Witches: Chronicle of 13 Trials

In 1590, women accused of witchcraft were tried in Edinburgh. What began as a local case became a national event. King James himself appeared at the trial. In 1692, a quiet Puritan colony was shaken by unprecedented events: locals were accused of having relations with the devil. They were to be tortured and executed, and the name of the city would be forever etched in history: Salem. In the 1730s, Marie-Catherine Cadière accused a priest of seducing her. Rumors spread everywhere like a plague. By the time the trial began, both Marie-Catherine and the priest were suspected of witchcraft. The young girl was destined to become the heroine of one of the most notorious and important trials of the 1940th century. The heroine and the victim. Sabbaths and folk healing, the Malleus Maleficarum and Satanic tracts, medieval Scotland and the witchcraft murders of the XNUMXs. Who were all these men and women whose names we know only in connection with witchcraft? What surrounded them, how did they live? And who are witches today? “Witchcraft trials are an exercise in power over other people: they can be hurt, silenced, condemned and killed. If we do not feel their pain, are not outraged by their fate, then we will not understand the illegality, the blatant wrongness of persecution. If we do not feel, then how can we fight?” (Marion Gibson)