Throughout the centuries there were many methods of execution that were used to kill and take
the lives of those people who had been condemned to death.
One of the most shocking methods used was hanging, drawing and quartering, a method
of execution that had a number of specific steps to it.
The aim of this was to bring some form of final humiliation to a person, and shame.
Much of the point of public execution was to ensure that the public did not commit serious
crimes and offences, and the King or Queen and authorities would want to strike fear
into the hearts of the public.
There was one method of execution used a number of times inside of the Papal States which
was incredibly brutal.
It could be performed by anyone and lacked any skill at all, with someone’s skull being
bashed to bits with a blunt instrument.
Join us today as we look at Mazzatello, one of History’s most brutal execution methods.
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The Papal States were a number of territories that were under the rule of the Pope inside
of Italy, and they existed for over a millennium from the 8th century to the 19th century.
With the Pope overseeing the lands almost as a King, it was the Catholic Church who
instilled law and order inside of the lands, and they would introduce a method of execution
which was very bloody.
Mazzatello was used for the worst crimes in society, and it would feature a public execution
with a condemned defendant being brought to a scaffold.
Inside of Rome, the person would be brought to a public square and there would have been
a huge crowd to witness the execution.
They would be brought with the guards of the Pope and also a priest who stayed with them
throughout their ordeal.
The executioner would be dressed in black and would often wear a mask, and be disguised
so that the crowd would not be able to identify them.
As they were taking the life of someone, they would also often beg for forgiveness from
the condemned before they took their life.
On the platform would also be a coffin in which the body of the victim would be placed
straight in to after the bloody events had taken place.
Then a prayer would be said for the condemned’s soul by the priest, who would then take a
step back and hand over to the executioner.
Mazzatello was when an executioner would take a weapon, usually a large long handled mallet
or a poleaxe and would simply bash the head in of the victim.
They would use the mallet almost like a hammer, and would crush someone’s skull and inflict
such trauma onto the head and skull that the person would die.
The executioner would raise the mallet and swing the weapon through the air to gain momentum,
and sometimes swung it a number of times.
He then brought the mallet down onto the head of the prisoner, and then the condemned would
usually be knocked out by the device.
This was also used as a way of slaughtering cattle in stockyards.
But if the person had not been killed, then the executioner would either continue with
the mallet smashing the person over the head, or would then take out his knife and would
slit the throat of the condemned with blood running all over the scaffold.
It was described as, ‘one of the most brutal methods of execution ever devised, requiring
minimal skill on the part of the executioner and superhuman acquiescence by the victim.
It was also described as a method of execution created by the Papal States that, ‘competed
with and in some instances surpassed those of other regimes for cruelty.
It was very bloody and would be very painful, but there are comparisons with it and other
methods of execution.
What makes Mazzatello different is the fact that almost anyone could carry it out, practically
hitting someone over the head with a hammer.
Unlike beheading by axe, it did not require any skill at all.
Often the criticism of beheading by axe was that it could go wrong, and the most skilled
executioners could take the head off the victim in one quick blow.
During the Tudor period, there were accounts of executions with axe that did go wrong with
several swings of the axe needed.
But Mazzatello was one of the most brutal execution methods used, with someone being
blundgeoned to death with a mallet.
It would have been bloody, and the crowds would probably be shocked by what they saw.
It was not a quick and easy death for someone, and it was shockingly performed under the
jurisdiction of the Pope.
The last reported use of the execution took place in September 1806, but inside of the
Papal States the more common methods used to execute criminals were hanging and beheading.
But Mazzatello today remains a forgotten but brutal execution method.
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