Augsburg, . Edgerton, Samuel Y. Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance. Ithaca, . Eisenbart, Liselotte Constanze. Kleiderordnungen der deutschen Sta¨dte zwischen  und . Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte des deutschen Bu¨rgertums. Go¨ttingen, . Elias, Norbert. The History of Manners: the Civilizing Process. Vol. . New York, . Elkeles, Barbara. ‘‘Medicus und Medikaster. Zum Konflikt zwischen akademischer und ‘empirischer’ Medizin im . und fru¨hen . Jahrhundert.’’ Medizinhistorisches Journal  (): –. Endres, Rudolf. Adel in der fru¨hen Neuzeit. Munich, . Ennen, Reinald. Zu¨nfte und Wettbewerb. Cologne, . Erler, Adalbert. ‘‘Galgen.’’ In Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, edited by Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, vol. , pp. –. Berlin, . ¨ ffentlichkeit und Autorita¨t. Zur Geschichte der Hinrichtungen in Evans, Richard J. ‘‘O Deutschland von Allgemeinen Landrecht bis zum dritten Reich.’’ In Ra¨uber, Volk, und Obrigkeit. Studien zur Geschichte der Kriminalita¨t in Deutschland seit dem . Jahrhundert, edited by Heinz Reif, pp. –. Frankfurt, . Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany –. Oxford, . Fassl, Peter. ‘‘Wirtschaft, Handel und Sozialstruktur.’’ In Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Gunther Gottlieb et al., pp. –. Stuttgart, . Feile, Rudolf. ‘‘Die Gewerbegerichtsbarkeit der Freien Reichsstadt Augsburg.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Universita¨t des Saarlandes, . Ferrari, Giovanna. ‘‘Public anatomy lessons and the carneval: the anatomy theatre of Bologna.’’ Past and Present  (): –. ‘‘Fett.’’ In Handwo¨rterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, edited by Hans Ba¨chtold-Sta¨ubli, vol. , pp. –. Berlin, /. Fischer, Alfons. Geschichte des deutschen Gesundheitswesens. Vol. . Hildesheim, . Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York, .

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Selected bibliography Franc¸ois, Etienne. ‘‘Das System der Parita¨t.’’ In Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Gunther Gottlieb et al., pp. –. Stuttgart, . Die Unsichtbare Grenze. Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg, –. Sigmaringen, . Frensdorff, Ferdinand. ‘‘Das Zunftrecht insbesondere Norddeutschlands und die Handwerksehre.’’ Hansische Geschichtsbla¨tter  (): –. Friedrichs, Christopher. ‘‘Anti-Jewish politics in early modern Germany: the uprising in Worms, –,’’ Central European History  (): –. Fuhl, Beate. ‘‘Randgruppenpolitik des Schwa¨bischen Kreises im . Jahrhundert. Das Zucht- und Arbeitshaus zu Buchloe.’’ ZHVS  (): –. Ganß, Hans-Ju¨rgen. ‘‘Der Scharfrichter. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Rechts- und Kulturgeschichte.’’ Ph.D.dissertation, Universita¨t Ko¨ln, . Gebauer, Johannes Heinrich. ‘‘Die ‘Unechten’ und ‘Unehrlichen’ in der Stadt Hildesheim.’’ Archiv fu¨r Kulturgeschichte  (): –. Geremek, Bronislaw. ‘‘Criminalite´, vagabondage, paupe´risme. La marginalite´ a` l’aube des temps modernes,’’ Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine  (): –. The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris. Cambridge, . Geschichte der Armut. Elend und Barmherzigkeit in Europa. Munich, . Gernhuber, Joachim. ‘‘Strafvollzug und Unehrlichkeit.’’ Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fu¨r Rechtsgeschichte, Germanische Abteilung  (): –. Gerth, H. H. and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology New York, . Gilmore, David D. ‘‘Introduction: the shame of dishonor.’’ In Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean, edited by David D. Gilmore, pp. –. Washington, DC, . Glenzdorf, Johann, and Fritz Treichel. Henker, Schinder, und arme Su¨nder.  vols. Bad Mu¨nder am Deister, . Gordon-Grube, Karen. ‘‘Evidence of medicinal cannibalism in Puritan New England: ‘mummy’ and related remedies in Edward Taylor’s ‘dispensatory’.’’ Early American Literature  (): –. Grabner, Elfriede. ‘‘Der Mensch als Arzenei. Alpenla¨ndische Belege zu einem Ka¨rntner Schauerma¨rlein.’’ In Festgabe fu¨r Oskar Moser. Beitra¨ge zur Volkskunde Ka¨rntens. Klagenfurt, . Graus, Frantisek. ‘‘Randgruppen der sta¨dtischen Gesellschaft im Spa¨tmittelalter.’’ Zeitschrift fu¨r historische Forschung  (): –. Greyerz, Kaspar von. ‘‘Confession as a social and economic factor.’’ In Germany: a New Social and Economic History, vol. , pp. –. New York, . Grießinger. Das symbolische Kapital der Ehre. Streikbewegungen und kollektives Bewußtsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen im . Jahrhundert. Frankfurt a.M./Berlin/Vienna, . ‘‘Maurer, Dachdecker und Zimmerleute.’’ In Lexikon des alten Handwerks. Vom Spa¨tmittelalter bis ins . Jahrhundert, edited by Reinhold Reith, pp. –. Munich, . Grimm, Jacob and Wilhem Grimm. Deutsches Wo¨rterbuch. Vol. , p. . Leipzig, . Grohsmann, Lore. Geschichte der Stadt Donauwo¨rth. Vol. : Von  bis zur Gegenwart. Donauwo¨rth, .

