Public Executions in England in the Late Middle Ages: The Indignity and Dignity of Death

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Abstract
Medieval historians evaluated the deaths of individuals in moral terms and often interpreted them as divine intervention. They discerned two types of death: a good, even beautiful death in terms of the “Art of Dying,” and a bad, shameful death, particularly when inflicted in a public execution. However, the indignity of a public death could lead to greater admiration for and a positive judgment about the executed because of the way in which he met his end. While such a “legal death” contained obvious elements of retribution, deterrence, and atonement in a sacral sense, the spectacle of a public execution could provide a very subtle interplay of learning and teaching how to die on the part of the executed and the spectators alike.

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