by Phil Clarke
Those who were consigned to the flames for witchcraft and association with the Devil stood no chance of acquittal after being charged by Nicholas Remy. On his death in April 1612, he could boast such titles as the Attorney General of Lorraine and Seigneur de Rosieres-en-Blois et du Breuil; the latter raising him to the level of aristocracy. Yet it was the title of witch-hunter that would brought arguably his grandest boast of all: that he sent around 2,500 suspected witches to their deaths during his career.
Pierre de Lancre
Another witch-hunting aristocrat was to make an name for himself during the early years of the seventeenth century, purging provincial towns and villages of supposed satanic evildoers. His name was Pierre de Rostegny. Born in Bordeaux into a prosperous wine-growing family, de Rostegny went on to pursue a career in law before turning his attention to the pursuit of witches. Attaining a doctorate in 1579 after extensive study in Turin and Bohemia, he was soon practising law for none other than the parliament of Bordeaux. During this time he chose to adopt the noble name of de Lancre; a name that would soon become synonymous with the hunting and severe persecution of so many witches.
His unerring belief in the existence of witches was given significant credence during a stalled pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1599. His journey came to a halt in Naples and, while still in Italy, he witnessed Satan himself transform a young girl into a boy. This delusion spurred the Lord of de Lancre on to greater impassioned discoveries of the Devil’s work, prompting him to write three books on witchcraft. Despite possessing a well-educated, well-travelled mind, the beliefs documented in these works were steeped in irrational fear and reveal a mind full of religious neuroses. He believed that, while sex with the Devil existed, Satan favoured married women over singletons as this would effect a sinful act of adultery. He also believed that demonic children were being created through incestuous acts between mothers and sons all over France.
These documented revelations prompted King Henry IV of France to direct de Lancre to Labourd in 1608 to look into the possibility of witchcraft occurring within this Basque province. The unwavering zeal of this noble witch-hunter was renowned and so Henry IV’s government suggested its president, D’Espagnet, should join him to ensure the investigation did not become a bloodbath. Unfortunately, this wise move was scuppered with the submission of D’Espagnet’s resignation on 5 June 1609, leaving de Lancre free to persecute the unfortunate inhabitants of Labourd.
De Lancre stayed in the village of Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle during this purge, occupying the castle of Amou, and soon discovered that the entire population – reported to have been approximately 30,000 – had been touched by the Devil in some way. According to the witch-hunter, Labourd had become a sanctuary for the pagan ritualists, or sorginak as they were known who had been forced to flee the Orient after the arrival of Christian missionaries. He was provided with reports that 100,000-strong sabbats were regularly taking place, and there were confessions from the witches themselves telling of their dates with the Devil.
Sixteen year-old Marie de Naguille and her mother told how Satan himself had invited them to a sabbat ritual. Marie de Marigene and her friends confessed to riding on the Devil in donkey form to nearby Biarritz and seventeen-year-old Marie Dindarte spoke of how the Devil had hidden an ointment that allowed her to fly. Confessions were extracted in abundance by de Lancre, allowing him to burn at the stake 600 predominantly female witches in the area. This wholesale slaughter of sorcerers came to a sudden halt when the husbands and fathers of the executed returned from their summer fishing off Newfoundland. As many as 5,000 Basque fishermen discovered they had lost their loved ones in the massive witch-hunt and they went in search of the man responsible. Fearing he would become the victim of a new hunt, de Lancre was forced to take flight, leaving what he believed to be tens of thousands of witches unpunished.
In 1616, Pierre de Lancre gave up his pursuit of witches altogether, retiring to Loubeur-sur-Garonne in the Bordeaux region of France where he continued to write works on witchcraft. In 1622, he published his L'incredulité et mescreance du sortilège plainement convaincue, which warned against the erroneous belief that magic performed by these witches was some sleight of hand or illusion. Until his death in 1631, aged seventy-three, Lord de Lancre was adamant that witchcraft existed and felt considerable pride that he was able to rid his beloved France of so many of these spell-casting satanists.
