Editing Executioner (section)

== Scope and job ==
The executioner was usually presented with a [[Execution warrant|warrant]] authorising or ordering him to ''execute'' the sentence. The warrant protects the executioner from the charge of [[murder]]. Common terms for executioners derived from forms of capital punishment—though they often also performed other physical punishments—include '''hangman''' ([[hanging]]) and '''headsman''' ([[Decapitation|beheading]]). In the military, the role of executioner was performed by a soldier, such as the ''provost''. A common [[stereotype]] of an executioner is a [[hood (headgear)|hooded]] [[medieval]] or absolutist executioner. Symbolic or real, executioners were rarely hooded, and not robed in all black; hoods were only used if an executioner's identity and anonymity were to be preserved from the public. As [[Hilary Mantel]] noted in her 2018 [[Reith Lectures]], "Why would an executioner wear a mask? Everybody knew who he was".

While this task can be occasional in nature, it can be carried out in the line of more general duty by an officer of the court, the [[police]], [[Corrections officer|prison staff]], or even the [[military]]. A special case is the tradition of the Roman ''fustuarium'', continued in forms of [[running the gauntlet]], where the culprit receives their punishment from the hands of the comrades gravely harmed by their crime, e.g. for failing in vital sentinel duty or stealing from a ship's limited food supply.

Many executioners were professional specialists who traveled a circuit or region performing their duty, because executions were rarely very numerous. Within this region, a resident executioner would also administer [[Corporal punishment|non-lethal physical punishments]], or apply [[torture]]. In [[Middle Ages|medieval]] Europe, to the end of the [[early modern period]], executioners were often [[knacker]]s,<ref name="TFTGU">{{Cite book
| title      = Tales from the German Underworld: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth Century
| url        = https://books.google.com/books?id=tYQB6PItGQ0C
| last       = Evans
| first      = Richard
| publisher  = Yale University Press
| location   = New Haven and London
| date       = 1998
| page       = 145
| isbn       = 978-0-300-07224-2
}}</ref> since pay from the rare executions was not enough to live off.

In medieval Europe executioners also taxed lepers and prostitutes, and controlled gaming houses.  They were also in charge of the latrines and cesspools, and disposing of animal carcasses.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/executioners-who-inherited-their-jobs-180967947/|title=The Executioners Who Inherited Their Jobs|website=Smithsonian}}</ref>

The term is extended to administrators of severe physical punishment that is not prescribed to kill, but which may result in death.

Executions in France (using the [[guillotine]] since the [[French Revolution]]) persisted until 1977, and the French Republic had an official executioner; the last one, [[Marcel Chevalier]], served until the formal [[Capital punishment in France#The abolition process in 1981|abolition of capital punishment]] in 1981.<ref name="Clarke Hardy Williams 2008">{{cite book
| last1        = Clarke
| first1       = P.
| last2       = Hardy
| first2      = L.
| last3       = Williams
| first3      = A.
| title       = Executioners
| publisher   = Book Sales
| year        = 2008
| isbn        = 978-0-7088-0366-0
| url         = https://books.google.com/books?id=8a0l2PYRS-EC
| language    = sv
| access-date = 16 September 2018
| pages       = 374–380
}}</ref>