the unfavourable impressions traditionally attached to
the duties of executioner. At least, we have authority for supposing this,
when, for instance, in 1418, we see the Paris executioner, who was then
captain of the bourgeois militia, coming in that capacity to touch the
hand of the Duke of Burgundy, on the occasion of his solemn entry into
Paris with Queen Isabel of Bavaria. We may add that popular belief
generally ascribed to the executioner a certain practical knowledge of
medicine, which was supposed inherent in the profession itself; and the
acquaintance with certain methods of cure unknown to doctors, was
attributed to him; people went to buy from him the fat of culprits who had
been hung, which was supposed to be a marvellous panacea. We may also
remark that, in our day, the proficiency of the executioner in setting
dislocated limbs is still proverbial in many countries.

[Illustration: Fig. 344.--Amende Honorable before the
Tribunal.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in J. Damhoudere's "Praxis Rerum
Criminalium:" in 4to, Antwerp, 1556.]

More than once during the thirteenth century the duties of the executioner
were performed by women, but only in those cases in which their own sex
was concerned; for it is expressly stated in an order of St. Louis, that
persons convicted of blasphemy shall be beaten with birch rods, "the men
by men, and the women by women only, without the presence of men." This,
however, was not long tolerated, for we know that a period soon arrived
when women were exempted from a duty so little adapted to their physical
weakness and moral sensitiveness.

The learned writer on criminal cases, Josse Damhoudere, whom we have
already mentioned, and whom we shall take as our special guide in the
enumeration of the various tortures, specifies thirteen ways in which the
executioner "carries out his executions," and places them in the following
order:--"Fire"--"the sword"--"mechanical force"--"quartering"--"the
wheel"--"the fork"--"the gibbet"--"drawing"--"spiking"--"cutting off the
ears"--"dismembering"--"flogging or beating"--and the "pillory."

[Illustration: Fig. 345.--The Punishment by Fire.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut
of the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.]

But before entering upon the details of this revolting subject, we must
state that, whatever punishment was inflicted upon a culprit, it was very
rare that its execution had not been preceded by the _amende honorable_,