Epitomes of Evil: Representations of Executioners in Northern France and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages

Hangmen were familiar characters from urban reality to people living in France and the Burgundian Netherlands in the late Middle Ages. These officers played an essential role in the new penal system. However, general attitudes towards public executioners were highly ambiguous, often hostile and disparaging. In past imagery, various hangman figures, real or fictitious, were closely linked to ideas of otherness, cruelty, sin and evil. They were identified with criminals, marginal people and demons…