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The Würzburg witch trial, which took place in Germany in 1626–1631, is one of the biggest mass-trials and mass-executions seen in Europe during the Thirty Years War; 157 men, women and children in the city of Würzburg are confirmed to have been burned at the stake, mostly after first being beheaded; 219 are estimated to have been executed in the city proper, and an estimated 900 were killed in the entire Prince-Bishopric. The Würzburg witch trial is among the largest among the Witch trials in the Early Modern period, alongside the trials of Trier (1581–1593) and Bamberg (1626–1631). == Background and context == The first persecutions in Würzburg started with the consent of Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, Prince bishop of Würzburg, and reached its climax during the reign of his nephew and successor Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg. They started in the territory around the city in 1626 and evapourated in 1630. As so often with the mass trials of sorcery, the victims soon counted people from all society; also nobles, councilmen and mayors. This was during a witch hysteria that caused a series of witch trials in South Germany, such as in Bamberg, Eichstätt, Mainz and Ellwangen. In the 1620s, with the destruction of Protestantism in Bohemia and the Electorate of the Palatinate, the Catholic reconquest of Germany was resumed. In 1629, with the Edict of Restitution, its basis seemed complete. Those same years saw, in central Europe at least, the worst of all witch-persecutions, the climax of the European craze. Many of the witch-trials of the 1620s multiplied with the Catholic reconquest. In some areas the lord or bishop was the instigator, in others the Jesuits. Sometimes local witch-committees were set up to further the work. Among prince-bishops, Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg of Würzburg was particularly active: in his reign of eight years (1623–31) he burnt 900 persons, including his own nephew, nineteen Catholic priests, and children of seven who were said to have had intercourse with demons. The years 1627–29 were dreadful years in Baden, recently reconquered for Catholicism by Tilly: there were 70 victims in Ortenau, 79 in Offenburg. In Eichstatt, a Bavarian prince-bishopric, a judge claimed the death of 274 witches in 1629. At Reichertshofen, in the district of Neuburg an der Donau, 50 were executed between November 1628 and August 1630. In the three prince-archbishoprics of the Rhineland the fires were also relit. At Coblenz, the seat of the Prince-Archbishop of Trier, 24 witches were burnt in 1629; at Sélestat at least 30—the beginning of a five-year persecution. In Mainz, too, the burnings were renewed. At Cologne the City Fathers had always been merciful, much to the annoyance of the prince-archbishop, but in 1627 he was able to put pressure on the city and it gave in. Naturally enough, the persecution raged most violently in Bonn, his own capital. There the chancellor and his wife and the archbishop’s secretary’s wife were executed, children of three and four years were accused of having devils for their paramours, and students and small boys of noble birth were sent to the bonfire. The craze of the 1620s was not confined to Germany: it raged also across the Rhine in Alsace, Lorraine and Franche-Comté. In the lands ruled by the abbey of Luxueil, in Franche-Comté, the years 1628–30 have been described as an “épidémie démoniaque.” “Le mal va croissant chaque jour,” declared the magistrates of Dôle, “et cette malheureuse engeance va pullulant de toutes parts.” The witches, they said, “in the hour of death accuse an infinity of others in fifteen or sixteen other villages.” 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Würzburg witch trial」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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