europe2

The Witch Hunt

The first witch of the great witch hunt was burned in 1459, who was a poor hermit in the northern French city of Arras. During torture he named a
prostitute and an elderly poet to be witches. They intern named other leading into the snowball effect where innocent people were forced to name
other innocents for witchcraft. Numerous clerics and priests were also eventually convicted of witchcraft. Such example could be seen near Bern
Switzerland where they were killed for making homage to the Devil during church services, and stealing children, draining them of blood to make
magical ointments, and then finally cooked and ate them.

One of the first large outbreaks was in northern France in the town of Arras. It all started with four women, and quickly spread like wildfire to the
point where one-third of the people were thought to be witches. In numerous instances while the witches were being burnt alive on the stake, they
were screaming that if they confessed they could live.

The ultimate power for the church of being able to deal death sentences became a major corruption for the church especially when money became
involved. Many rich individuals would be able to pay for their lives and their freedom, while the less fortunate, peasants were forced to confess by
torture and then executed while the community had to pay for their fees. Anyone condemned for being a witch would lose their property and
belongings, had to pay for their trial fees, and even fees for the torture that they had to endure. At this point the church was lying, stealing, and
murdering thousands of innocent people all in the name of the god, but the church is actually the devil.

Religious Conviction's and Killers

Many of the major outbreaks of witchcraft happened to coincide with political and/or religious problems, or anywhere where there were floods,
droughts, or any other natural disasters. One such witch "outbreak" was in in France between the Catholics and Protestants in Alsace and
Lorraine. It spread to the point where the entire population lived in fear of dying from being prosecuted as a witch. These outbreaks were used by
the churches to control people into believing in their religion. In 1579 the Church Council at Melun said that, "every charlatan and diviner, and
others who practice necromancy, pyromancy, chiromancy, hydromancy, will be punished by death."

In 1556 a woman in Bievres France was mistakenly burned at the stake when her sentence said she was supposed to be garroted first, and that
this early execution was God's secret judgment. 1591 a Lorraine attorney named Nicholas Remy who was a relentless demonologist who
condemned 900 witches in fifteen years. He believed that any strange coincidence was not normal and was due to the Devil. A man named Henri
Bouquet killed 600 people from elderly to prepubescent children. Pierre de Lancre was appointed as the special prosecutor in the Basque region of
France in 1609. He quickly became convinced that all 30,000 of his people in his district were witches and he saw flocks of them flying to Sabbats.
Because of this he cremated over 600 people in only four months. It took this large number of executions for the people to rebel against him, which
still did not change him because he didn't stop until he burned three priests, and then finally the bishop himself rescued people from jail and joined
the opposition. In 1612 de Lancre published a book for witch hunters with all the details of how to find witches to what their rituals were.

In 1589 the German town of Quedlinburg burned 133 witches in one day. The 1620's Phillip Adolf von Ehrenberg, the bishop of Wurzburg, burned
900 witches. Judge Balthasar Ross killed 300 people from 1603 to 1606 he would first have their wrists bound behind their backs and hoisted up
(strappado) to dislocate the shoulders meanwhile they would stick hot skewers through their flesh. Johan Georg II Fuchs von Dornheim of Bamberg
killed 600. His chancellors documented what this time was like, "a third of the city is surely implicated. The rich-est, most attractive, most
prominent of the clergy are already executed. A week ago, a girl of nineteen was burned, said everywhere to be the fairest in the whole city… there
are 300 children of three and four years who are said to have intercourse with the Devil. I have seen children of seven put to death…"