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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ Wehry (00:01.363)
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Joel Harrington, professor of history at Vanderbilt University and author of The Faithful Executioner, Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent 16th Century. Dr. Harrington, wonderful to have you on today.
Joel (00:20.174)
Thanks, I'm glad to be here.
PJ Wehry (00:22.887)
Dr. Harrington, first question I almost always ask guests, why this book?
Joel (00:29.87)
So I came across this man, his name is Franz Schmidt. And I came across him when I was doing an earlier book that was about, in part about crime. And the executioner came up in Franz Schmidt. And so that was, he was already on my radar. But then it was when I was in a bookstore in Nuremberg, actually, I was looking around and I found this book that was his journal. It was a reprint, know, modern 20th century reprint.
of his journal. said, this is amazing. The guy kept the journal. So I bought it, took it home, read it. But then after I did that, I found out that other people in my field had known about this, but nobody had ever approached it as a way to get at the man. They treated it more like a source for crimes and punishments and executions and so on. But I thought, I want to know this guy. And so that's how it started.
PJ Wehry (01:30.083)
If you don't mind kind of setting up for us.
PJ Wehry (01:36.955)
What was the life of an executioner like? There is obviously it was in change. It was in process at this time and he's trying to make it more respectable. I know that's part of it, but what shocked me and this was really helped me with my own work, German Idealism, because I think when I read German Idealism,
Joel (01:48.014)
Right.
PJ Wehry (01:57.839)
I can recognize them as modern. And then I was reading the Faithful Executioner as kind of like a lead up to that. I was, the world was so alien to me. that, I mean, maybe that's not the right term, but that's, definitely how it felt. I just, can you talk about some of the difference in society and kind of that otherness?
Joel (02:00.13)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (02:23.264)
I think this is part of the job of a historian to convey an alien or foreign society in its own terms, but to also make it understandable because we share a common humanity. I think once you read the book more and more, you identify commonalities with Franz Schmidt, an executioner. thought I would never have something in common with an executioner, but in fact I did. And I think a lot of readers have.
So yeah, the Alien Society, it's 16th century Germany. There's not really a Germany. Nuremberg is an independent city state in the Holy Roman Empire. And this is a period when legal authorities become more serious about law enforcement. They wanna be more professional. So they pass a series of laws and codes to try to professionalize the whole operation. Of course, part of it is you wanna get a professional.
executioner, somebody who really knows what he's doing, but is also, I don't want to say an upstanding person, but is not a drunk or a criminal himself, which is what a lot of executioners in the middle ages were. So this is a perfect time for somebody like Ron Schmidt, who takes things seriously. It's a profession he didn't want to do. It was passed on to him from his father and his father was forced to do it.
but it's a profession he takes seriously in trying to be an upright enforcer of the law. And that's how think he sees himself as a law enforcer. Of course, it's got a lot of what we would think of as alien aspects, such as the involvement with interrogation under torture or the various ways that they execute people in the society itself. It's much more of...
Pre-modern Europe is more like a developing country today, you know, in terms of that they don't have, literacy is not that high, life expectancy is not that high. It's very patriarchal. In parts, it's very violent. I actually compare Franconia, the area where Franz Schmidt lived in Nuremberg, it's sort of like the American Wild West.
Joel (04:42.51)
They're just starting to get the rudimentary parts of law and order, but they're not quite there yet. And so outside of these cities, you have robbers and highwaymen and all these other people roaming through the forest. And so any trip that you take is a pretty, could be a dangerous undertaking. yeah, so I wanted to try to convey, like comparing it to the American Wild West.
something that is in some ways familiar. But again, it's very different. And so I think the job of a historian is to convey what's different and what's very similar. And a lot of times people who aren't familiar with the historical period get it backwards. They get the things that are different that are actually very much the same, which is a lot of human aspects, and they get the things different.
which are actually similar. it's, that's our job. I think that's all can say.
PJ Wehry (05:45.683)
Yeah. Yeah. And I would love to return to that. But first I'd like to ask you, you talked about the father being forced to be an executioner and you're talking about him inheriting the job. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Cause I, that was the, one of the things that was the most alien to me because we live in a society where we struggle trying to figure out what we want to do. But what we want to do is an open question.
