Executions moved through city streets as participatory parade rituals

Evidence

Executions were frequently preceded by “parades” in which the condemned were pushed, dragged, prodded, or carried through the streets en route to the death site, as in Roman Jerusalem prior to crucifixion or in medieval Prato, where “forgers and heretics were dragged behind carts to be burned alive in the open square” (Sjoberg, 1960:248}. Sometimes the spectators were allowed to participate as when, for example, the condemned was stoned to death. More frequently, their role was limited to that of a rather demanding audience. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 182

Categorization

• XREF: The condemned being dragged through the street is the inverse of the flâneur’s wandering — the street as a theater for displaying identity forcibly, which could anchor the reader’s reading on how urban wandering is a voluntary vs. coerced visibility. — connects to: Lynching crowds voiced praise to God at the moment of death — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 97; Urbanization drove executions out of public view into prisons — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1663