The Executioner is the red-clad public executioner of the city, awaited “like the Rockstar” and shunned as defiling. The Chief Executioner of the Bastille interrogates and tortures in its dungeons.
| Type | Office / character |
| Spanish entry | el Verdugo |
Description
He wears red and is “much bigger than a normal person”; he is sometimes recorded among the creatures. The Chief Executioner of the Bastille has half his face burned, cause unknown. He carries a whip and a blunt weapon “meant to break the joints”. Nothing begins until he arrives; no one wants to be near him.
A house of the trade
His assistants are his sons. “Because that stains you”: the trade defiles those who practice or assist it, so it stays in the family. At the Suplicio two sons assist him, shooting arrows upward; one “pulls out two knives and stabs them in” and is also called the Eliminator.
Duties
- Public execution at the Suplicio, in the open before crowds: “The executioner will not say a single word.”
- Below: the Chief Executioner works without audience in the Bastille dungeons, on interrogation and torture; he is called both executioner and inquisitor. “Chief” suggests subordinates.
- Forgiveness of sin: at the Suplicio he “had challenged everyone to say that they did not come with violence, but came seeking forgiveness of sin”, giving the condemned a ritual way out.
One version holds: “The executioner is going to retract. And he said he would ask forgiveness. Even taking the prisoners.” Whether this is fact or rumor, and whether it happened, is not recorded.
Conflicting accounts
- The silent executioner and the one who challenges the crowd and plans to retract do not reconcile: either silence covers only the final stage, or they are two figures.
Open questions
- Whether the Suplicio’s executioner and the Bastille’s Chief Executioner are one man or two offices.
- Who pays him, under what authority (Crown, court, Church), and how much.
- By what authority he forgives sins, and what that consists of.
- Where he lives, whom he may marry, who trades with him.