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Selected bibliography Hampe, Theodor. Die Fahrenden Leute in der deutschen Vergangenheit. Jena, . Die Nu¨rnberger Malefizbu¨cher als Quellen der reichsta¨dtischen Sittengeschichte vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert. Bamberg, . Hartung, Wolfgang. Die Spielleute. Eine Randgruppe in der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters. Wiesbaden, . Hefele, Carl Josef. Conciliengeschichte. Nach den Quellen bearbeitet. Vol. . Freiburg, . Heigel, K. Th. ‘‘Einleitung.’’ In Chroniken der deutschen Sta¨dte vom . bis ins . Jahrhundert, vol. . Edited by the Historische Commission bei der Ko¨niglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, pp. –. Leipzig, . Heinemann, Franz. ‘‘Die Henker als Volks- und Vieha¨rzte seit Ausgang des Mittelalters.’’ Schweizerisches Archiv fu¨r Volkskunde  (): –. Hentig, Hans von. ‘‘Der geha¨ngte Henker. Eine criminalhistorische Studie.’’ Schweizerische Zeitschrift fu¨r Strafrecht  (): –. Vom Ursprung der Henkersmahlzeit. Tu¨bingen, . ‘‘Zur Genealogie des Scharfrichters.’’ Schweizerische Zeitschrift fu¨r Strafrecht  (): –. Hermann, Conrad. Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte.  vols. Karlsruhe, –. Herzog, Markwart. ‘‘Scharfrichterliche Medizin. Zu den Beziehungen zwischen Henker und Arzt, Schafott und Medizin.’’ Medizinhistorisches Journal  (): –. Heusler, Andreas. Institutionen des deutschen Privatrechts. Vol. . Leipzig, . ‘‘Hingerichteter, Armsu¨nder, Hinrichtung.’’ In Handwo¨rterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, edited by Hans Ba¨chtold-Sta¨ubli, vol. , pp. –. Berlin/Leipzig, –. Hinkeldey, C. Justiz in Alter Zeit. Rothenburg o.d.T, . Hinschius, Paul. System des Katholischen Kirchenrechts mit besonderer Ru¨cksicht auf Deutschland. Vol. . Graz, . His, Rudolf. Das Strafrecht des deutschen Mittelalters. Vol. . Aaalen, . Hoffmann, Carl A. ‘‘Strukturen und Quellen des Augsburger reichssta¨dtischen Strafgerichtswesens in der ersten Ha¨lfte des . Jahrhunderts,’’ ZHVS  (): –. Hoffmann, Robert. ‘‘Die Augsburger Ba¨der und das Handwerk der Bader.’’ ZHVS  (): –. Hornberger, Theodor. Der Scha¨fer. Landes- und volkskundliche Bedeutung eines Berufsstandes in Su¨ddeutschland. Stuttgart, . Hovorka, Oskar von and Adolf Kronfeld. Vergleichende Volksmedizin. Eine Darstellung volksmedizinischer Sitten und Gebra¨uche. Vol. . Stuttgart, . Hsia, R. Po-Chia. Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe –. London/ New York, . The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany. New Haven, . Hughes, Diane Owen. ‘‘Distinguishing signs: ear-rings, Jews, and Franciscan rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance city,’’ Past and Present  (): –. Hull, Isabel. Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, –. Cornell, . Huntington, Richard and Peter Metcalf. Celebrations of Death: the Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual. Cambridge, . Hupp, Otto. Scheltbriefe und Schandbilder. Ein Rechtubehelf aus dem . und . Jahrhundert. Munich, . Ingram, Martin. ‘‘Ridings, rough music and mocking rhymes in early modern England.’’ In

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Selected bibliography Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, edited by Barry Reah, pp. –. New York, . Irsigler, Franz, and Arnold Lasotta. Bettler und Gaukler, Dirnen und Henker. Außenseiter in einer mittelalterlichen Stadt. Ko¨ln, –. Munich, nd edn., . Jacobeit, Werner. Schafhaltung und Scha¨fer in Zentraleuropa bis zum Beginn des . Jahrhunderts. Berlin, . Jahn, Georg. Zur Gewerbepolitik der deutschen Landesfu¨rsten vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert. Leipzig, . Jahn, Joachim. ‘‘Die Augsburger Sozialstruktur im . Jahrhundert.’’ In Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Gunther Gottlieb et al., pp. –. Stuttgart, . Ju¨tte, Robert. A¨rzte, Heiler, und Patienten. Medizinischer Alltag in der fru¨hen Neuzeit Munich, . ‘‘Stigma-Symbole. Kleidung als identita¨tsstiftendes Merkmal bei spa¨tmittelalterlichen und fru¨hneuzeitlichen Randgruppen (Juden, Dirnen, Aussa¨tzige, Bettler).’’ Saeculum  (): –. Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, . ‘‘Contacts at the bedside: Jewish physicians and their Christian patients.’’ In In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish–Gentile Relations in Late-Medieval and Early Modern Germany, edited by R. Po-Chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehmann, pp. –. Cambridge, . Karant-Nunn, Susan. The Reformation of Ritual: an Interpretation of Early Modern Germany. London, . Kaufhold, Karl Heinrich. Das Handwerk der Stadt Hildesheim im . Jahrhundert. Eine wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Studie. Go¨ttingen, . Kellenbenz, Hermann. ‘‘Wirtschaftsleben der Blu¨tezeit.’’ In Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Gunther Gottlieb et al., pp. –. Stuttgart, . Keller, Albrecht. Der Scharfrichter in der deutschen Kulturgeschichte. Bonn/Leipzig, ; Hildesheim, reprint . Keller, Hiltgrad. Reclams Lexikon der Heiligen und der biblischen Gestalten. Legende und Darstellung in der bildenden Kunst. Stuttgart, . Kießling, Rolf. ‘‘Augsburgs Wirtschaft im . und . Jahrhundert.’’ In Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Gunther Gottlieb et al., pp. –. Stuttgart, . ‘‘Territorial Hoheit.’’ In Augsburger Stadtlexikon. Geschichte, Gesellschaft, Kultur, Recht, Wirtschaft, edited by Wolfram Baer et al., pp. –. Augsburg, . Klenz, Heinrich. Scheltenwo¨rterbuch. Die Berufs- und besonders Handwerksschelten und Verwandtes. Strasbourg, . Kramer, Karl-Sigismund. ‘‘Bußen vertrinken.’’ In Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, edited by Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, vol. , p. . Berlin, . ‘‘Ehrliche/Unehrliche Gewerbe.’’ In Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, edited by Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, vol. , pp. –. Berlin, . Grundriß einer rechtlichen Volkskunde. Go¨ttingen, . ‘‘Hohnsprake, Wrakworte, Nachschnak und Ungebu¨r. Ehrenha¨ndel in holssteinischen Quellen.’’ Kieler Bla¨tter zur Volkskunde  (): –.