Joel (06:11.382)
Right. Well, being an executioner was a dishonorable job. And what that meant was actually has legal consequences too. It's sort of, it might be compared to being an untouchable Dalit in India, where people who do these, you know, unpleasant tasks and they're kept separate from the rest of society. So executioners, was, you know, people had superstitions about even the touch of an executioner.
could cause bad luck and things like that. So it's not something anybody would voluntarily choose to do. You're socially excluded. In the case of Franz Schmidt, his father, whose name was Heinrich, was in a town square when their prince, who was actually a very tyrannical person, decided that he wanted to execute three men.
But they did the town that they were living in did not have a professional executioner. Normally you would send away them to another town and wait some days or weeks until an executioner could come in. But he wanted to get these men executed right away because these were three men he accused of a plot against him, trying to assassinate him. So he picks out Heinrich Schmidt in the crowd and you come up here and you're going to hang these guys. And Heinrich Schmidt says, not me. I don't have anything to do with this.
And he keeps protesting. And finally, the prince says, you either come up here and hang them or I'm going to hang you and the two guys next to you. And so he comes up there and he does it. And once he does that, he's branded as a desirable person and people avoid him and he's ostracized. And the only occupation that he can really practice is as an executioner. So he's. Forced into that occupation.
And usually these executioners were, they started to build families, dynasties of executioners, because they weren't allowed to do other work, but they were allowed to be executioners. So his son, the person I write about, Franz Schmidt, was more or less destined to be an executioner. But one of the things that's really interesting is I found another document from much later when Franz Schmidt's about 70, and he's writing the Emperor, and he's asking to have his honor restored.
Joel (08:37.942)
And he says, this is a job I never wanted to do. It's a terrible job. It's a necessary job to make people feel safe and to avenge the victims. But if I had it my way, the job that I always felt called to do would be a doctor, a physician. And some people find this shocking, but he's person like anybody else with his own aspirations, but he's forced into this unsavory occupation.
And he does it for 45 years.
PJ Wehry (09:11.409)
Yeah, and detailing it to write that letter, right? That's where the journal comes from is then he uses that to write the Emperor.
Joel (09:20.206)
Yeah, the petition is actually a much better source in some ways because when he writes the emperor and he's retired by this point, he tells a shorter version of his life story. And so for a historian, that's a great source, but especially because he talks about his feelings. And in the journal, it's a professional journal. It's not a diary. He doesn't say, oh, I felt bad about today's torture session.
or, I wonder if we should still execute people. It doesn't have any that interior stuff. It's just more of a recording of the people that he meets and executes and sometimes their stories. But there's very little of Franz Schmidt himself in the journal. Whereas in the petition from much later, it's a lot of Franz Schmidt. And so it was a great source that I found that. I'd say that source is as important as the journal.
PJ Wehry (10:16.787)
And I love how you spend time carefully reading the journal though, and there are little hints of his opinions. are little moments where he'll talk about crimes and it'll be like a single line and then he'll talk about other crimes and then he goes into detail. Can you talk a little bit about how you approached that and what you learned?
Joel (10:33.004)
Right.
Joel (10:38.956)
Yeah, well, the book he starts out, he's keeping track. It's sort of like a professional resume, like a CV. And he's just keeping track of the various people he executed and when and where, what crime. But as he becomes older and more confident, he starts to write more about the person and the person's stories and their crimes. And yeah, you're right that the people that really upset him are the ones he writes more about because he thinks their crimes are so terrible.
So you really have to read between the lines. But for instance, he's very upset by the killing of small children or of old people, which we can understand. And he'll list their ages. He never lists ages of anybody except young people and old people. And he finds it shocking, just like we find it shocking. And that's one of those instances where I think people would look back and say,
PJ Wehry (11:21.885)
Very not, yep.
Joel (11:37.62)
life was cheaper for them, they didn't value it as much. And I said, I don't think that's true at all. I think they valued it just as much as we did. And they were just as shocked by some of these things as we are. So, yeah.
