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The Witch Trials of Trier in Germany in the years from 1581 to 1593 was perhaps the biggest witch trial in European history. The persecutions started in the diocese of Trier in 1581 and reached the city itself in 1587, where it was to lead to the death of about three hundred and sixty-eight people, and was as such perhaps the biggest mass execution in Europe in peace time. This counts only the executed within the city itself, and the real number of executed, counting also those executed in all the witch hunts within the diocese as a whole, was therefore even larger. The exact number of executed has never been established; a total of 1000 has been suggested but not confirmed.〔http://www.historicum.net/themen/hexenforschung/lexikon/alphabethisch/h-o/art/Kurtrier_Hexe/html/artikel/1620/ca/29dc540208e1fa1e821c5f29e5b20d2d/〕 == The witch trials == In 1581, Johann von Schönenberg was appointed archbishop of the independent diocese of Trier. Schönenberg greatly admired the order of the Jesuits in which he was “Wonderfully addicted”; he built them a college, and as a part of his efforts to demonstrate his convictions, he ordered the purging of three groups in society; first he rooted out the Protestants, then the Jews, and then the witches: three stereotypes of nonconformity. He was the one responsible for the massacres of Trier which, because of his initiative, support and patronage, became “of an importance quite unique in the history of witchcraft.” The beginning of the persecutions was later described by an eyewitness;
Between 1587 and 1593, 368 people were burned alive for sorcery in twenty-two villages, and in 1588, two villages were left with only one female inhabitant in each. People of both sexes, all ages and all classes, were victims; among the victims, 108 were men, women and children of the nobility, and also people with positions in the government and administration.
One of the victims was Dietrich Flade, rector of the university and chief judge of the electoral court, who was in opposition to the persecutions; he doubted the use of torture and treated the accused mildly, and consequently he was arrested, tortured, strangled and burned himself, which made the witch trials even worse as it effectively put a stop to all opposition to the persecutions. The Archbishop had a large staff to participate in the massacres, such as his suffragan bishop Peter Binsfeld, whose instructions in the subject, published in 1589 and 1591, were used in the activity. The mass executions caused the population to shrink, and the executioner prospered economically, described as riding about on a fine horse “like a nobleman of the court, dressed in silver and gold, while his wife vied with noblewomen in dress and luxury.”
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