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Selected bibliography Kunze, Michael. Highroad to the Stake: a Tale of Witchcraft. Chicago, . Kuschbert, Paul. Deutsche Scharfrichter-Sippen. Cologne, . Ku¨ther, Carsten. Menschen auf der Straße. Vagierende Unterschichten in Bayern, Franken und Schwaben in der zweiten Ha¨lfte des . Jahrhunderts. Go¨ttingen, . La¨mmert, G. Volksmedizin und Medizinischer Aberglaube in Bayern. Wu¨rzburg, . Langbein, John H. Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Re´gime. Chicago, . Laqueur, Thomas W. ‘‘Crowds, carneval and the state in English executions, –.’’ In The First Modern Society, edited by A. L. Beier, David Cannadine, James M. Resenheim, pp. –. Cambridge, . Larner, Christina. Enemies of God: the Witch-hunt in Scotland. London, . Lederer, David. ‘‘Aufruhr auf dem Friedhof. Pfarrer, Gemeinde und Selbstmord im fru¨hneuzeitlichen Bayern.’’ In Trauer, Verzweiflung, Anfechtung. Selbsmord und Selbstmordversuche in mittelalterlichen und fru¨hneuzeitlichen Gesellschaften, edited by Gabriela Signori, pp. –. Tu¨bingen, . ‘‘The dishonorable dead: perceptions of suicide in early modern Germany.’’ In Ehrkonzepte in der fru¨hen Neuzeit. Identita¨ten und Ausgrenzungen, edited by Sybille Backman, Hans-Jo¨rg Ku¨nast, Sabine Ullmann, and B. Ann Tlusty, pp. –. Berlin, . Lenhardt, Heinz. ‘‘Feste und Feiern des Frankfurter Handwerks.’’ Archiv fu¨r Frankfurts Geschichte und Kunst. Fu¨nfte Folge,  (): –. Levack, Brian. The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe. London, . Liedke, Volker. ‘‘Scharfrichter in Bayern.’’ Bla¨tter des Bayerischen Vereins fu¨r Familienkunde  (): –. Liedl, Eugen. Gerichtsverfassung und Zivilprozeß der freien Reichsstadt Augsburg. Augsburg, . Lindemann, Mary. Health and Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Baltimore/London, . Linebaugh, Peter. ‘‘The Tyburn riot against the surgeons.’’ In Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, edited by Douglas Hay et al. New York, . Lingo, Alison K. ‘‘Empirics and charlatans in early modern France: the genesis of the classification of the ‘Other’ in medical practice.’’ Journal of Social History  (): –. ¨ ber das Abdecker–wesen und die Folgen seiner Aufhebung. Die Arkana, Lux, M. J. J. W. U sympathischen Kuren und die geheime Sprache der Scharfrichter und Abdecker. Leipzig, . Lyncker, Karl. Deutsche Sagen und Sitten in hessischen Gauen. Cassel, . MacDonald, Michael and Terence Murphy, Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England. Oxford, . Maehnert, Carsten. ‘‘Metzger.’’ In Lexikon des alten Handwerks. Vom Spa¨tmittelalter bis ins . Jahrhundert, edited by Reinhold Reith, pp. –. Munich, . Marschall, D. ‘‘Ha¨ngen.’’ In Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, edited by Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, vol. , pp. –. Berlin, . Maschke, Erich. ‘‘Die Unterschichten der mittelalterlichen Sta¨dte Deutschlands.’’ In Gesellschaftliche Unterschichten in Su¨dwestdeutschen Sta¨dten, edited by Erich Maschke

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Selected bibliography and Ju¨rgen Sydow, pp. –. Stuttgart, . Mating-Sammler, Alfred. Kampf der Kursa¨chsischen Leineweber um die Ehrlichkeit ihres Handwerks. Beigabe zum Programm der Realschule in Rochlitz. Rochlitz, . Mayer, Adrian C. ‘‘Caste: the Indian caste system.’’ In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol.  (): –. Mellinkoff, Ruth. Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages. Vol. . Berkeley, . Merzbacher, F. ‘‘Infamie.’’ In Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, edited by Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, vol. , pp. –. Berlin, . ‘‘Legitimation durch nachfolgende Ehe.’’ In Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, edited by Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, vol. , pp. –. Berlin, . Messerich, Richard. Die Levis Notae Macula der deutschen Scharfrichter. Greifswald, . Mitterauer, Michael. ‘‘Zur familienbetrieblichen Struktur im zu¨nftischen Handwerk.’’ In Wirtschafts- und sozialhistorische Beitra¨ge. Festschrift fu¨r Alfred Hoffmann zum . Geburtstag, edited by Herbert Knittler, pp. –. Munich, . Moeller, Bernd. Imperial Cities and the Reformation. Philadelphia, . Moore, R. I. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, –. Cambridge, . Mo¨rke, Olaf. ‘‘Die Fugger in . Jahrhundert. Sta¨dtische Elite oder Sonderstruktur?’’ Archiv fu¨r Reformationsgeschichte  (): –. Mo¨rke, Olaf, and Katarina Sieh. ‘‘Gesellschaftliche Fu¨hrungsgruppen.’’ In Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Gunther Gottlieb et al., pp. –. Stuttgart, . Morsak, Louis. ‘‘Aus dem Rechtsleben bayerischer Wallfahrten.’’ In Forschungen zur Rechtsarcha¨ologie und rechtlichen Volkskunde, edited by Louis Carlen. Zurich, . Mousnier, Roland. ‘‘Les concepts d’‘ordres,’ d’‘e´tats,’ de ‘fidelite´’ et de ‘monarchie absolue’ en France de la fin du XVe sie`cle a` la fin du XVIe.’’ Revue Historique  (): –. Muchembled, Robert. Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, –. Baton Rouge, . Mu¨nch, Paul. ‘‘Grundwerte in der fru¨hneuzeitlichen Sta¨ndegesellschaft? Aufriß einer vernachla¨ssigten Thematik.’’ In Sta¨ndische Gesellschaft und soziale Mobilita¨t, edited by Winfried Schulze, pp. –. Munich, . Nicoli, Ottavia. ‘‘‘Menstruum Quasi Monstruum’: monstrous births and menstrual taboo in the sixteenth century.’’ In Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective, edited by Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, pp. –. Baltimore, . Nowosadtko, Jutta. ‘‘Ehre in sta¨ndischer Gemeinschaft und moderner Gesellschaft.’’ In Soziologie der Ehre, Kurseinheit , edited by Fernuniversita¨t – Gesamthochschule – in Hagen, pp. –. Hagen, . ‘‘Scharfrichter’ – ‘Hangman.’ Zwei Soziokulturelle Varianten im Umgang mit dem Vollzug der Todesstrafe.’’ Archiv fu¨r Kulturgeschichte  (): –. ‘‘Wer Leben nimmt kann auch Leben geben – Scharfrichter und Wasenmeister als Heilkundige in der fru¨hen Neuzeit.’’ Medizin, Gesellschaft, und Geschichte  (): –.