PJ Wehry (11:52.017)
Dying was certainly more common and there are certain... You have to deal with that in some way. It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It's just, it's more a fact of life in their time. Is that a, would that be a fair way to talk about it?
Joel (12:04.748)
Yeah, I mean, there's a low life expectancy. But what it means doesn't, it doesn't mean that 40 is old. You know, maybe that was true in Neolithic times. What it means is there's very high infant mortality. So half of all children born not make it to age 12. And that's shocking. And it's something people had to live with. And a long time ago, about 60 years ago, a French historian wrote a saying that they didn't parent in
have any emotional attachment to their children because they died so often. It's absolutely untrue. If you read the sources of anything, parents are devastated the same way they are today. So that's one of those anachronisms that modern people think, we value life more than they did. No, they did. If you made it to age 12, you have just as much chance of living to an old age as somebody in 1900.
Franchpin himself, he dies at the age of 80. So the big change in life expectancy, at least in the Western world, came in the 20th century. And that's when life expectancy really extended and child and infant mortality rate declined. So all of the pre-modern world, all of the world before 1900 was living under these circumstances, which meant that if you had five children,
most likely two or maybe even three of them would not have made it to adulthood. That's hard. That's hard. But that doesn't mean people don't value life anymore. They get distraught and upset just like modern parents would. It's just the fact of life for them. It's like the weather. There's nothing you can do about it. That's just the way things are.
PJ Wehry (13:56.211)
I, maybe this is stretching it too far, I'm wondering if, if in the future we find this, the cure for cancer and people are living to 120, 140, you know, like life expectancy for a historian to look back and say, well, people die from cancer all the time. So you didn't really affect people. that a good, like, you'd be like, what are you talking about? Like,
Joel (14:17.036)
Yeah. No, that's exactly right. People place a different value on life itself. I think people throughout history wanted to stay alive and they felt very bad when their family or friends died. I think that's one of the commonalities we have.
I think there's a kind of othering that goes on. And this happens today sometimes with when you have countries at war or when you have, you look down on certain developing countries, you say, they don't value life the way we do. You're trying to make them non-human in a certain way. And I think that's just propaganda. It's simply not true.
PJ Wehry (15:12.349)
That's something that I definitely picked up on the Faithful Executioner. I really appreciated it. I think it's the epilogue. You kind of go, you mentioned that at length. And then I started the Dangerous Mystic about Maestro Iacar, your other book. And you just start off with that idea. You've already mentioned, referenced a couple of times. Why is it important to humanize history? Why is it important to humanize people from the past?
Joel (15:40.974)
Well, it depends why you read history and why you write it. And for me, it's about understanding. It's like foreign travel. I go to meet different people and go different places and learn more about them. And I learn more about myself in the process. I'm a big proponent of foreign travel and living abroad. And I've done it for several years. And I think going back to historical society is very similar.
that when you try to understand them in their own terms, you can learn things. The times you don't learn things is when you just judge them and you say, oh, we're so much better than they are. And then you mentioned the epilogue and that's why I what we think we're so much better than the people in past. You know, that may make us feel good, but that doesn't help us understand these people. And you have to think, you know, like you said, a hundred years from now, what are they going to say about people in the early 21st century?
can you believe that they actually ate animals in the early 21st century? Does that invalidate us as humans because we do something that in another time is considered taboo? So it's not excusing past actions or past cruelties. It's try to understand what motivates people and how people react.
PJ Wehry (17:04.889)
And given the conditions allowing us to see the conditions that have these taboo things happen in. Before I want to ask more about that. But when we kind of other people, when we other people in the past, we also, you know, we you said that we should humanize them in order to better understand them and better understand ourselves so that when we say, hey, we are better than them and we just kind of
Joel (17:19.938)
Yes. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (17:34.513)
wall them off, we're also deceiving ourselves. I think there is like when you when you say, I'm better than them, I wouldn't have been part of that. That's really a way of walling off and deceiving something about yourself.
