Witch hunts. When you say the word, a number of situations come to mind. The Salem witch trials in Massachusetts in the 1600s might be one. Or maybe the word makes you think of Matthew Hopkins, who called himself the chief witch hunter during the English Civil War. At a push, you may have heard of the Pendle witches who were tried in Lanasher during the reign of James I.
Their trial was a big part of what led to Salem. These witch trials are amongst the best known, most welldocumented examples of the persecutions of witches. But those are only the very top of the ocean. During the so-called witch craze, which happened in Europe and North America from the 1400s to the 1800s and even later, thousands of men, women, and children died.
There was religious fear, sexual and social hysteria, jealousy, suspicion, or these cases were just a cynical way to make money. A lot of them are missing from the report, but a lot more live on. They aren’t as wellknown as the more popular one, but they are just as shocking or sad. These less well-known witch cases help show how the witch craze spread in the early modern world. Alice Kitler.
Before the 1300s, witchcraft, also known as malipium, was a small non-religious crime. The traditional Catholic Church didn’t recognize it because they were happy with their place and didn’t believe in the power of superstitions. This changed when the church had a change of heart in the 1400s. There were more and more different ways of understanding Christianity which questioned the power of the organized church.
Out of the blue, anything not in line with what the church taught became an error. That included being a witch. Alice Kitler was tried for witchcraft as a heretic outside of Germany in 1324 in Kilkenny in the south of Ireland. She was also the first woman to be accused of getting witchcraft by having sex with a devil.
But Alice wasn’t a poor, sad outsider like many witches did in the past. She was related to rich and powerful Flemish merchants who moved to Kilkenny and made it their home. The trouble was that Alice got even richer through four marriages that were all very good for her. When Alice married William Outlaw, a local banker the first time they had a son named William Outlaw Jr. and Alice was very wealthy after his death. William Jr. went on to work with Alice in business and become mayor of Kilkenny. Alice got married three more times during this time. After her second and third husbands died, Alice inherited more money and a bunch of angry stepchildren who thought their stepmother had stolen their inheritances.
By 1324, things were really bad when Alice lost her last husband, Sir John Leo. These kids along with Alice’s other stepchildren teamed up with Sir John’s kids and went to Bishop Richard de Ladre. They said Alice used maleficium to kill their dads. At Avignon, Dere was a member of the royal court and his patron.
Pope John the 22nd really did fear witchcraft. But malipium was no longer just a crime of the flesh. It was also a sin. This kind of charge was good for the church. Alice was charged with blasphemy by DeRaa. Alice pulled strings to slow things down. From then on, no one heard from her again. She ran away to either Flanders or England.
Her trial went on without her, though. Several of her slaves were caught by the Inquisition and abused. They admitted that they had used satanic magic at the request of their mistress. One of the demons, Artison, told the court that Alice had been with demons and that he had taught her how to fly. Instead of being sent to prison, most of those who were charged and found guilty were freed on condition that they did penance and paid the church.
Petranilla Deidia, Alice’s maid, was sent to jail. Though on November 3rd, 1324, she was burned because she was a witch. Most victims of early witchcraft trials were not necessarily women. Valet witch trials. The southwest Swiss canton of Valet is now better known for its wine, tourists, and the Matterhorn, which is a famous landmark in the area.
During the years 1428 to 1436, however, the area became famous as the site of the first organized witch hunt into Europe. The trials took place over 8 years and happened 50 years before other big European witch trials. At least 367 people died during the trials. A lot of political and religious unrest was going on at the time of the trials.
In Valet in the early 1400s, the Waldensian cult was spreading. So, the Inquisition set up a base at Loausan on Lake Geneva to help with law enforcement. In addition, Valet had just come out of a major revolt. Between 1415 and 1420, people in the area rose up against the powerful Rar family.
Tensions were still high after the event, and the government knew they needed to show themselves again, especially with people living in rural areas. Both issues were solved by the witch trials in Valet. A charge of witchcraft in Valet was valid as long as there was public talk or slander of three or four neighbors.
