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The Roermond witch trial, which took place in and around the city of Roermond in the Spanish Netherlands in 1613, was the largest witch trial in present-day The Netherlands. [1] It caused the death of sixty four people by burning.
Before the 1613 trials there were other trials. They mainly came from peasants who felt they, their family, or their cattle or crops had been bewitched.
They would then go to the accused and demand from them to bless them or their children, animals or crops. This was meant to dispel the bewitching. It did mean that the accused would be held responsible for the bewitching and to dispel would be seen as admittance of guilt, so usually these blessings would be denied. The witch could also start her own slander trial against the accusers, which could prevent a witch trial.
If the witch's honour could not be restored in this way, a formal witch trial would follow. The accusers would have to show evidence to the court. Damages would have to be proved with the help of witnesses, or otherwise the witch would go free. If the accused could find enough witnesses (about four to eight) in his or her defense, the witch would usually be declared not guilty and released. Judgment could depend on the influence or popularity of the accused.
These trials were usually less about the bewitchings and more about the heretical pact with the devil. Torture would only be used if the guilt of the witch was considered proven and all that was needed was a confession. During these trials the accused were not forced to name other witches yet.
In 1572 Roermond had passed from Spanish hands to the hands of Orangists and Protestants, but in 1580 it had been reconquered by the Catholic Spaniards. The mercenaries of both armies had stayed around and were still pillaging the area.
The justices tried to remain sceptical to the peasants' accusations but were powerless against the lynchings in which the mercenaries played a big part. From then on the accused were forced with torture to admit they were heretics who had closed a pact with the devil and had even had sexual intercourse with him and danced during witch's sabbaths together with other witches.
These infamous trials are only known about because of a pamphlet. The actual process papers have been lost. 64 witches were arrested. The charges were: miscarriages, diseases in animals and fish, diseases in crops, and many people losing their livelihood. The witches had allegedly bewitched all these people. The charges no longer came from the peasants, but from the church and government who had investigated the complaints themselves and made the charges.
There was now a true inquisition. The accusations were not only of bewitchings but also of heresy and forming a pact with the devil, and having danced and had intercourse with him. The witches were forced by means of torture to reveal the names of other witches that had partaken in the sabbath. Giving up the names of other witches was the main cause of the large number of trials.
Tryntjen van Zittaert was the first to be arrested, together with her daughter, who purportedly learned witchcraft from her. While playing with children on the street she was said to have showed her crafts to other children.
The 12-year-old girl apparently magically made things appear out of her mouth, like coins. A magistrate noticed and mother and daughter were taken into custody. The girl said she had learned everything from her mother. Both of them were from Sittard, where things like prestidigitation were allowed, but in the more Protestant Roermond this was not tolerated.
Tryntjen was tortured and admitted to killing 41 children with magic, and also three men and seven women, and many crops and animals. She also accused the surgeon Jan van Ool of being a wizard. This Jan van Ool was from Gulik which was also less strictly religious than Roermond. After four days in custody the mother was burnt to death, and the daughter was locked into a convent for the rest of her life.
The ten other witches were taken into custody together with Jan van Ool. He admitted to having tried to convince his wife to seal a pact with the devil, which she refused. He claimed he then became scared she would turn him in, so he cut her into pieces and threw her down a well and told everyone she ran away. He was forced by the devil to kill one patient with magic for every ten he healed. In 16 years he would have killed 150 people. That would mean he would be treating about 100 people a year. During his torture he accused 41 other people of being witches. He was burnt alive.
These 41 alleged witches were also taken into custody. They admitted to having killed children, crippled or diseased people, including their own families. They said they had been forced into these actions by the devil.
Near Straelen the magistrates arrested another 10 alleged witches, who in their turn accused a midwife named Entjen Gillis.
Entjen Gillis confessed to having killed the foetuses of 40 pregnant women, and 150 babies just after birth. She had also supposedly killed their mothers and her husband and children with witchcraft. She was burnt alive.
Altogether there were 63 witches and Jan van Ool, so during a month two people were burnt to the stake every day. The trials were handled in a very short period of time. The magistrates decided this needed to be done because over 600 newborn children and 400 old people, and over 6000 animals were purportedly killed by witchcraft.
The North Berwick witch trials were the trials in 1590 of a number of people from East Lothian, Scotland, accused of witchcraft in the St Andrew's Auld Kirk in North Berwick on Halloween night. They ran for two years, and implicated over 70 people. These included Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell, on charges of high treason.
European belief in witchcraft can be traced back to classical antiquity, when magic and religion were closely entwined. During the pagan era of ancient Rome, there were laws against harmful magic. After Christianization, the medieval Catholic Church began to see witchcraft (maleficium) as a blend of black magic and apostasy involving a pact with the Devil. During the early modern period, witch hunts became widespread in Europe, partly fueled by religious tensions, societal anxieties, and economic upheaval. European belief in witchcraft gradually dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment.
The Basque witch trials of the seventeenth century represent the last attempt at rooting out supposed witchcraft from Navarre by the Spanish Inquisition, after a series of episodes erupted during the sixteenth century following the end of military operations in the conquest of Iberian Navarre, until 1524.
Werewolf witch trials were witch trials combined with werewolf trials. Belief in werewolves developed parallel to the belief in European witches, in the course of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Like the witchcraft trials as a whole, the trial of supposed werewolves emerged in what is now Switzerland during the Valais witch trials in the early 15th century and spread throughout Europe in the 16th, peaking in the 17th and subsiding by the 18th century. The persecution of werewolves and the associated folklore is an integral part of the "witch-hunt" phenomenon, albeit a marginal one, accusations of lycanthropy involved in only a small fraction of witchcraft trials.