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Selected bibliography Scharfrichter und Abdecker. Der Alltag zweier ‘‘unehrlicher Berufe’’ in der Fru¨hen Neuzeit. Paderborn, . Oestreich, Gerhard. ‘‘Strukturprobleme des europa¨ischen Absolutismus.’’ In Gerhard Oestreich, Geist und Gestalt des fru¨hmodernen Staates. Berlin, . Ooms, Herman. Tokugawa Village Practice: Class, Status, Power, Law. Berkeley, . Oppelt, Wolfgang. ‘‘Die Verlegung des Ansbacher Galgens .’’ Ansbach, Gestern und Heute  (): –;  (): –. ¨ ber die ‘‘Unehrlichkeit’’ des Scharfrichters. Unter bevorzugter Verwendung von Ansbacher U Quellen. Lengfeld, . Pagden, Anthony. The Fall of Natural Man: the American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology. Cambridge, . Park, Katherine. ‘‘The criminal and the saintly body: autopsy and dissection in Renaissance Italy.’’ Renaissance Quarterly  (): –. Pasing, Andreas. ‘‘Mu¨ller. Ein Verarbeitungsgewerbe als Zielscheibe der Volksha¨me, der Kundenkritik und Zunftpolitik.’’ In Randgruppen der spa¨tmittlealterlichen Gesellschaft, edited by Bernd-Ulrich Hergemo¨ller, pp. –. Warendorf, nd rev. edn., , Peacock, Mabel. ‘‘Executed criminals and folk-medicine.’’ Folk-Lore  (): –. Peristiany, J. G. ‘‘Introduction.’’ In Honor and Shame: the Values of Mediterranean Society, edited by J. G. Peristiany, pp. –. Chicago, . Peters, Edward. Torture. New York, . Pitt-Rivers, Julian. The Fate of the Sichem or the Politics of Sex. Essays in the Anthropology of the Sichem. Cambridge, . Po¨lnitz, Go¨tz Freiherr von. Die Fugger. Frankfurt a.M., . Pouchelle, Marie-Christine, The Body and Surgery in the Middle Ages. Oxford, . Price, John. ‘‘A history of the outcast: untouchability in Japan.’’ In Japan’s Invisible Race: Caste in Culture and Personality, edited by George De Vos and Hiroshi Wagatsuma. Berkeley, . Quataert, Jean H. ‘‘The shaping of women’s work in manufacturing: guilds, household and the state in central Europe, –.’’ American Historical Review  (): – . Radbruch, Gustav. ‘‘Ars Moriendi. Scharfrichter – Seelsorger – Armersu¨nder – Volk.’’ In Gustav Radbruch, Elegantiae Juris Criminalis. Vierzehn Studien zur Geschichte des Strafrechts. Basel, . Raeff, Marc. The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, –. New Haven, . Rajkay, Barbara. ‘‘Die Bevo¨lkerungsentwicklung von  bis .’’ In Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Gunther Gottlieb et al., pp. –. Stuttgart, . Reininghaus, Wilfried. Entstehung der Gesellengilden im Spa¨tmittelalter. Wiesbaden, . ‘‘Fru¨hformen der Gesellengilden in Augsburg im . Jahrhundert.’’ ZHVS  (): –. Rieber, Albrecht. ‘‘Das Patriziat von Ulm, Augsburg, Ravensburg, Memmingen und Biberach.’’ In Deutsches Patriziat, –, edited by Helmuth Ro¨ssler, pp. –. Limburg, .

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Selected bibliography Roeck, Bernd. ‘‘Geistiges Leben –,’’ In Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg von der Ro¨merzeit bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Gunther Gottlieb et al., pp. –. Stuttgart, . Ba¨cker, Brot und Getreide in Augsburg. Zur Geschichte des Ba¨ckerhandwerks und zur Versorgungspolitik der Reichsstadt im Zeitalter des Dreißigja¨hrigen Krieges. Sigmaringen, . ‘‘Christlicher Idealstaat und Hexenwahn. Zum Ende der Europa¨ischen Verfolgungen.’’ Historisches Jahrbuch  (): –. Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden. Studien zur Geschichte der Reichsstadt Augsburg zwischen Kalenderstreit und Parita¨t.  vols. Go¨ttingen, . Außenseiter, Randgruppen, Minderheiten. Fremde im Deutschland der fru¨hen Neuzeit. Go¨ttingen, . Rogge, Jo¨rg. Fu¨r den Gemeinen Nutzen. Politisches Handeln und Politikversta¨ndnis von Rat und Bu¨rgerschaft in Augsburg im Spa¨tmittelalter. Tu¨bingen, . Roper, Lyndal. ‘‘‘Going to church and street:’ weddings in Reformation Augsburg.’’ Past and Present  (): –. ‘‘‘The common man’, ‘the common good’, ‘common women’: gender and meaning in the German Reformation commune.’’ Social History  (): –. The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg. Oxford, . Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe. London/New York, . Rublack, Hans Christoph. ‘‘Political and social norms in urban communities in the Holy Roman empire.’’ In Religion, Politics, and Social Protest: Three Studies on Early Modern Germany, edited by Kaspar von Greyerz, pp. –. London, . Sabean, David Warren. Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany. Cambridge, . Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, –. Cambridge, . ‘‘Soziale Distanzierungen. Ritualisierte Gestik in deutscher bu¨rokratischer Prosa der fru¨hen Neuzeit.’’ Historische Anthropologie  (): –. Sachße, Christian, and Florian Tennsted. ‘‘Sicherheit und Disziplin. Eine Skizze zur Einfu¨hrung.’’ In Soziale Sicherheit und Soziale Disziplinierung. Beitra¨ge zu einer historischen Theorie der Sozialpolitik edited by Christian Sachße and Florian Tennstedt, pp. –. Frankfurt a.M., . Schattenhofer, Michael. ‘‘Hexen, Huren, und Henker.’’ Oberbayerisches Archiv  (): –. Schild, Wolfgang. Alte Gerichtsbarkeit. Vom Gottesurteil bis zum Beginn der modernen Rechtsprechung. Munich, . Schmidt, Eberhard. Einfu¨hrung in die Geschichte der deutschen Strafrechtspflege. Go¨ttingen, . Schmidt, Rolf. ‘‘Zum Augsburger Stadtbuch von .’’ Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins fu¨r Schwaben  (): –. ¨ berlegungen zu einem Schreiner, Klaus and Gerd Schwerhoff, ‘‘Verletzte Ehre. U Forschungskonzept.’’ In Verletzte Ehre. Ehrkonflikte in Gesellschaften des Mittelalters und der fru¨hen Neuzeit, edited by Klaus Schreiner and Gerd Schwerhoff, pp. –. Cologne, .

