He used a new, sharp sword when executing his friend Jan Jessenius, an educated man who performed the first public autopsy in the Czech Lands.

(Although the original sentencing was for Jessenius's body to be quartered before beheading, the emperor changed the punishment.)

[citation needed] A total of 47 men were sentenced to death (27 in Bohemia and 20 in Moravia) but the unprecedented cruelty of the Prague executions stopped the Moravian “sequel”.

The executions lasted 5 hours and guns and drum rolls drowned out the final words of each of the convicted men.

Votive candles (a method of commemorating the dead in the Czech Republic) are put on each cross every year on the anniversary of the mass executions.

Mydlář is the central character of a 19th-century novel by Josef Svátek based on his life, The Memoirs of a Prague Executioner.

Mydlář is featured on the thrash metal band Sodom’s debut EP In The Sign Of Evil.