Medieval execution costs in Paris exceeded gibbet maintenance costs

Evidence

A foreign visitor to London in the early 1 700s reported that “[public] executions are frequent in London, they take place every six weeks, and five, ten or fifteen criminals are hanged on these occasions” (quoted in Chancellor, 1907 :62). In medieval France, the “gibbet” was a permanent fixture in every city and town, and after the hanging, the corpse was allowed to remain till it crumbled: … One can easily imagine the strange and melancholy aspect of this monumental gibbet [called Montfaucon and located at the outskirts of Paris] if one thinks of the number of corpses continually attached to it, and which were feasted upon by thousands of crows. On one occasion only it was necessary to replace fifty-two chains, which were useless; and the accounts of the city of Paris prove that the expense of executions was more heavy than that of the maintenance of the gibbet, a fact easy to be understood if one recalls to mind the frequency of capital sentences during the Middle Ages. Montfaucon was used not only for executions, but also for exposing corpses which were brought there from various places of execution in every pan of the country. The mutilated remains of criminals who had been boiled, quartered or beheaded, were also hung there, enclosed in sacks of leather or wicker-work. (Lacroix, 1963 :424) 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}. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 180