The Val Camonica witch trials were two large witch trials which took place in Val Camonica in Italy, in 1505–1510 and 1518–1521.
The best source for the trials is considered to be the Venetian Marin Sanudo, who was the chronicler to the Council of Ten from 1496 to 1536. The documentary evidence was destroyed by order of Giacinto Gaggia, the bishop of Brescia, to prevent it from being used by the anticlerical opposition.
The region had not undergone full conversion to Christianity until the 5th century, and thus even by the 8th century, the area was still suspect for paganism. For example, after a ban on the practice promulgated in 724, Liutprand, King of the Lombards, feared the area would rebel. In the laws of 1498, stern laws are issued against all "Devilish heresy". In 1499, it was accused of having participated in a "Black mass", and it was reported to be common with such "depravity" in the area.
In 1433, witches were burnt in South Tirol, 1460 in Valtellina, and in 1485, the Inquisitor Antonio da Brescia had strongly criticized the ongoing heresy and witchcraft in Val Camonica in the Venetian Senate. On 23 June 1505, seven women and one man were burned in Cemmo in Val Camonica, and in 1510, witches were burned who were accused of having caused the drought by magic: 60 women and men confessed having injured people, animals and land with their spells, caused fires with help of Satan: "The whole world mourns for the sad lack of faith in God and the saints in Valcamonica. In four places in Valcamonica, c. sixty four people men and women, have been executed, and many more are placed in prison..."
The second trial occurred after the peace of Noyon with France. During the first months of 1518, inquisitors were stationed in the parishes of the Val Camonica; Don Bernardino de Grossis in Pisogne, Don James de Gablani in Rogno, Don Valerio de Boni in Breno, Don Donato de Savallo in Cemmo and Don Battista Capurione in Edolo, all under the bishop Inquisitor Peter Durante, who presided at the central court of the Inquisition at Cemmo. In July 1518, more than sixty women and men were burned at the stake.
In a letter from August 1518, an official, Josef di Orzinuovi, reported of the trial to Ludovico Quercini. He reported that several people had been burned for witch craft after spreading the plague by magic. They were also accused of causing thunder and lightning storms.
The same year, one Carlo Miani, a venetian nobleman, wrote to Dr Zorzi: "Some women in Breto have confessed to have spread powder from Satan through the air, which caused sickness and the death of 200 people..."
In 1573, it was reported that Christianity was still weak in the area; few fulfilled their religious responsibilities, women went to church without covering their hair with a veil, people danced on holidays. In 1580, the church again instigated a visit to make the inhabitants more Catholic. A lot of old Pagan cults and habits were still alive there. On The Tonale mountain, the "witches" were reputed to meet at July. This time, however, the visit of the church did not lead to executions.
The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, but convictions of unrepentant heresy were handed over to the secular courts, which generally resulted in execution or life imprisonment. The Inquisition had its start in the 12th-century Kingdom of France, with the aim of combating religious deviation, particularly among the Cathars and the Waldensians. The inquisitorial courts from this time until the mid-15th century are together known as the Medieval Inquisition. Other groups investigated during the Medieval Inquisition, which primarily took place in France and Italy, include the Spiritual Franciscans, the Hussites, and the Beguines. Beginning in the 1250s, inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order, replacing the earlier practice of using local clergy as judges.
The Malleus Maleficarum, usually translated as the Hammer of Witches, is the best known treatise purporting to be about witchcraft. It was written by the German Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer and first published in the German city of Speyer in 1486. Some describe it as the compendium of literature in demonology of the 15th century. Kramer blamed women for his own lust, and presented his views as the Church's position. The book was condemned by top theologians of the Inquisition at the Faculty of Cologne for recommending unethical and illegal procedures, and for being inconsistent with Catholic doctrines of demonology.
A witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. The classical period of witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America took place in the Early Modern period or about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 executions. The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In other regions, like Africa and Asia, contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, and official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon today.
Berzo Inferiore is an Italian comune of 2,316 inhabitants in Val Camonica, province of Brescia, in Lombardy, northern Italy.
