e first master of his trade, and thus all the head
artificers are judges. They punish with exile, with flogging, with
blame, with deprivation of the common table, with exclusion from the
church and from the company of women. When there is a case in which
great injury has been done, it is punished with death, and they repay an
eye with an eye, a nose for a nose, a tooth for a tooth, and so on,
according to the law of retaliation. If the offence is wilful the
council decides. When there is strife and it takes place undesignedly,
the sentence is mitigated; nevertheless, not by the judge but by the
triumvirate, from whom even it may be referred to Hoh, not on account of
justice but of mercy, for Hoh is able to pardon. They have no prisons,
except one tower for shutting up rebellious enemies, and there is no
written statement of a case, which we commonly call a lawsuit. But the
accusation and witnesses are produced in the presence of the judge and
Power; the accused person makes his defence, and he is immediately
acquitted or condemned by the judge; and if he appeals to the
triumvirate, on the following day he is acquitted of condemned. On the
third day he is dismissed through the mercy and clemency of Hoh, or
receives the inviolable rigour of his sentence. An accused person is
reconciled to his accuser and to his witnesses, as it were, with the
medicine of his complaint, that is, with embracing and kissing. No one
is killed or stoned unless by the hands of the people, the accuser and
the witnesses beginning first. For they have no executioners and
lictors, lest the state should sink into ruin. The choice of death is
given to the rest of the people, who enclose the lifeless remains in
little bags and burn them by the application of fire, while exhorters
are present for the purpose of advising concerning a good death.
Nevertheless, the whole nation laments and beseeches God that His anger
may be appeased, being in grief that it should as it were have to cut
off a rotten member of the state. Certain officers talk to and convince
the accused man by means of arguments until he himself acquiesces in the
sentence of death passed upon him, or else he does not die. But if a
crime has been committed against the liberty of the republic, or against
God, or against the supreme magistrates, there is immediate censure
without pity. These only are punished with death. He who is about to die
is compelled to state in the presence of the people