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Selected bibliography Schubart-Fikentscher, Gertrud. Die Unehelichen Frage in der Fru¨hzeit der Aufkla¨rung. Berlin, . Schubert, Ernst. Arme Leute, Bettler und Gauner im Franken des . Jahrhunderts. Neustadt an der Aisch, . ‘‘Randgruppen in der Schwankliteratur des . Jahrhunderts.’’ In Sta¨dtische Randgruppen und Minderheiten, edited by Bernhard Kirchga¨ssner and Fritz Reuter, pp. –. Sigmaringen, . Schuhmann, Helmut. Der Scharfrichter. Seine Gestalt – Seine Funktion. Kempten, . Schulz, Knut. Handwerksgesellen und Lohnarbeiter. Untersuchungen zur oberrheinischen und oberdeutschen Stadtgeschichte des . bis . Jahrhunderts. Sigmaringen, . Schulze, Winfried. ‘‘Gerhard Oestreichs Begriff ‘Sozialdisziplinierung in der fru¨hen Neuzeit’.’’ Zeitschrift fu¨r historische Forschung  (): –. Schuster, Beate. Die freien Frauen. Dirnen und Frauenha¨user im . und . Jahrhundert. Frankfurt a.M, . Schwerhoff, Gerd. Ko¨ln im Kreuzverho¨r. Kriminalita¨t, Herrschaft und Gesellschaft in einer fru¨hneuzeitlichen Stadt. Bonn, . ‘‘Verordnete Schande? Spa¨tmittelalterliche und fru¨hneuzeitliche Ehrenstrafen zwischen Rechtsakt und sozialer Sanktion.’’ In Mit den Waffen der Justiz. Zur Kriminalita¨tsgeschichte des spa¨ten Mittelalters und der fru¨hen Neuzeit, edited by Andreas Blauert and Gerd Schwerhoff, pp. –. Frankfurt a.M., . Scribner, Robert W. ‘‘Elements of popular belief,’’ Handbook of European History, – , ed. Thomas A. Brady, Heiko A. Oberman, and James Tracy, vol. , pp. –. Leiden, . Sewell, William H. ‘‘Etat, corps, and order: some notes on the social vocabulary of the French Old Regime.’’ In Sozialgeschichte Heute. Festschrift fu¨r Hans Rosenberg zum . Geburtstag, edited by Hans Ulrich Wehler, pp. –. Go¨ttingen, . Sieh-Burens, Katarina. ‘‘Die Augsburger Stadtverfassung um .’’ ZHVS  (): –. Soliday, Gerald Lyman. A Community in Conflict: Frankfurt Society in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries. Hanover, New Hampshire, . Spierenburg, Pieter. The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and their Inmates in Early Modern Europe. New Brunswick/London, . Sprandel, Rolf. ‘‘Die Diskriminierung der unehelichen Kinder im Mittelalter.’’ In Zur Sozialgeschichte der Kindheit, edited by Jochen Martin and August Nitschke, pp. – . Munich, . Strack, Hermann L., Das Blut im Glauben und Aberglauben der Menschheit. Munich, . Stu¨rmer, Michael, ed. Herbst des alten Handwerks. Zur Sozialgeschichte des . Jahrhunderts. Munich, . Stu¨rzbecher, Manfred. ‘‘Johann Valentin Deusser, Scharfrichter und Chirurg.’’ Deutsches Medizinisches Journal  (): –. Thamer, Hans-Ulrich. ‘‘On the use and abuse of handicraft: journeyman culture and enlightened public opinion in th and th century Germany.’’ In Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, edited by Steven L. Kaplan, pp. –. Berlin, . Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York, .

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Selected bibliography Tille, Armin. ‘‘Zur Ehrlichmachung der sa¨chsischen Leineweber.’’ Neues Archiv fu¨r sa¨chsische Geschichte und Altertumskunde  (): –. Tlusty, B. Ann. ‘‘Das ehrliche Verbrechen. Die Kontrolle des Trinkens in Augsburg in der fru¨hen Neuzeit.’’ ZHVS,  (): –. ‘‘The devil’s altar: the tavern and society in early modern Augsburg.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, . Trusen, W. ‘‘Schwabenspiegel.’’ In Handwo¨rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, edited by Adalbert Erler and Ekkehardt Kaufmann, vol. , pp. –. Berlin, . Usener, F. P. Beitra¨ge zu der Geschichte der Ritterburgen und Bergschlo¨sser in der Umgegend von Frankfurt a.M. Frankfurt, . Vann, James Allen. The Swabian Kreis: Institutional Growth in the Holy Roman Empire, –. Brussels, . Voß, Gu¨nter. ‘‘Henker, Tabugestalt und Su¨ndenbock.’’ In Randgruppen in der spa¨tmittelalterlichen Gesellschaft, edited by Bernd-Ulrich Hergemo¨ller, pp. –. Warendorf, . Wagner, Roy. ‘‘Taboo,’’ Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade, vol. , pp. – . New York, . Walker, Mack. German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, –. Ithaca/London, . von Weichs, Engelhardt Freiherr. Studien zum Handwerkerrecht des ausgehenden . Jahrhunderts unter besonderer Beru¨cksichtigung der Schriften von Adrian Beier. Stuttgart, . Wesoly, Kurt. Lehrlinge und Handwerksgesellen am Mittelrhein. Ihre soziale Lage und ihre Organisation vom . bis ins . Jahrhundert. Frankfurt a.M., . Wiedemann, Alfred. ‘‘Mumie als Heilmittel.’’ Zeitschrift des Vereins fu¨r rheinische und westfa¨lische Volkskunde  (): –. Wiesner, Merry. Working Women in Renaissance Germany. New Brunswick, . ‘‘Guilds, male bonding and women’s work in early modern Germany,’’ Gender and History  (): –. ‘‘The midwives of south Germany and the public/private dichotomy.’’ In The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe, edited by Hilary Marland. London, . Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, . Wiest, Ekkehard. Die Entwicklung des Nu¨rnberger Gewerbes zwischen –. Stuttgart, . Wilbertz, Giesela. ‘‘Das Notizbuch des Scharfrichters Johann Christian Zippel in Stade (–).’’ Stader Jahrbuch, N.F.  (): –. ‘‘Standesehre und Handwerkskunst. Zur Berufsideologie des Scharfrichters.’’ Archiv fu¨r Kulturgeschichte  (): –. Scharfrichter und Abdecker im Hochstift Osnabru¨ck. Untersuchungen zur Sozialgeschichte zweier ‘‘unehrlicher’’ Berufe in nordwestdeutschen Raum vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert. Osnabru¨ck, . ‘‘Scharfrichter und Abdecker. Zur Sozialgeschichte zweier ‘unehrlicher’ Berufe im nordwestdeutschen Raum vom . bis zum . Jahrhundert.’’ Unser Bocholt. Zeitschrift fu¨r Kultur und Heimatpflege  (): –. ‘‘Fremde in der Stadt. Herkunft und soziale Beziehungen der Halbmeister (Abdecker) in

