Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries what was known as "was carried out in central and northern Europe" Witch hunt " On some occasions it was not the church that promoted the trials for witchcraft, but also participated in them, but they were civil trials. If you thought that the Inquisition In Spain it was fearsome, the European Witch Hunt was terrifying. In Supercurioso we saw one of the worst cases in which a family living near Munich known as the Papepnheimer family and another occurred in Sweden in which 15 children were sentenced: The trial of the witches of Mora . On this occasion we wanted to approach another case from the same period, the terrible ones Witch trials in Würzburg and its region in which more than 1,000 people were killed .
The terrible witch trials of Würzburg
It is considered that witch trial of Würzburg is one of the worst that took place in Germany during the Modern Age. It took place in the city of Würzburg between 1626 and 1631 and in the city itself it is believed that more than 200 people were killed and in the vicinity of the town and its region about 900 more.
During the first decades of the seventeenth century, many places in Germany fought against Protestantism and in favor of the Catholic Church. This fact together with the collective hysteria that unleashed witch trials carried out in the south of the country led to the events that occurred during The Witch Trials of Wurzburg .
The main instigator and the one that was most active was the Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg of Würzburg. During the eight years in which he led the bishopric, he burned 900 people, including 19 Catholic priests, his own nephew and about 400 children since he was three or four years old. He managed to confess that they had treated him carnal with the devil. The people, subjected to terrible tortures, began to accuse their neighbors and acquaintances of having committed sacrileges and witchcraft acts.
Priests, doctors, mayors, officials, students and even nobles joined in the bonfires to beggars and orates who admitted to having agreed with the devil and even the notary of the city was tortured and confessed. Bishop von Ehrenberg wrote in a letter that he believed that a third of the inhabitants of the city were involved in the plot and that he was looking for a book that included the names of 8,000 people who had participated in a black mass.
In July 1631 Bishop Von Ehrenberg died, but the deaths only ceased when the city was conquered by the King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus in that same year. During the witch trials of Würzburg only the voice of a Jesuit, Friedrich Spee, was heard against the persecutions since he had been the confessor of the condemned and saw only tortured beings who had been forced to confess to get rid of the pain. His thoughts during that terrible time of the witch trials of Wurzburg They were published in a book called "Cautio Criminalis".
Did you know the witch trials of Wurzburg ? Did you know that so many people had died? If you are interested in topics related to witchcraft trials, we invite you to read the post: The TERRIBLE history that the Aquelarre de Goya hides .