Joel (17:49.4)
Well, I think there's an example even closer to home that living in during World War II, living in occupied Europe, you know, we'd like to think, we would have all been in the resistance. When in fact, I think very few of us would have been willing to place our whole family and lives on the line. And I think most people just try to keep their head down and get through it all. So. I think it's a it's a.
kind of historical compassion.
that we should also aim for in our own lives, trying to understand each other and trying to find common ground. And again, it doesn't erase unpleasant or bad things. It just tries to make the connection. Let's fight that.
PJ Wehry (18:43.187)
And as you were talking here about the different things that are kind of terrible, for instance, we have, in many ways, a very disciplined man. That's what I came away with. Franz Schmidt made a lot of sacrifices for many years. I think he retired when he was 63, which is from a very physically demanding job.
Joel (19:02.7)
But yeah.
Joel (19:09.004)
Yeah. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (19:12.249)
And he's this incredible physician, know, obviously they'd have, you know, as an executioner, I think that's what they would call him even when they went to him for medicine.
Joel (19:22.092)
Yeah, it's a funny thing because out in the street, they didn't want to have any contact with them. But if people got sick or had wounds, it was a common belief that executioners could heal you. So they would come to the executioner's house. And in the case of Franz Schmidt, as I mentioned, that's what he considered his true vocation. So he's an autodidact, I think. I think he read a lot on medicine and healing. And he must have been very effective because
According to his petition, he says, I've treated over 15,000 people over the last 40 years. That's a lot. So.
I've lost the train of thought.
PJ Wehry (20:03.891)
Yeah, no, no, it's good. I I I think that's definitely as he's writing to the Emperor. That's a good piece of evidence. But I think to me, what I found more convincing that he was a good physician was when the other executioner came, how annoyed he got that he couldn't get clients because they kept going. I was like, if you have someone complaining about how good you are at something because you're taking away clients, you must be pretty good.
Joel (20:24.718)
Yeah.
Joel (20:32.894)
and his successor had it really bad because he was also a worse executioner and he was also somebody who drank and got into public fights. So in every way, he was compared negatively to Meister Franz. And you can imagine how that feels with everybody saying, well, he's no Meister Franz in his entire life, but he was a big man. I think that's safe to say.
PJ Wehry (20:58.995)
So I have kind of alluded to a couple of times there is this torture aspect though and one of things I appreciate it is you didn't shy away from it and you obviously condemn it but you also give the conditions I remember specifically one passage where you talked about the conditions that made that I won't say I don't think anyone necessarily found it appealing or most people didn't find it appealing back then but made that
seem to them the best route to take. And you showed how, and I want to give too much of the answer, but why the reasons that we avoid torture today is because we have access to better forensics. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Joel (21:43.552)
And sure, I think what you mentioned about forensics is part of it. They don't have any many very good ways of determining somebody's guilt. If you have two eyewitnesses, that's sufficient, but that most of these crimes happen in secret or in the dark or something like that. They did not use torture for every crime. It's probably only used for maybe one out of 20 or something like that.
It's really for the capital crimes. It's for when something usually involved in murder. And it's when people refuse to confess because the confession was the main basis for conviction. Since they couldn't accumulate evidence outside of that, they really depended on the person confessing. Now, lawyers at the time said, confess or torture is not reliable for confession.
People will say anything you want. mean, case in point, the witch craze. All these people confess to being witches. There were no witches. You know, this was where torture created guilt, where there wasn't any. I think it's tricky because I wanted to say that this was a part of his regular life. He probably was involved in sessions maybe a couple of times every week down in a really dang...
the worst kind of medieval dungeon you can imagine. But he doesn't talk about it. He doesn't talk about it in the journal. He doesn't talk about it in his petition. And I don't know what to make of this. You you could say, he's ashamed of it. Or you could say he just thinks it's not proper to talk about. I do talk briefly about torture, but I don't want to dwell on it because this is a book that you could write.
and just dwell on the really gory and violent things. And so my challenge was to address those violent things without in any way glorifying or, you know, making it titillating and something like that. So I've actually read some reviews where a few readers say there's not enough torture, there's not enough violence. And I saw one reader, I don't read all my reviews, but sometimes I look at them.
Joel (24:08.384)
And a reader said, this is not torture porn, which apparently is a thing. And I'm glad for that, that testimonial. But yeah, violence was a part of his life and this terrible, especially terrible type of violence, torture was. But as you said at the beginning, if they thought somebody was really guilty, but they couldn't prove it, this was their only option.
