Why were executioners treated like shit? It was a necessary job...

Why were executioners treated like shit? It was a necessary job. People before 20th century truly were stupid fucking apes.

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The outcast status of executioners was also symbolic in nature. As much as committing crimes was regarded as wrong, killing people was regarded as wrong too, and this reminded people of it.

It made them feel better about the system whose luxuries they enjoyed. Like people today shouting fuck the police and deriding the military industrial complex or oil monopolies for giving them the privileges of world hegemony. Its virtue signaling. I'll take the benefits, but deride the drawbacks. You didn't see alot of people fleeing their nations because of execution, and you don't see Americans leaving America because of its absurd wealth built on the petrodollar.

Yeah, this. I'm willing to bet the notion of "ritual pollution" played a role a lot of the time. Yes it was necessary work so you didn't look down on them in some sort of morally superior way, but rather they must be kept away from "pure" elements of society so their ugly but necessary work did not contaminate your priests or ealdormen or whatever.

The Romans had this attitude. Priests were forbidden from having contact with, say, grave diggers, or even from seeing them. Maybe it became just a less formal aversion but it's a pretty common attitude toward certain "untouchable" trades throughout history.

Sources? A good executioner was well regarded. Being able to behead someone with one cut was a skill and considered more humane than hacking away at a spinal cord. Axes were likely to require more than one chop- since they weren't usually sharpened as much as a sword. This was known- and was why people of status would request a sword be used- or a particular swordsman perform the execution. There's also some accounts of the people being executed mocking the executioner for failing the first couple of swings.

Further, there was a famous french dynastic family that were in charge of public executions. The execution was a social event- musicians would play, plays were put on, booths would sell food and trinkets- like guillotines for children to play with.

>In the Ottoman Empire, only Romani could be executioners. Executioners were seen as "damned" people and even their graveyards were separate from public graveyards. There were no inscriptions on executioner tombstones, usually uncarved and unpolished simple rough stones were used. One of the oldest and largest "executioner graveyards" is in the Eyüp district in Istanbul. After the republican revolution in Turkey, executions continued to be performed by Romani executioners. This situation continued until the abolition of capital punishment in Turkey.

lel

>get tried poorly by everyone because you're a gypsy
>but you do get to execute everyone else when they inevitably fuck up

interesting tradeoff desu

>Sources?
Not the OP but The Faithful Executioner by Joel F. Harrington is a good one about Meister Frantz Schmidt who lived in the 16th century. He became an executioner because his father was an executioner. His father became an executioner because the local lord had no executioner and commanded his father to do the deed. Schmidt was an official outcast because of his position and sought to spare his children of the stigma that came with his job.

Some of the many interesting things about the book is it points out if an execution should go badly the crowd may turn on the executioner, the ability of the law to deal with criminals was very limited (some places had no jails), and showing a bit about how German politics worked in the 16th century.

Because more often than not, they're the same scum as the people they're executing, they were just given the choice of killing their mates and being let go, or joining them.

thats why they wore those mask