In August 1428, people from seven different valet district came to the authorities in the municipality of Lok with charges of murder, heresy, sorcery, and making deals with the devil. Most of the people who were accused were guys from poor families, but some were educated and onethird were women. The first hearing started on August 7th, 1428.
When the accused was being tortured, they started to tell stories that mixed evil magic with forbidden practice. At night, the witches got together in caves where the devil taught them as if he were a teacher. in exchange for not going to mass or confession, which were practices similar to the Waldenzian heresy.
The congregation’s unholy boss gave them special powers. There were people who said they had a magic cream that let them fly on chairs. Others said they had the power to change into dogs. Most of them, though, said the devil gave them the power to curse and kill their neighbors. Everything in the valet area was affected by the hate crimes.
100 to 200 people were put to death in 15 years. Some had their heads cut off, but most of them burned to death. There was a twist to this very sad death. They were tied to a ladder and had a bag of gunpowder around their necks. The ladder was then thrown into the fire which made the powder go off.
If luck was on their side, death came quickly. The rise of Protestantism caused such witch trials to spread and increase. The Vizenstein witch trials in Europe in the 1600s. The Protestant Reformation caused a lot of religious unrest as Catholics and people who were against the reforms fought for control of the people’s hearts and thoughts.
This rivalry happened a lot when politics and society were unsure. The witch craze that had been slowly picking up speed across Europe all of a sudden went off. Germany was the site of some of the largest and worst witch trials starting in the middle of the 16th century onward. The first one was in Vizensteig in 1562 and 1563. Visenstein was a pretty normal town in southern Germany.
The town was built around a Benedicting Abbey in the 9th century and it stayed Catholic until 1555. Then Count Olrich I 17th of Helenstein who was in charge of the town brought in Lutheran Protestantism. So people in Visensteig were split into two groups. those who followed the new religion and those who stuck to the old Catholic ways.
In the meantime, the town had some bad luck which reached its peak on August 3rd, 1562. A huge hail storm hit Vegansteag and did a lot of harm. Count Olrich finally gave up after this storm. He said that he thought Vizensteig had been harmed by witches. Olrich did something right away. A lot of women were caught by him and Vizensteig’s Lutheran leader, Leyonhard Kulman, agreed with him.
The women were beaten until they admitted to being part of a bad group called a coven. They also blamed people from Essingan, which is close by. Because of this, the police arrested three people from Essingan, but they let them go just as quickly. Outraged by this lack of care, Count Olrich stepped up the searches in Visensteig to make up for it.
Visensteig’s Lutheran leaders arrested and killed 40 more women right away. In December 1562, Olrich gave the order to kill 20 more people. Because of how unusual what happened at Vizensteig was, a short book was written with the title, the true and horrifying deeds and activities of 63 witches who have been executed by fire in Visensteig.
Johan Va’s of the tricks of demon on the other hand was the answer to this book. Vaia used the Visenstein cases to show that the way witches were treated was wrong. In the 1600s, the book was a huge hit. By 1583, it had been printed six times. It did not stop the persecutions though by either Protestants or Catholic.
The cases at Vizensteig were the first of four major witch trials in Germany. They were part of a trend that happened all over Europe. Nor was Visensteag the only trial to make the popular press. Mother styles. In England and Wales, witchcraft became a separate crime for the first time in 1542 when a nervous Henry VIII added it to the law book.
The act was revoked in 1547, but it was brought back in 1563 in a much harsher form. When Elizabeth I, Henry’s daughter, was on royal journey, wax figures of her were found and scared her. That was when witchcraft was once again a royal issue. In this kind of mood, the British witch trials turned into news stories that people wanted to read.
An early British witchcraft book called a rehearsal both strong and true of heinous and horrible acties committed by Elizabeth Style alias rockingham, Mother Dutton, Mother Duel, Mother Margaret, fou notorious witches was written by an unknown author. The book, which came out in 1579, told the story of Elizabeth Styles, a 65-year-old widow from Windsor who had been charged with witchcraft the previous year.
Styles was a mean-spirited beggar who was known for yelling at people who turned her down for money. The fact that she kept a rat as a pet added to her strange image. One day, the owner of a nearby inn said no to Styles’s requests for food. Soon after that, he got sick. The landlord tried to break the spell because he thought the old woman had cursed him.