So it explains why it doesn't excuse it at all, but it explains why forced confessions were common.
PJ Wehry (24:52.059)
As you're I will say. I really appreciate the way the the style that you wrote in, because even what you did put in often just from quoting primary sources was enough to turn my stomach. It was I loved the book. I loved the book. I was like, I'm not sure who I could recommend this to without being like, hey, some of the stuff in here. Yeah, it'll it'll sit with you. It's I mean, and I'm sure like.
Joel (25:03.98)
Good.
PJ Wehry (25:19.591)
you encountered things that you did not include in the book, right? Some of that is the torture side of it, but a lot of it was even the crime part of it was stuff that I was like, it made me grateful for forensic methods now that allow us to catch criminals better than they did. Can we talk about that kind of that goal of justice? And this is part of
the so much money that they, mean, he made a really good salary. Yeah. And then, so kind of that move from, it's not, know, mercenaries and thugs, basically bandits that they brought in, cause they'd be the kind of people you'd have to be executioners, to something that was more respectable and a stricter code, more uniform code kind of across the Holy Roman Empire. Can you talk about,
Joel (25:53.23)
You got a good summary. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (26:17.267)
And of course, I think this is what you alluded to earlier, like, that's how Meister Franz thought of himself as someone who is part of this overall scheme and goal of justice.
Joel (26:28.846)
Yeah. Well, there's a criminal code that gets passed by Emperor Charles the fifth in 1532 and its influences throughout the Holy Roman Empire, so all the German lands. And it lays down the conditions on how you should interrogate people, how you should investigate crimes, what constitutes sufficient evidence for torture, how trials should go.
what should be the punishment for each crime. And the reason they do it is because in Germany, well, I think this is true in England as well, it's amateurs. These are non-durists, non-professionals who are making these decisions. These are local notables who come together and they're not trained as law experts. So they're winging it a lot of the time. So this is meant as a manual for them to try to professionalize it.
It didn't go so far as to replace them with professional jurists, which is what happened in France. But it did try to make it more professional. And one of the parts of it was the requirements and expectations for an executioner. And this is again where Franz was perfect because as she said, he was very disciplined. He did lead a very sober life. Literally, he didn't drink at all, which is very unusual for the time.
And he was good at his job. And so this is why the leaders of Nuremberg, once they found him, they held on to him. They kept giving him raises. They gave him citizenship in the city, which was unheard of for an executioner. And then eventually they support his petition for having his honor restored. So they knew they had caught something really good there with Franz Schmidt. I won't say that all the executioners were on that level.
But there was a push in the 16th and 17th century to professionalize all these things. But I'll also say it took a very long time. It really isn't until the modern times that we have fully professional courts and legal systems. It's more people who happen to be prominent, it's an honor for them to have these responsibilities. And they often write
Joel (28:52.952)
to legal faculties, they write to law schools for advice about cases. They maintain some, a panel of jurists in the city where they're constantly asking for advice. But the decisions belong to the city council of Durnberg, which are all lay people. They're not lawyers. And they're the ones who make the final decisions.
PJ Wehry (29:16.057)
On that note, it's interesting to me how all this kind of keeps weaving together, we've talked about the difficult parts of that time. I'd love to ask, as we look at that authority side, you've talked about the witchcraft craze, the witch hunt. And what was astonishing to me, because that story that's always told is always told that everywhere the witch hunt craze was just kind of overwhelming. And then
right in the middle of the book, or kind of near the end of the book, it's like, not in Nuremberg. That was astonishing to me. Can you talk a little bit more about that? You don't kind of go into depth there. I'm wondering if there's more to that story because you were focusing on Meister Franz's point of view, so he just kind of carried it out. But why did that not take off in Nuremberg? In fact, they punished people who pushed it.