The witch trials of Vardø were held in Vardø in Finnmark in Northern Norway in the winter of 1662–1663 and were one of the biggest in Scandinavia. Thirty women were put on trial, accused of sorcery and making pacts with the Devil. One was sentenced to a work house, two tortured to death, and eighteen were burned alive at the stake.
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe is a 1921 anthropological book by Margaret Murray, published at the height of the success of Frazer's Golden Bough. Certain university circles subsequently celebrated Margaret Murray as the expert on western witchcraft, though her theories were widely discredited. Over the period 1929-1968, she wrote the "Witchcraft" article in successive editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
The Witch trial of Nogaredo took place in 1646–1647 in Nogaredo in Italy. It attracted considerable attention and is one of the best documented cases of witch trials in Italy. It led to the death of between eight and ten people.
The Channel Islands Witch Trials were a series of witch trials in the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey between 1562 and 1661.
In early modern Scotland, in between the early 16th century and the mid-18th century, judicial proceedings concerned with the crimes of witchcraft took place as part of a series of witch trials in Early Modern Europe. In the late middle age there were a handful of prosecutions for harm done through witchcraft, but the passing of the Witchcraft Act 1563 made witchcraft, or consulting with witches, capital crimes. The first major issue of trials under the new act were the North Berwick witch trials, beginning in 1590, in which King James VI played a major part as "victim" and investigator. He became interested in witchcraft and published a defence of witch-hunting in the Daemonologie in 1597, but he appears to have become increasingly sceptical and eventually took steps to limit prosecutions.
Witchcraft in Orkney possibly has its roots in the settlement of Norsemen on the archipelago from the eighth century onwards. Until the early modern period magical powers were accepted as part of the general lifestyle, but witch-hunts began on the mainland of Scotland in about 1550, and the Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563 made witchcraft or consultation with witches a crime punishable by death. One of the first Orcadians tried and executed for witchcraft was Allison Balfour, in 1594. Balfour, her elderly husband and two young children, were subjected to severe torture for two days to elicit a confession from her.
The Terrassa witch trials took place in Terrassa, then in the Principality of Catalonia, Spain between 1615 and 1619. Six women of the city of Terrassa were accused of witchcraft and sentenced to death on 27 October 1619.
Sweden was a country with few witch trials compared to other countries in Europe. In Sweden, about four hundred people were executed for witchcraft prior to the last case in 1704. Most of these cases occurred during a short but intense period; the eight years between 1668 and 1676, when the witch hysteria called Det stora oväsendet took place, causing a large number of witch trials in the country. It is this infamous period of intensive witch hunt that is most well known and explored.
The Witch trials in Denmark are poorly documented, with the exception of the region of Jylland in the 1609–1687 period. The most intense period in the Danish witchcraft persecutions was the great witch hunt of 1617–1625, when most executions took place, which was affected by a new witchcraft act introduced in 1617.
The witch trials in Norway were the most intense among the Nordic countries. There seems to be around an estimated 277 to 350 executions between 1561 and 1760. Norway was in a union with Denmark during this period, and the witch trials were conducted by instructions from Copenhagen. The authorities and the clergy conducted the trials using demonology handbooks and used interrogation techniques and sometimes torture. After a guilty verdict, the condemned was forced to expose accomplices and commonly deaths occurred due to torture or prison. Witch trials were in decline by the 1670s as judicial and investigative methods were improved. A Norwegian law from 1687 maintained the death penalty for witchcraft, and the last person to be sentenced guilty of witchcraft in Norway was Birgitte Haldorsdatter in 1715. The Witchcraft Act was formally in place until 1842.
Witch trials in Latvia and Estonia were mainly conducted by the Baltic German elite of clergy, nobility and burghers against the indigenous peasantry in order to persecute Paganism by use of Christian demonology and witchcraft ideology. In this aspect, they are similar to the Witch trials in Iceland. They are badly documented, as many would have been conducted by the private estate courts of the landlords, which did not preserve any court protocols.
The witch trials in the Netherlands were among the smallest in Europe. The Netherlands are known for having discontinued their witchcraft executions earlier than any other European country. The provinces began to phase out capital punishment for witchcraft beginning in 1593. The last trial in the Northern Netherlands took place in 1610.
The witch trials in Poland started later than in most of Europe, not beginning in earnest until the second half of the 17th century, but they also lasted longer than they did elsewhere. Despite being formally banned in 1776, the law was not evenly enforced for the next half century, even after the witch trials had ended or become a rarity in the rest of Europe. It is estimated that between 3,000 and 4,000 people were executed for sorcery in Poland.
The Kastelholm witch trials were witch trials held in Kastelholm, Åland between 1665 and 1668, the witch trials were the biggest witch trials in the history of Finland. It was also almost unique in its character for Finland, where witch trials were normally small, with a single and often male defendant accused of sorcery. In contrast, the Kastelholm witch trials were a mass trial where several women were accused of attending a Witches' Sabbath and making a pact with the Devil in the manner of contemporary continental witchcraft demonology, and in both instances it was almost unique for Finland, where only the Ostrobothnia witch trials of 1674-1678 were similar to it. It resulted in the execution of six women.
Maria Johan was a Spanish alleged witch.
Katherine Campbell was a maidservant accused of theft and witchcraft during the last major witch hunt in Scotland, the Paisley witch trials.