He then went up to Styles and scratched her until she bled. If she was the witch who was cursed, this would definitely break the spell. The host got better after the blood flowed. Mother Styles was caught and put in jail. Styles told the police that she and three other old outcasts named Mother Margaret, Mother Dutton, and Mother Devel had done image magic, which meant making a doll of the person they wanted to hurt and then stabbing it with pins.
The women were also connected to a priest named Father Rosy Mundday, who was said to be able to take on the shape and likeness of any beast whatsoever he will. After being tried, Styles and her helpers were found guilty and hanged on February 26th, 1579. The mysterious figure of Father Rosimunda helped connect the women’s witchcraft with the equally questionable popish superstitions of Catholicism.
However, religion was not the only reason they were being put on trial because women were being linked to witches more and more, especially women who didn’t have a set place in society. People who were old, disabled, or on the outside were at risk, especially those who only had pets to keep them company. There is a book that tells the story of Mother Styles that helped make the witch into the figure we see today.
Women who challenged the status quo were also at risk. Gwen Fur Ellis. Gwen Fur Ellis was the first person in Wales to be killed for being a witch in 1594. However, it looks like her real crime was crossing a social line. Gwen lived in Beta’s Denbisha and was 42 years old. She had been married three times and been widowed twice.
Her job was as a knitter. On the side, though, she did some mending. Gwen was up to no good with her business. She helped people and farm animals get better by giving them herbs or magic. She only asked for food and wool for her loom in return. Before 1594, no one said anything bad about what Gwen did. But in 1594, wealthy Thomas Mustin said that Gwen had put a curse on his house.
Glaude Jane Conway of Mal Hall in Conway was linked to Gwen. Mustin did not get along with Jane. To get back at Conway, he said that Gwen had stayed in his house one night while he was away and put the curse there as a way of getting even. Gwen said she didn’t leave any charms at Godath, but she did say she healed people and used charms.
She even read some to her interrogators to show them that they were safe. Someone started by saying, “In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit of God.”
Then it said, “And the three Marys and the three holy altars, the blessed son of grace, and by the stones and the herbs which the son of grace bestowed with their virtue, so that they might defend thee, the sinner who suffered as Christ did.”
It was no surprise that this obvious mix of Catholicism and older views didn’t help Gwen much. She was brought to court in October 1594. Strangely, the song that started the affair never showed up as proof against her. But some neighbors did, suddenly speaking out against Gwen’s mean behavior when they hadn’t before. One said that Gwen had killed her son by making him crazy.
Even though the original charge was dropped, this was enough to prove Gwen guilty and hang her. On the other hand, it looks like Gwen’s real crime wasn’t witchcraft, but having illegal information. Mustin seems to have been seeing Jane Conway without her permission, and Gwen knew about it. The charm is no longer there, which suggests that Mustin faked it so that Gwen would never find out his secret.
By the 17th century, the witch craze had spread further north to Scandinavia. Vardo witch trials. Christians thought that the north was dangerous. People thought it was the home of the prince of darkness because it was dark, cold, and scary. The Finnmark in Norway was very far away on the edge and the northernmost point of Norway.
It was also the home of the native Sammy people whose continued use of old traditions scared the Christian leaders. This set the stage for the first of 70 years of witch trials in the Vado Kyborg area of the Finnmark in 1621. A huge storm blew up around the Veranga fjord on December 24th, 1617, right before the trial.
It felt like the wind was ripped out of a bag when it came. That Christmas Eve, most of the men who lived in the nearby fishing towns of Kyberg and Vardo were out fishing. 23 boats were out on the fjord. When the storm stopped, only five came back. 40 men drowned, killing a lot of people because Vardo and Kyberg only had about 150 people living between them.
In 1620, rules against sorcery that were passed in Denmark and Norway in 1617 finally made it to the Finnmark. Germans and Scots who worked for the local government had already heard about the witch trials happening in other parts of Europe. These officials jumped on the laws with joy. They already had doubts about the small towns in Finnmark which were home to both Christian Norwegian and pagan Sami.