Joel (30:12.386)
Right. Well, there's an ocean of books about the witch-craze and all these different theories about why they happen, where they happen, when they happen, and all these sorts of things. What we're talking about are legal procedures. They're actually brought in, they're questioned, they're convicted on proof, which is often portrait confessions. There are also lynch-mocks who execute people on their own.
for witchcraft. So the first thing is that the belief in witchcraft is widespread in the period that there are witches out there. It's increased by lawyers and clerics who say, yes, these people are real. And in the Carolina, that legal code I mentioned, there's actually a provision of execution for sorcery for witchcraft, which was new. That was not.
So it has now become an official capital crime. It's the era of the reformation. So there's a lot of religious tension and beliefs that the world is, it's a, it's a to the death struggle between God and Satan and Satan has all his agents out there. So the point is it's a very widespread belief, but in Nuremberg, as you say, they don't execute anybody, at least they don't until the 17th century.
then they executed a few people. But at the very time that there are some of these mass witch hunts, where hundreds of people are executed, Nuremberg resists it.
I guess you could say it's because their leaders were more educated. I don't know.
Joel (32:02.83)
Not everybody believed in witchcraft. mean, people believed in the devil and they thought the devil had real power. But when it comes to a legal case, I think there were certain officials led by lawyers who said there's poisoning, which is poisoning, not witchcraft. And then the rest of these people, they're deluded or they're killed or they're accused by somebody else. Yeah, I think Franz Schmidt and
I've read a lot of his interrogations. He doesn't really, he thinks a lot of these things that are supposed to have magical powers and witchcraft are more fraud. That they're, they're, you they sell people little bags of, of, of grass or something that's supposed to protect you from bullets or, or you cut off the hand of a baby boy. This is pretty gross. And that will
allow you to remain invisible in a house if you break into the house. He knows all these things are superstitious because he's seen how people break down, they confess that they didn't work or so on. So it is an anomaly. And as you said, there's one case where a guy comes into town who had worked as an executioner's assistant and a lot of executioners were considered witch finders. They were very good at detecting witches, not front-fists.
And this guy came in and he says, he tries to sell all his little wares and people aren't buying them. So he says, I, on my street alone, there are 16 witches. Um, you know, it's kind of like McCarthy in the 1950s. are 16 witches and they haul him in for that. And he admits that he made it up and he's executed. So they, they want to nip any of these witchcraft scares in the bud.
PJ Wehry (33:47.708)
Yeah.
Joel (34:01.838)
doesn't eliminate the belief in witchcraft. And as I said, a couple of generations later, they actually cave into it for a moment. But it is remarkable because there are very few places in German lands that completely resisted the witch hunt.
PJ Wehry (34:25.779)
There's a moment and I might be reading too much into it But definitely it felt it was one of my connecting moments with Meister Franz It felt it felt like he was being humorous on purpose when he's writing about so and so promised that this would That this magic would work it did not and he just like it just I was like
Joel (34:46.838)
Right. She said she would fly off on a broom. She did.
PJ Wehry (34:53.145)
yes. And I like I have to admit I laughed out loud. I was reading the book. It's like just that really I mean, it definitely feels. I mean, this is several hundred years in the past, but it felt like German humor, right? Like it's like.
Joel (34:58.978)
Yeah.
Joel (35:07.01)
Well, it's also maybe that he considered it possible that it might have happened, but it did not happen, instead of saying, but it is a kind of humor. think you're right. That's how I read it.
PJ Wehry (35:19.291)
Yeah, yeah, You mentioned that, you know, that was one of the things, the hand of glory, the idea of creating magic out of infant corpses. And this is that that is one of those alien moments you were talking about ingesting executed corpses and that as a source of income for executioners, I don't
Joel (35:43.758)
Yeah.
Joel (35:47.084)
or drinking the blood from somebody who just been executed to cure epilepsy.
PJ Wehry (35:55.831)
And, but it doesn't seem like Meister Franz really engaged in a lot of that, but for, or did he, I think he did a little bit. can't forgive me that, that I don't have off top of my head.
Joel (36:07.598)
Well, he dissected some of the people that he executed. And I think that reflected his medical interest. But you're right, these things could all be sold, like the thumb of an executed thief was a magical token or other things. Also mummy, which is what they called the skin from a dead person, would go to the pharmacist and the pharmacist would sell it for a certain, as a cure for certain ailments.