Bienno is an Italian comune in Val Camonica, province of Brescia, Lombardy, classed as one of the five most beautiful villages of Italy by the Council of Tourism of the Association of Italian Municipalities (ANCI).
Breno[ˈbreːno] is an Italian comune of 4,986 inhabitants in Val Camonica, province of Brescia, in Lombardy.
Pisogne is a comune of 8156 inhabitants in the province of Brescia, in Lombardy, Italy.
Val Camonica is one of the largest valleys of the central Alps, in eastern Lombardy, Italy. It extends about 90 kilometres (56 mi) from the Tonale Pass to Corna Trentapassi, in the commune of Pisogne near Lake Iseo. It has an area of about 1,335 km2 (515 sq mi) and 118,323 inhabitants.
The Camuni or Camunni were an ancient population located in Val Camonica during the Iron Age ; the Latin name Camunni was attributed to them by the authors of the 1st century. They are also called ancient Camuni, to distinguish them from the current inhabitants of the valley. The Camunni were among the greatest producers of rock art in Europe; their name is linked to the famous rock engravings of Valcamonica.
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 rock drawings in Valcamonica are located in the Province of Brescia, Italy, and constitute the largest collections of prehistoric petroglyphs in the world. The collection was recognized by UNESCO in 1979 and was Italy's first recognized World Heritage Site. UNESCO has formally recognized more than 140,000 figures and symbols, but new discoveries have increased the number of catalogued incisions to between 200,000 and 300,000. The petroglyphs are spread on all surfaces of the valley, but concentrated in the areas of Darfo Boario Terme, Capo di Ponte, Nadro, Cimbergo and Paspardo.
Evidence of magic use and witch trials were prevalent in the Early Modern period, and Inquisitorial prosecution of witches and magic users in Italy during this period was widely documented. Primary sources unearthed from Vatican and city archives offer insights into this phenomenon, and notable Early Modern microhistorians such as Guido Ruggiero, Maria Sofia Messana, Angelo Buttice and Carlo Ginzburg, have defined their careers detailing this topic. In addition, Giovanni Romeo's monograph Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell'Italia della Controriforma (1990) was considered pioneering and marked an important step forward in inquisitorial and witchcraft studies dealing with early modern Italy.In last 25 years a jurist and researcher on trials against witches, add many informations: the names of people involved in witchcraft, their jobs, the meetings. Monia Montechiarini in 'Stregoneria: Crimine Femminile', 'Streghe, eretici e benandanti del Friuli Venezia Giulia' and 'Streghe, Avvelenatrici e Cortigiane di Roma' discovered new secrets.
The Pieve of Saint Syrus is a church in the village of Cemmo, a frazione of Capo di Ponte, at 410 meters above sea level. It was one of the pievi, or isolated churches with baptistries, among which the territory of Val Camonica was divided. The complex, which stands on a ridge overlooking the river Oglio, can be reached via a staircase built in the 1930s.
The Pelagians were a lay confraternity founded in the church of Santa Pelagia in Milan by the seventeenth century Giacomo Filippo di Santa Pelagia, an Italian lay mystic. Although initially approved of by Roman Catholic authorities, the group was later condemned for alleged heretical practices associated with Quietism.
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.
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 and given attention.
In England, witch trials were conducted from the 15th century until the 18th century. They are estimated to have resulted in the death of perhaps 500 people, 90 percent of whom were women. The witch hunt was as its most intense stage during the English Civil War (1642–1651) and the Puritan era of the mid-17th century.
The Witch trials in the Italian states of present-day Italy are a complicated issue. Witch trials could be managed by a number of different secular courts as well as by the Roman Inquisition, and documentation has been only partially preserved in either case. A further complication is the fact that Italy was politically split between a number of different states during the time period in which the witch trials occurred; and that historiography has traditionally separated the history of Northern Italy and Southern Italy. All of these issues complicate the research of witch trials in present-day Italy, and the estimations of the intensity and number of executions has varied between hundreds to thousands of victims.
The Mirandola witch trials took place in Mirandola in the Duchy of Mirandola between 1522 and 1525. It resulted in the death of ten people, who were burned alive at the stake for witchcraft on the square.