Executioner’s House

Local oral tradition labels house no. 14 Rua de Stº António as the “Executioner’s House”. It is the popular conviction that the executioners, or torturers, of the Monsanto court lived here. In other words, it was home to those who executed prisoners condemned to death or who applied other sentences of corporal punishment and the acts of torture for extracting confessions from the accused. As it was a despicable duty, the recruiting was commonly carried out among those who were sentenced to death or to exile as a commutation of their sentence. The fact there is a lintel dated 1601 (?) on which is engraved a skull and crossbones, flanked by the words in Latin “cogita mortem” (which can be translated as think about death), was the basis for this interpretation. Thus, the macabre iconography disparagingly marked the house within the anonymity of the urban landscape. But this unusual, and so far enigmatic piece, clearly out of its original location, therefore repurposed, refers rather to a religious setting (liturgical or funerary), which in no way takes away from its historic and cultural interest.