So it was a common thing to use parts of the body as part of medicine. And I think he was part of that. He bought into that. I don't know whether he himself made a big profit out of this.
PJ Wehry (36:53.287)
But we know, and I think, is it Vitruvius? was the, Vesalius. And it seems like he had studied some of that and he was practicing, I mean, we know that he was medically capable and that was part of what he was doing. I actually was gonna ask a follow-up question, but you mentioned it.
Joel (36:59.406)
to save it.
Joel (37:11.394)
Well, sometimes people said, what do you wish you knew about Meister Franz? And I said, well, number one, I wish I knew if he had a sense of humor. And I think that he did because he seemed to work so well with all kinds of people. But the other thing I said, I wish I had a list of the books in his library, which books he read, because there were a lot of do it yourself medical books on the book market. And I can only infer.
that he made use of these. I can't prove it because I don't have the inventory list. But there were a lot of people who were acting as do-it-yourself physicians. He was actually what's called a wound doctor, which is he's supposed to work on outer external wounds, whereas the physician is supposed to work on internal disturbances. And physicians were educated at a university. Wound doctors or
or they sometimes call them barbers, barbers surgeons, is more like an artisan trade that you're educated as an apprentice and an adjournment. That was another question I had is where did he learn all these things? Because his father, he didn't come from a long line of executioners. His father had bought into it. And what I think is once you're in the executioner guild, so to speak,
People communicate a lot with each other. And I can't prove it, but I think he was probably placed as an apprentice with some other people. I have no proof of that. But I think, how else could he have learned these things? And the other way would be from books, which are illustrated and tell you what to do. But yeah, apparently he was very good at it because people kept coming back him and he had a lot of very high ranking customers. So.
PJ Wehry (39:08.061)
Yeah, I want to be respectful of your time. But kind of as we draw to an end here, I wanted to ask.
For our audience besides reading the faithful executioner, which is an amazing book. I really enjoyed What would you tell them to think about? What would you tell them to do over the next week after listening to this episode? Maybe What right bye yes, bye bye and read the book. Yes but And I definitely think that this will accomplish some of what you're aiming for which is to humanize the past What's something else that they can do?
Joel (39:35.074)
I suppose. I suppose, yeah.
PJ Wehry (39:51.857)
in order to think about and humanize the past and to better understand themselves.
Joel (39:51.982)
Well, I think.
Joel (39:58.798)
That's a big question. I'm a big reader. Yeah. Yeah, that's a Leviathan of a question. I think reading is a good way to develop compassion. Reading about different people. doesn't have to be historical. I read quite a bit, both nonfiction and fiction.
PJ Wehry (40:01.917)
Sorry, it is that kind of podcast. that's.
Joel (40:25.038)
I don't think it necessarily makes you compassionate. You have to be open to it. You know, there have probably been some serial murderers who were big readers, so the reading itself is not a cure-all. I think also just in life, in your own life, I think trying to understand different people's perspectives. Our instinct is to judge right away, good, bad. And I have the same instinct. But if you can take a breath.
and try to understand somebody else's perspective. I think it's worthwhile. And if literature can help you with that, that's great. If some kind of volunteer work can help you with that. I think there are lots of ways to develop compassion. think raising children, I mean, you know about this, is you start to see how different people can be and how their perspectives are just different. They're not doing things just to defy you.
They think things differently. So I think it's all around us. There are all these opportunities to try to understand each other a little better. But I think all too often we give in to the baser instinct to just judge and dismiss.
PJ Wehry (41:24.403)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (41:43.431)
Yeah. And I, if you don't mind me just adding what I really took away and what I really appreciate about the book. one is you're just, it's a, it's a fascinating book. That's, that's definitely part of it. But what I got from it was that to flatten, when we flatten other people, we flatten ourselves. When we deceive ourselves about other people, we deceive ourselves about ourselves. And so I want to say thank you for writing the book.
Joel (42:10.125)
Thanks.
PJ Wehry (42:13.011)
It's been a huge joy to me and I've learned a lot through it. And thank you for joining me today to talk about it.
Joel (42:20.738)
Thank you for the opportunity.