"One afternoon in May 1573, a 19-year-old man named Frantz Schmidt stood in the backyard of his father's house in the German state of Bavaria, preparing to behead a stray dog with a sword. He'd recently graduated from 'decapitating' inanimate pumpkins to practicing on live animals. If he passed this final stage, Schmidt would be considered ready to start his job, as an executioner of people." Source: Live Science (2019).
"We know the details of this morbid scene because Schmidt meticulously chronicled his life as an executioner, writing a series of diaries that painted a rich picture of this profession during the sixteenth century. His words provided a rare glimpse of the humanity behind the violence, revealing a man who took his work seriously and often felt empathy for his victims. But what's more, Schmidt wasn't necessarily all that unusual; historical anecdotes reveal that the prevailing stereotype of the hooded, blood-spattered, brutish executioner falls far short of the truth."
I'm not sure how accurate all of this is.
Curiously, Schmidt also worked as a healer on the side. According to Slate (2013), he eventually became a "locally established and respected figure," but an executioner's social position back then was ambiguous, to put it mildly:
"Legally empowered to torture, maim, and kill suspected or convicted criminals, the professional executioner is one of the more evocative and charged symbols of pre-modern Europe's otherness [Note: "other" in this sense is a critical-theory buzzword]. An ubiquitous and integral part of the European social fabric well into the modern era, these human 'weapons of justice' were simultaneously viewed with suspicion and disdain by the very communities they served, formally marginalized as members of the 'dishonourable trades', a delimited menagerie that included slaughterhouse workers and gravediggers. And yet 'Meister Franz', as he was popularly, endearingly known, remained a revered member of the local establishment, widely respected for his piety and steadfastness." (Wikipedia)
Schmidt was chopping heads off during the late medieval period. Next video briefly describes the executioner's job under the Tudors. I'm not sure how accurate this is.