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Selected bibliography Quakenburg.’’ In Quakenburg. Von der Grenzfestung zum Gewerbezentrum, edited by Horst-Ru¨diger Jarck, pp. –. Quackenburg, . Wissell, Rudolf. Des Alten Handwerks Recht und Gewohnheit.  vols. Edited by Ernst Schraepler. Berlin, –. Wunder, Heide. ‘‘Er ist die Sonn, sie ist der Mond.’’ Frauen in der fru¨hen Neuzeit. Munich, . Zorn, Wolfgang. Augsburg: Geschichte einer deutschen Stadt. Augsburg, . Zunkel, Friedrich. ‘‘Ehre, Reputation.’’ In Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, edited by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reiner Kosselleck, vol. , pp. –. Stuttgart, .



Index absolutism, , , , ,  Achtbuch, – actors, , – Amira, Karl von,  Anhauser, Andreas, –, –, , , , , ,  anti-semitism,  Aquinas, St. Thomas,  Armsu¨nderfett, see poor sinner’s fat artisans, see guildsmen Augsburg Caroline reform,  constitution, , , ,  free imperial city, ,  population, ,  social structure, , , – Augustine, St., , , ,  Bab, Maria,  Bach, Anna,  Bach, Johannes,  bailiffs, , , , –, –, – Bair, Hans,  bakers,  barber-surgeons, , , –,  bastards, see illegitimacy bathmasters, , , –,  Bauer, Hans,  Bausch, Hans,  beadles, , , , –, – Becher, Johann Joachim,  Becker, Daniel,  beggars, –, , ,  begging ordinances,  Behem, Caspar, , , ,  Beisitz, see residency Beneke, Otto, 

Berreman, Gerald,  Berthold, of Regensburg,  Bez, Caspar,  Biberer, Thomas, , ,  birth certificates, , – Bloch, Marc,  Bo¨hm, Barbara, – bookbinders, ,  Bourdieu, Pierre, ,  Boyle, Robert,  brothel-keepers, – brothels, – Burakumin,  Bu¨rgerrecht, see citizenship Burke, Peter,  butchers, , , , , ,  Calvin, John,  cameralism,  Camporesi, Piero,  cannibalism, – canon law, ,  capital punishment, , , –, – carnifex, ,  carpenters, –,  charivaris,  Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, , ,  churching,  citizenship, , , , , , , , – Civic Code of Augsburg, see Stadtrecht civilizing process, the,  clergy, , –, , , – clothing, identifying, see stigma symbols clothing ordinances, –,  Coblentz, Martin,  Collegium Medicum, , , ,  commission, imperial , 



Index common weal, the, , ,  commune, , ,  Communion, exclusion from, , , ,  community, , , ,  confessionalization, , , , , –, –,  Constitutio Criminalis Bambergensis, ,  Constitutio Criminalis Carolina,  corporate society, see society of orders Counter-Reformation, the, , ,  Crafft, Hans,  criminal, condemned, the, ,  absolution of, ,  cadaver, , ,  last meal,  preparation for execution, – sanctification, – see also executions, execution rituals; poor sinner criminal justice, , , – accusatorial procedure, – division of labor in administration of, , – inquisitorial procedure,  criminal punishments, , , –, – customs officers,  Danker, Uwe, ,  Dankert, Werner,  Darton, Robert,  Da¨ubler, Marx,  Davis, Natalie Zemon,  day-laborers,  Decretum Gratiani,  degradation rituals, –, –, ; see also honor punishments Deibler, Barbara, – Deibler, Hans, , , – Deibler, Maria Elisabeth,  Deibler, Michael, , , ,  deviance, –,  dishonor conflicts, , , , – attempts to contain, , ,  criteria of, – expansion of, – heredity of, , , –,  legal theory of, – medieval, –

origins of, – secular understanding of, , , , –, – dishonorable people, – legislation on, – number of, –, – rehabilitation of, – see also bathmasters; bailiffs; beadles; executioners; grave-diggers; linen-weavers; millers; night-kings; shepherds; skinners Dismas, St., ,  dissections, – Do¨pler, Paul,  Douglas, Mary, , ,  Duden, Barbara, ,  dungeon guards,  Eberwein, Martin,  Eder, Leonard,  Eisenbarth, Martin, – Elias, Norbert,  Elsesser, Joachim,  embroiderers,  empirics, – endliche Rechtstag, see final day of justice Enlightenment, the, impact of, , , , – epilepsy, –, – Ettlin, Conrad,  Eucharist, ,  Evans, Richard,  execution pamphlets, , – execution rates, – execution rituals, , –, –; see also final day of justice executioners burial of, , , –,  confession of, – economic status, – endogamy, – exclusion from citizenship, –, – exclusion from guilds, , – masterpieces of, –, , ,  office of, –, – polluting touch, , –, ,  professional caste, ,  relations with skinners, –