So in January 1621 people who were thought to be witches were questioned. Mari Yorgen Statata a woman from Kyberg was the first person questioned being forced. Mari said that the devil had turned her into a witch in December 1620. Then she was turned into a raven and flew to a meeting the group on the Lidhorn mountain which is near Bergen in southern Norway.
Kirsty Soren Data, the leader of her coven and the Danish wife of a rich local merchant named Anders Johansson was with her. In that place, Mari met witches from Kilberg, Vardo and other nearby towns. Everyone agreed that they were the ones who made the big storm happen. Then there were more arrests. El Kut’s data, one of the people who was accused, almost drowned in the water before she could explain how the witches caused the storm.
Someone else talked about how to tie three knots in a fishing line. The witches then spat on the knots to loosen them, which let the wind blow freely. When Kirsty Sorenstatter got back to Vardo from a trip to Bergen, she was also arrested and had to admit that she was a witch. Kirsty caught fire on April 28th, 1621.
But even though Kirst blamed a number of other people in the area, including the sheriff Bertell Hendrickson, no one else was arrested. Most witch trials had ulterior motives. However, not all were such blatant fitups as our next example. Father Urban Grandier and the Louden possessions. It was Father Urban Grandier’s job to serve the people of S Pierre Dumar in Luda, France.
Grandier quickly became well-liked, especially among the women of Luda, with whom he had several affairs. He was wealthy, smart, well-connected, and a bit of an outcast. But he also had enemies including the bishop of Poatier. When a charge of immorality failed to get Grandier fired in 1630, the bishop started to look for other ways to get rid of the annoying priest.
Jean Deange, the mother superior of the Ursuline women at Lud asked Grandier to become their confessor in August 1632. He said no. Once a month, the nuns started to behave in a strange way. They had sexy dreams all the time, spoke in tongues, and had violent, sexually suggestive fits. Possession was discovered, and Grandier was found to be the cause of it.
Granier was scared by the case that was being made against him. So, he called everyone he knew. The investigation was put on hold when the Archbishop of Bordeaux’s doctor said the women were not possessed, but just crazy. The bishop of Poier didn’t give up, so he used his best card, Cardinal Rishelier.
Grandier had once hurt the feelings of the king’s prime minister by making fun of him in a song. Rishelier got what he deserved now. He told a royal committee to look into whether Grandier was a witch. Grandier was caught. He was shaved all over and looked for witch’s marks all over. To get him to admit he was beaten and both of his legs were broken in the boot.
Even though it hurt and embarrassed him, Grandier kept saying he was innocent. During the hearing, some of the nuns took back what they had said about him, but the defense said this was just Satan’s plan. Grandier was found to have used magic. On August 18th, 1634, he was burned in public in Lud. After the trial, it was discovered that the evil pact used as proof was written by Jean Desange.
The nuns had also been taught how to act like they were possessed. Some people also said that the things were faked on the bishop of Poatier’s orders. As it turns out, Grandier was set up on purpose. However, there was also a sexual obsession part to the story. It is said that Jean Desange dreamed of having sex with Grandier. Many psychologists now think that Grandier’s items were actually signs of hysteria caused by repressed sexuality.
They were used against him by the authorities who thought he was a threat. However, by the 18th century, witchcraft was becoming less credible. The last indictment for witchcraft in England. In the town of Leicester on August 4th, 1717, the last witchcraft charges were brought before a normal English court.
25 neighbors of Jane Clark in the town of Wigston Magna along with her son Joseph and daughter Mary dragged her before the court because they thought they were witches. The locals said the clarks were witches who were bothering them and making people sick, including Mary Hatchings, who died. The witnesses told the court, which was led by Justice Ashb, that the witch’s victims had seizures that didn’t make sense.
The fact that they started coughing up dirt and stones made it even more magical that they were sick. The witches didn’t let their victims sleep at night because they showed up in the form of people or animals. People in the town had to ask a local white witch, Thomas Wood, for help when the local church minister couldn’t break the curse.
