The Art of Executing Well: Rituals of Execution in Renaissance Italy (review)

In the current debate as to whether “early modern” appropriately applies to the Renaissance, or whether that period was only “late medieval”in the progressive history of Western civilization, this excellent book quite belies the very series title under which it was published. Indeed, the included essays regarding the elaborate rituals by which criminals were put to death in Italy from the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries, and especially the contemporaneous manuals (appended here in translation) instructing volunteer laybrothers in how to comfort the condemned and convince them to accept and even appreciate their fate, indicate remarkably just how medieval still were the judicial systems of that so-called age of cultural enlightenment.

If the word medieval implies obsessive religious devotion as opposed to modern secularism, then the Cinquecento, the century of “High Renaissance,” was perhaps the most religiously obsessed hundred years of the entire Middle Ages. The law courts in particular were modeled after the Last Judgment; the judges on earth served only as vicars of Jesus. Ultimate guilt or innocence of the accused was thus decided not here, but in the “supreme court” of heaven where the soul of even the most vile miscreant was automatically remanded. If the culprit had sincerely confessed and willingly suffered the required earthly punishment, then Jesus himself, the judge of all judges, would review the case and possibly grant redemption in paradise. In any event, “Ius Romanum” as still applied in the Renaissance hardly admitted to agnostic doubt about the justice of capital punishment.

Nicholas Terpstra contributes the first essay and also the last in which he documents the origin and social implications of the unique “comforter” lay-confraternities in various Italian cities, most notably Bologna. The members were male volunteers, often from well-to-do families, who visited the prisons incognito (dressed in hooded cassocks) to console condemned criminals in their final moments. This was one of the “good works” mentioned in the Gospel of St. Matthew: “I was in prison and ye came unto me … inasmuch as ye have done this unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” The Roman Church admonished the faithful to perform such charities as a means of achieving salvation. During the Counter-Reformation “good works” became a major issue, in opposition to Protestant “predestination.”

Kathleen Fulvey follows with a discussion of the extraordinary theatrics of public executions, literally vicarious passion plays in which the condemned prisoner, his religious comforters, and devilish executioner replicated the eternal psychic struggle between the forces of heaven and the minions of hell for the possession of souls. Each execution spectacle was a didactic lesson for the spiritual benefit of the spectators as well, to encourage them to contemplate their own eventual confrontation with Jesus in the hereafter.

Pamela Gravestock‘s next essay points out the role sacred music played in these grim events in which the condemned themselves joined in the singing. Alfredo Troiano then analyzes the poetry of Andrea Viarani, who was sentenced to death for treason against Duke Borso d’Este. His verses, written during his last days, are filled with both repentance for his crime and his resentment of the cruel world that has brought him to this fate.

The most interesting contribution pertains to the use of pictures, small hand-held paintings called tavolette that depicted Jesus on the Cross and other saintly martyrdoms, which the comforting laybrothers held before the eyes of the condemned on their way to the scaffold. Adriano Prosperi describes how the comforters were trained to keep the gaze of their trembling charges fixed on the holy image, urging them to gain strength from the stoicism of the represented martyr. The tavoletta was even used to shield the prisoner’s eyes from the frightening sight of the instruments of his imminent demise. Interestingly, several important Renaissance artists...