Index social interaction with, , , –, , – social networks, – spiritual state of, –, – vagrancy and crime of, – see also prostitutes; stigma symbols executions, , – beheadings, , , , , , , , , , , , –, ,  hangings, , , , , , ,  Fahner, Johann Michael,  Feinler, Thomas,  Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, ,  final day of justice,  filth, – first aid practices,  fishermen, –, –, – Forssdorfer, Wolf, – Franc¸ois, Etienne,  Frank, Anthoni,  Frank, Hans Jerg, , – Frank, Tobias, –, – Frankfurt, , , , , , – Frederick I, King of Prussia,  Frederick II, King of Prussia,  free imperial cities, , , – free status, ,  Freitag, Hans,  Friedrich, Johann,  Fru¨holz, Michael,  Fugger family, ,  Gaisser, Barthlme,  Gaisser, Hans, the Elder, – Gaisser, Hans, the Younger, , – gallows, , ,  gallows-building rituals, –, – Gassner, Christoph,  Geiger, Balthasar, ,  Geiger, Georg,  Geißler, Franz Anthoni,  Geißler, Hans, –, – Gemeinde, see community gender, , , , –; see also sexual division of labor; pollution, female Germanic law,  Gernhuber, Joachim, 

Gerstecker, Augustin, , ,  Giese, Augustus,  Glanz, Jacob,  glaziers, , , ,  goldsmiths, , , – Graus, Franticek,  grave-diggers, , , , ,  Grießinger, Andreas,  Gru¨ner, Christian Gottfried,  guild revolt, – guilds, –, , , , –, – guildsmen, –, , , – gypsies, , , ,  Habnits, see have-nots Halmberger, Franz Antoni, –,  Hartmann, Anna Catherina,  Hartmann, Johann Adam, , , , , –, – Hartmann, Maria Barbara,  Hartmann, Marx Philipp, , , , –, , , , , , , – Hartmann, Matheus, ,  Hartmann, Susanna, – Ha¨userer, Tobias, – have-nots,  Hefelin, Anthoni,  heretics,  Herren- und Bu¨rgerstube, – Herrschaft, , ; see also sovereigny; lordship Hirschfeld, Balthasar, ,  Hoffman, Johann Georg,  Ho¨gt, Jacob Otto, – Holy Roman emperor, –, , , , –,  Holy Roman empire, , , , ,  honor, –, –, –, , , , , , , , , –, –, –, – honor punishments, , , –, – see also degradation rituals Ho¨zl, Hans, , , ,  Hsia, R. Po-Chia, ,  Huss, Karl,  Hu¨ttling, Christoph, – Hu¨ttling, Georg,  illegitimacy, , , , , –



Index imperial law, –, , –; see also police ordinances improvers of society, see Mehrer der Gesellschaft infamia juris, see infamy infamy, , , , – insults, –; see also pasquills irregularity,  Jews, –, , –, , , –, , ,  journeymen, ,  enforcers of artisanal honor, , – organizations of, , – strikes, , , , –,  Justi, Johann Heinrich Gottlob von, ,  Ju¨tte, Robert,  Kaufleutestube,  Keck, Samuel, , , – Kimicher, Barbara,  Klugheimer, Joseph, – Ko¨lderer, Georg,  Kopp, Hans,  Kromer, Martin,  latrine-cleaners, see night-king and night-workers legitimate birth, , ,  legitimations, –, , –, – Leichnam, Barbara, –, –, ,  Leichnam, Christoph,  Leichnam, Dietrich,  Leichnam, Georg, – Leichnam, Hans,  Leichnam, Martin, the Elder, , ,  Leichnam, Martin, the Younger,  Leichnam, Michael, –,  Leimer, Johann Georg,  Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor,  lepers, ,  Leser, Hans,  levis notae macula,  Liber Vagatorum,  linen-weavers, , , –, –, – Lingo, Alison,  lords’ drinking hall, see Herren- und Bu¨rgerstube

lordship, ,  Ludwig, Hans,  Luther, Martin, ,  Luz, Hans, , ,  magic, –, ; see also witchcraft Mair, Christoph,  Malsch, Veit,  marriages, cross-confessional, –, – Maurer, Hans,  Mauss, Marcel,  Mayr, Melchior,  medical practice of executioners, – competition with licenced practitioners, – criminalization of, – healing touch,  human raw materials, –, , – latency of dishonor, ,  patients, – skinners’ practice, , – and upward social mobility, – wives’ practice,  medical practitioners, –,  Medicus Microcosmus,  Mehrer der Gesellschaft, ,  Mellinkoff, Ruth,  menstrual taboo, – mercantilism,  merchants, ,  Metz, Barbara, , , ,  Metz, Dietrich, , , –, , ,  Metz, Maria,  midwives, , , , ,  millers, , , , , , , , –, , – minstrels,  Mirror of the Saxons, see Sachsenspiegel Mirror of the Swabians, see Schwabenspiegel Moore, R. I.,  Mozart, Franz, –, ,  Mozart, Hans Georg, –, ,  Mozart, Leopold,  Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, – Muchembled, Robert,  mummy, , ,  Nadler, Leonard, 



Index natural law, –,  Nicolai, Friedrich, ,  night-kings and night-workers, , , , , , – norms, political, –, – Nowosadtko, Jutta,  Obrigkeit,  Oestreich, Gerhard, ,  outlaws, see rechtlose lewte pain, attitudes towards,  palatine counts, , ,  Paracelsus,  Pare´, Ambroise,  pariahs in India, , – in Japan, – parity, confessional, , ,  pasquills, , ,  patricians, , , , –, , , ,  conservatism, – marriage strategies, ,  nepotism, ,  as ruling class, –, , , – see also Herren- und Bu¨rgerstube Paulani, Christian Franz,  peasants, , , , – pillory, , – police ordinances, , –, –, –, ; see also imperial law Pompanazzi, Pietro,  poor sinner, the, see criminal, condemned poor sinner’s blood, – poor sinner’s fat,  poverty, –, –, , ; see also beggars Preining, Clas,  printers, , – prison workhouse in Augsburg, –,  in Buchloe, ,  prostitutes, , , , –, – supervision by executioner, ,  see also stigma symbols Ramer, Peter, – rechtlose lewte, 