By boiling the victim’s pee, Wood tried to break the curse and find the witches. The strange cure he used brought the Clark’s shadows into the room where they glared at him and then disappeared up the chimney. As soon as the Clark family was found, a group of angry locals attacked them. To try to break the curse, they were stripped naked and looked for witches marks.
They were also bled. After deciding to catch the Wigston witches, the locals decided that swimming them in the village pond would be the best way to prove that they were witches. Each of the clarks sank like a cork or an empty barrel. But Judge Ashb wasn’t persuaded, so the case was thrown out.
Following 20 years, witchcraft was no longer against the law in England. However, it was some 70 years before the last execution for witchcraft occurred in Europe. Anna Goldie, the last witch executed in Europe. Anna Gold’s life was sad and full of bad luck. Born into a poor family in the town of Senvald in the Saxs district of Zurich.
She worked as a maid in different village homes from the time she was 15. It was a hard but good life for Anna until she got pregnant at age 31. The father was a hired gun who left her before the baby was born. Being a poor single mom must have been very hard, but the baby died of suffocation on its first night of life.
Anna was said to have killed her child. She was found guilty and put on the public pillary. After that, she was given 6 years of house arrest. Anna did get away though. Glaris is a separate canton that is a day’s walk away. There, her punishment didn’t matter. There, Anna kept working as a maid in a number of rich homes.
Johan Yakob Chudy was the judge of the village of Mollis in 1780. When she was 46 years old, she got her last job as a maid for his family. One of Chud’s children woke up one morning and found needles in a milk drink that Anna had made. Anna was fired right away. Because of the rank of the Chudy family, she couldn’t get another job and had to leave the area.
18 days after Anna left the Chudy home, Judge Chudy’s 8-year-old daughter started throwing up pins. When the judge said that his former maid cursed his daughter, Anna became the main suspect. It looks like Chudy had an affair with Anna, who was still pretty, but he was afraid she would tell anyone and hurt his image. Because of how the judges were set up, Anna was tried even though there was no proof against her.
She rejected the charges, but after being beaten, she finally admitted that she had cursed the girl with the help of the devil. So, Anna Goldie was cut off her head with a sword in Glaris. On June 13th, 1782, she was the last known witch to be put to death in Europe. However, even as late as the 19th century, witches were still being pursued.
The Heingham Witchcraft case. Some of the last signs of the witch hunts that killed so many people in Europe by the 1800s were almost gone. Or did they? According to an article in the Berry and Norwich Post on March 15th, 1864, people in the English village of Hedingham still believed in witches and curses.
It was a theory that would kill one specific resident, but no one else. He lived in a small mud hut near Hedingham and was about 80 years old and dumb and deaf. No one knew Dumy’s real name or where he was from, but some thought he might be French. He was a strange but harmless person who talked with strange body language and wore more layers of clothes as it got warmer.
Dummy read fortunes for a living as he went around the neighborhood with three or four small dogs. Some people laughed at his quirks. Other than that, most people were nice to him. Dummy often stayed at a nearby inn that was run by a Mr. Smith. On one evening, Dummy chose to stay the night and told Emma Smith, the landlord’s wife, that he was ready to do so. Emma said no.
Dummy used his stick to show that he didn’t like it and then left. But not long after that, Emma got sick. She started to think that Dummy had cursed her. Smith thought he was the only one who could heal her, just like many others have done over the years. But Dummy either couldn’t or wouldn’t help, no matter how many times she asked.
Emma tried one last time on August 3rd, 1863 to get Dummy to break what she thought was his curse. The couple got a lot of attention from people in the area who pushed Dummy around and knocked him to the ground. Then Emma Smith hit and kicked the old man and then pulled him toward the nearby brook. As she went, she was heard to cry out, “You old devil, you serve me out. Now I will serve you out.”
When they got to the pond, Smith and Samuel Stammers, a local carpenter, tried to swim Dummy. Stammers was only pulled out when someone told them that Dummy would die in a minute if they didn’t. Dummy passed away on September 4th, 1863 after being soaked, tired, and frightened. The witch hunters were punished this time, though.
Smith and Stammers were given 6 months of hard work for their part in Dumy’s death.
