Historical Miniature: Papal Executioner
It's a piece by John Allen from a 2001 National Catholic Reporter, so I don't entirely trust it, and Allen draws a few conclusions that are stretched. But it's interesting:
Over the course of his 68 years on the pontifical payroll, [Giovanni] Bugatti was called upon to perform “justices” 516 times -- a seemingly prodigious number, though it comes out to just over seven working days each year.
His first assignment came on March 22, 1796, and his last on Aug. 17, 1861. Such details are known because he left behind a precise list of each of his “justices,” with the date, the name of the condemned, the nature of the crime and the site of the execution.
Mastro Titta [his nickname] was not, it should be noted, executing the Giordano Brunos or Savonarolas of his day. His “patients,” as they were euphemistically known, were not victims of the Inquisition or theological critics of the pope. They were mostly brigands and murderers who had been convicted by the civil courts of the Papal States.
The method of execution was, before 1816, either the ax or the noose, and afterward the guillotine. In special cases, however, Mastro Titta would employ two other techniques.
The first was what the Romans called the mazzatello. In this case the executioner would carry a large mallet, swing it through the air to gather momentum, and then bring it crashing down on the prisoner's head, in the same manner that cattle were put out of commission in the stockyards. The throat would then be cut to be sure the crushing blow killed, rather than merely stunned.
The other alternative was drawing and quartering. Sometimes this method would be employed in combination with the guillotine or ax. The body would be laid on a stone with its arms and legs tied to four different horses. The horses would be spurred at the same moment, pulling the body apart. In both cases, the point was to signal that the crime in question was especially loathsome.
When an execution was to be held, papal dragoons would provide security. The most common sites were the Castel Sant'Angelo bridge, the Piazza del Popolo, and Via dei Cerchi near the Piazza della Bocca della Verità .
Roman fathers would bring their sons to watch Mastro Titta lower the boom. By tradition, they would slap their son's head when the blade came down, as a way of warning: “This could be you.”
Witnesses would take bets about how long it would take for the head to drop into the basket, how many times it would spin, and how much blood would spurt forth from the corpse. Pickpockets were notorious for staking out the gallows.
A public festival followed.
For his troubles, Mastro Titta received lodgings in the Borgo district of Rome near the Vatican and a steady income from various tax concessions granted by the pope. He also had a generous pension, awarded, according to official documents, in gratitude for his “very long-standing service.”
For each killing, however, papal law specified that the Boia (Italian for “executioner”) was to receive only three cents of the Roman lira, in order to “mark the vileness of his work.”
Link.