Reformation, the, , ,  Reiser, Hans Georg, , ,  Reiser, Michael,  ritual pollution, , ,  ambivalence towards, –,  by carrion, , –, , – female, – verbal protective formulae, – see also taboo; menstrual taboo Roeck, Bernd, , , , – Roman law, , , – Roper, Lyndal, , , ,  royal touch, the,  Rublack, Hans Christoph,  rumors, defamatory, – Sabean, David, ,  Sachsenspiegel, –,  saints’ relics, – Scha¨ffer, Franz, – Schauman, Tobias,  Schebel, Johann,  Scheibenhart, Hans, , ,  Scheibenhart, Sabina, , – Scheifelhut, Margaretha,  Scheifelhut, Marx,  Scheifelhut, Simprecht, –,  Scheifelhut, Wolf,  Scheller, Johann Jacob, , –,  Scheller, Johann, the Younger, , – Schelm von Bergen, – Scheppelin, Georg,  Scheppelin, Johann, –, ,  Schinderhannes,  Schmidt, Franz, ,  Schmidt, Georg, , ,  Schmidt, Gordian,  Schmidt, Johann Michael, –, ,  Scholz, Valentin, – Schott, Georg,  Schubert, Ernst,  Schu¨tz, Samuel,  Schwabenspiegel, –,  Schwerhoff, Gerd,  Seckendroff, Veit Ludwig von,  Seidler, Hans,  Seitz, Lorentz,  Sewell, William, 



Index sexual division of labor, –, –; see also gender sexual morality, , –,  shepherds, , , –,  Sieber, Jacob Gottlieb,  skinners, , , , –, , , , , –, , –,  confession of, – endogamy, –, – legal rehabilitation of, – professional caste, –,  social interaction with, , , , –, , –,  social capital,  social control,  social disciplining, –, –, –, ,  society of orders, , –, , –, – sovereignty, , , , , , –,  sow-gelders, ,  Stadler, Hans, , ,  Stadtrecht of Augsburg, ,  Stapf, Hans, – Stetten, Paul von,  stigma symbols, , , , , , –, – Stolz, Margaretha,  Stolz, Veit, , ,  stonemasons, , , –, – Storch, Johann,  Straub, Anna Maria,  suicides, –, – sumptuary legislation, ,  symbolic capital,  taboo, –,  tanners, ,  Taylor, Edward, 

territorial states,  Thirty Years’ War, ,  Thomas, Keith, – Thomasius, Christian, ,  Tlusty, Ann,  topography, social, – torture, judicial, , , –, ,  Tregelin, Adam, – Tregelin, Elias, – Trenkler, Johann Georg, –, , , – Trenkler, Josepha, – Trenkler, Stephan,  Truckenmu¨ller, Elizabeth,  Trummer, Thomas,  Unehelichkeit, see illegitimacy unehrliche Leute, see dishonorable people Unehrlichkeit, see dishonor vagrancy, –, ,  Vogel, Johann Georg, , , –,  Volmayr, Johannes,  Wagner, Franz,  Walker, Mack, , ,  weavers, , , , ,  Weber, Max, –,  Welser family,  Wergeld, ,  Widemann, Johann Georg, ,  Widemann, Johann Michael,  Wilbertz, Giesela, ,  witchcraft, , , ; see also magic witches, , ,  witch-hunting, , –, , , – Wu¨stle, Caspar, 



CAM B RI D G E ST U D I E S I N E A R LY M O DE R N HI S T O R Y The Old World and the New* .  .    The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, –: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries Wars*         Richelieu and Olivares* .  .    Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc*       The Princes of Orange: The Stadholders in the Dutch Republic*    .     Lille and the Dutch Revolt: Urban Stability in an Era of Revolution   .      The Continuity of Feudal Power: The Caracciolo di Brienza in Spanish Naples        The Nobility of Holland: From Knights to Regents, – . .  .     Early Modern Democracy in the Grisons: Social Order and Political Language in a Swiss Mountain Canton, –     .   War, State and Society in Wu¨rttemberg, –*   .      From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain   . .    The Reformation and Rural Society: The Parishes of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach, –  .        Labour, Science and Technology in France, –      The King’s Army: Warfare, Soldiers, and Society during the Wars of Religion in France, –   .    Spanish Naval Power, –: Reconstruction and Defeat            State and Nobility in Early Modern Germany: The Knightly Feud in Franconia –      The Quest for Compromise: Peace-Makers in Counter-Reformation Vienna      Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism, – .  .    

Noble Power during the French Wars of Religion: The Guise Affinity and the Catholic Cause in Normandy      The Reformation of Community: Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in Holland, –    .      Henry IV and the Towns: The Pursuit of Legitimacy in French Urban Society, – .       -        The Limits of Royal Authority: Resistance and Obedience in Seventeenth-Century Castile    Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany    Titles available in paperback marked with an asterisk* The following titles are now out of print: French Finances, –: From Business to Bureaucracy .  .     Chronicle into History: An Essay in the Interpretation of History in Florentine FourteenthCentury Chronicles      France and the Estates General of  .      Reform and Revolution in Mainz, – . . .     Altopascio: A Study in Tuscan Society –     Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century          The State, War and Peace: Spanish Political Thought in the Renaissance – . .  ´   -      Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, –        The Kingdom of Valencia in the Seventeenth Century     Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome         Rouen during the Wars of Religion        The Emperor and His Chancellor: A Study of the Imperial Chancellery under Gattinara  .    The Military Organisation of a Renaissance State: Venice c. – .  .      . .   Neostoicism and the Early Modern State       

Prussian Society and the German Order: An Aristocratic Corporation in Crisis c. –      The Changing Face of Empire: Charles V, Philip II and Habsburg Authority, – . .  ı´    -     Turning Swiss: Cities and Empire –     .     Neighbourhood and Community in Paris            The Duke of Anjou and the Politique Struggle during the Wars of Religion   .   Society and Religious Toleration in Hamburg –       Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily     Rome in the Age of Englightenment: The Post-Tridentine Syndrome and the Ancien Re´gime     Renaissance and Revolt: Essays in the Intellectual and Social History of Modern France .  . .    Louis XIV and the Origins of the Dutch War     The Cost of Empire: The Finances of the Kingdom of Naples during the Period of Spanish Rule        The Armada of Flanders: Spanish Maritime Policy and European War, – . .     After the Deluge: Poland and the Second Northern War –      Classes, Estates and Order in Early Modern Brittany   .    