Execution
The execution of Stumpp, on October 31, 1589, and of his daughter and his mistress is one of the most brutal on record: He was put to a wheel, where "flesh was torn from his body", in ten places, with red-hot pincers, followed by his arms and legs. Then his limbs were broken with the blunt side of an axehead to prevent him from returning from the grave, before he was beheaded and burned on a pyre. His daughter and mistress had already been "flayed, raped, and strangled" and were burned alive along with Stumpp's body. As a warning against similar behavior, local authorities erected a pole with the torture wheel and the figure of a wolf on it, and at the very top they placed Peter Stumpp's severed head.
Read more about this topic: Peter Stumpp
Famous quotes containing the word execution:
“I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.”
—Gabriel Péri, French Communist leader. Letter, July 1942, written shortly before his execution by the Germans. Quoted in New York Times (April 11, 1943)
“Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.”
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
“It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is less need of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.”
—Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755)