Szőllősy Csilla - Pokrovenszki Krisztián (szerk.): Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis - Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei. C. sorozat 45. (Székesfehérvár, 2017)
Tanulmányok/közlemények - Néprajz - Gelencsér József: Az ítéletvégrehajtó kötele (Jogszokás, néphit, praxis)
Gelencsér József: Az ítéletvégrehajtó kötele (Jogszokás, néphit, praxis) József Gelencsér The Executor’s Rope (Customs, Popular Beliefs, Praxis) Societies, after being organised into a state, created their own justice systems, including punishments. The weight of death penalty has varied from period to period. In the Middle Ages, it was a common capital punishment, but since the formation of civil societies, it has considerably lost ground. In addition to the norms of conventional law and customary law, several customs and — as known to the experts of the cultural history of law — rimais, tools, elements and beliefs have developed and have been applied in relation to the taking of life as a punishment. As a centuries-old means used to carry out death sentences, the rope used for execution by hanging was particularly likely to become the subject of certain beliefs and customs. In this context, it is necessary to also mention the people who used this means, i.e. executioners (also called hangmen). The people attributed magical power to the rope of a hanged man. For this reason, a custom was created: the practice employed when taking possession, or even ownership, of this object. The rope could come from a person hanged as punishment or from a suicide, or could have been used as a means of murder. Its acquisition could take place lawfully, by purchase or by receiving it as a gift, or unlawfully, such as by theft or by committing a criminal offence. It was also customary that if the rope was torn, the convict could be granted clemency. However, judges did not apply the custom of clemency consistently. In addition to beliefs and customs, a lot of linguistic and terminological phenomena are linked to the term ‘rope’. In the latest period of the practice of execution by hanging, a group of phenomena, which since then has been gradually losing ground (one may as well say, has been disappearing), namely the execution itself and the rope of the executioner, could be studied interdisciplinarily, from the point of view of multiple academic disciplines. In this way, examples of the complexity of certain elements and phenomena of the cultural history of law and ‘folk law’ could be presented. 393
