Mazzatello: crushing of the head with AXE (abbreviated mazza) was a method of capital punishment used by the Papal States from the late 18th century to 1870.
The method was named after the implement used in the execution: a large, long-handled mallet or pole-ax. The condemned would be led to a scaffold in a public square of Rome, accompanied by a priest (the confessor of the condemned); the platform also contained a coffin and the masked executioner, dressed in black.
A prayer would first be said for the condemned’s soul. Then, the mallet would be raised, and swung in the air to gain momentum, and then brought down on the head of the prisoner, similar to a contemporary method of slaughtering cattle in stockyards.
Because this procedure could merely stun the condemned rather than killing him instantly, the throat of the prisoner would then be slit with a knife.
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The Robe and Axe of a Christian Executioner called Giovanni Battista Bugatti whose job was to execute people on behalf of the Pope for the state of the church.
Executioner Giovanni Battista Bugatti was given a total of 516 assignments by the Pope.
The method of execution was by the axe 🪓.
When he retired, the Pope paid paid him a regular pension.
He worked in the ministry of Grace and Justice of the papal State...
The people executed in the Papal States under the government of the Popes or during the 1810–1819 decade of French rule. Although capital punishment in Vatican City was legal from 1929 to 1969, no executions took place in that time. This list does not include people executed by other authorities of the Roman Catholic Church or those executed by Inquisitions other than the Roman Inquisition, or those killed in wars involving the Papal States, or those killed extrajudicially.
Most executions were related to the punishment of civil crimes committed within the Papal States, with the condemned convicted within the civil courts of the Papal States; for example, in 1585, Pope Sixtus V initiated a "zero tolerance" crackdown on crime, which resulted in more severed heads collected on the Castel Sant'Angelo bridge than melons in the Roman markets.The best records are from the tenure of Giovanni Battista Bugatti, the executioner of the Papal States between March 22, 1796 and August 17, 1861, who recorded the name of the condemned, the crime, and the location of the execution for each of the 516 "justices" he performed for the governments, papal or French. Bugatti's list ends: "So ends the long list of Bugatti. May that of his successor be shorter".
Before 1816, the most common methods of execution were the axe and noose (with burning at the stake used in high profile instances); after 1816, the guillotine (installed by the French during their control of Rome) became the norm.[However, after 1816, two other methods—the mazzatello (crushing of the head with
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