Beheading

It was in use among the Greeks and Romans, and the former, as Xenophon says at the end of the second book of the Anabasis, regarded it as a most honorable form of death. So did the Romans, by whom it was known as decollatio or capitis ampulatio. The head was laid on a block placed in a pit dug for the purpose, in the case of a military offender, outside the intrcnchments, in civil cases outside the city walls, near the porta decuinatw. Before execution the criminal was tied to a stake and whipped with rods. In earlier years an axe was used; afterwards a sword, which was considered a more honorable instrument of death, and was used in the case of citizens (Dig. 48, 19, 28). It was with a sword that Ciceros head was struck off by a common soldier. The beheading of John the Baptist proves that the tetrarch Herod had adopted from his suzerain th~ Roman mode of execution. Suetonius (Calig. C. 32) states that Caligula kept a soldier, an artist in beheading, who in his presence decapitated prisoners fetched indiscriminately for that purpose from the gaols.

Beheading is said to have been introduced into England from Normandy by William the Conqueror. The first person to suffer was Waltheof, earl of Northumberland, in 1076. An ancient MS. relating to the earls of Chester states that the serjeants or bailiffs of the earls had power to behead any malefactor or thief, and gives an account of the presenting of several heads of felons at the castle of Chester by the earls serjeant. It appears thatthe custom also attached to the barony of Malpas. In a roll of3 Edward II., beheading is called the custom of Cheshire(Lysons Cheshire, p. 299, from Harl.

MS. 2009 fol. 34b). The liberty of Hardwick, in Yorkshire, was granted the privilegeof beheading thieves. (See GUILLOTINE.) But with the exceptions above stated beheading was usually reserved as the mode of executing offenders of high rank. Fromthe 15th century onward the victims of the axe include some ofthe highest personages in the kingdom: Archbishop Scrope(1405); duke of Buckingham (1483); Catherine Howard (1542); earl of Surrey (1547); duke of Somerset (1552); duke of Northumberland (553);

Lady Jane Grey (1554); Lord Guildford Dudley (554); Mary queen of Scots (1587); earl of Essex(1601); Sir Walter Raleigh (1618); earl of Strafford (1641); Charles I. (1649); Lord William Russell (1683); duke of Monmouth (1685); earl of Derwentwater (1716); earl of Kenmure (1716); earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino(1746); and the list closes with Simon, Lord Lovat, who (9th of April 1747) was the last person ,beheaded in England.

The execution of Anne Boleyn was carried out not with the axe,but with a sword, and by a French headsman specially broughtover from Calais. In 1644

MUCH MUCH MORE at:
http://2.1911encyclopedia.org/B/BE/BEHEADING.htm

or whoever that was.

Beheading as a method of execution was considered a merciful one that spared pain and suffering. Thats why it was reserved for the affluent.

The reason was simple. Blades of the time were hard to keep sharp. This is why the Guillotine was invented. It didn't HAVE to be sharp. The method of execution for the common man was hanging. In Rome, Crucifixion (the most excrutiating) was reserved for really bad apples.

What was done to Nick Berg was NOT beheading. It was not quick and painless. The idea is to make a single cut to severe EVERYTHING. This is why the condemened were always supposed to forgive their executioner. He could make your passing quick or excrutiating.

Nick's head was sawed off with a Boowey knife. This is why Arabs are so aghast. One would think a member of Delta force could afford a good sword.