The Witch-hunters: Germany
Benedict Carpzov
As we have seen, the prominent witch-hunters in France were noted for their elevated social standing and ancestral association with law and its practices. Their witch-finding counterparts across the border in Germany were no different. In 1595, Benedict Carpzov Junior was born into a family of eminent jurists and statesmen in the south-eastern district of Saxony. His father was a renowned law professor at the University of Wittenberg, known for one of its most famous alumni: the Protestant theologian Martin Luther. With a background such as this, it is unsurprising that Benedict Carpzov developed into a committed Protestant and high-principled judge, known throughout the country as the Lawgiver of Saxony for his relentless pursuit and prosecution of more than 20,000 German witches.
Carpzov attained various prominent positions which soon ensured a level of power. As well as being a professor at the University of Leipzig, he was also a member of the Leipzig Supreme Court. This enabled him to influence verdicts throughout all of Saxony. His belief in the power of witchcraft ensured no leniency was given when it came to sentencing suspected witches. It was the combination of his knowledge of law and religious conviction that saw him send so many devil worshippers to the stake. He was known to attend church without fail each Sunday, take Holy Communion almost as regularly and even claimed that he had read the Bible an astonishing fifty-three times. Such was the extent of his religious zeal.
This extreme piety never manifested itself through acts of mercy when witches were concerned. The Protestant faith to which Carpzov belonged advocated as vehement a hatred of witchcraft as Catholicism, and it was thanks to Lutherans such as Carpzov that witches were beset on all sides by righteous crusaders seeking to cleanse their communities of heretical heathens. The Lawgiver of Saxony assisted in the offensive when, in 1635, he published his Practica rerum Criminalum, in which he sought to systemise the legal persecution of those guilty of sorcery. In this publication, which soon became the Protestant version of the Malleus Maleficarum, he insisted that local judges should be given the freedom to mete out the severest of penalties to witches and not be constrained by judicial minutiae. This included torture, which he believed was called for within his oft-read Bible.
Carpzov listed as many as seventeen varied techniques for acquiring a confession, such as the placing of candles underneath an alleged heretic, allowing for an agonising slow burn. He also refers to driving wooden wedges under the nails to obtain ‘the truth’ from a prisoner, and if this failed to obtain an admission, then the wedges would be set alight to increase the pain.
Carpzov was not concerned with a fair trial for, in his eyes, there was only one true outcome where a witch was involved. To ensure this foregone conclusion was reached in the shortest time, Carpzov believed that witches should be prevented from questioning any witnesses called to the stand, and so they were unable to prove their innocence before the court. He suggested that allowing these sorcerers to cross-examine would give them the chance to use their satanic powers to bewitch and befuddle their accusers, reducing the validity of their testimonies and even leading to a not-guilty verdict. Removing this legal right shows the lengths to which Carpzov was prepared to go to ensure the suspected witch became a dead one.
Even after successful execution, Carpzov’s oppression continued. He forbade the burial of any witch because this was a Christian custom and should not be extended to those guilty of heresy. Instead, he called for their bodies to remain above ground to rot and become carrion for the birds – this posthumous punishme
nt acting as a deterrent to all witches in hiding.
By the time of his death in 1666, Benedict Carpzov had become the most prominent German figure in the pursuit and eradication of witchcraft. His pen worked overtime signing death warrants and sealing the fates of so many so-called witches. Yet it was his published beliefs that secured this position of distinction. Rather than bringing to light new thoughts and beliefs regarding the persecution of witchcraft, Carpzov reappropriated old Saxon laws from the previous century, and made certain the topic of witchcraft was in the forefront of many German minds. His success is revealed with the example of Anna Maria Rosenthal who, in 1728, was sentenced to death for witchcraft in Winterberg after the prosecutor quoted Carpzov’s published words. Over sixty years after his death, his power to persecute was still strong.
Franz Buirmann
While evidence suggests many of those involved in the direct persecution and execution of witches came from noble stock, the same cannot be said of Franz Buirmann. Described as a shrewd man of low birth, this ruthless reprobate has been chronicled as one of the most depraved of all witch-hunters. Unlike his fellow witch-killers, very little is known of his family and upbringing. There are no achievements in learning or acquisitions of title documented save the post of judge which was bestowed upon him by the Prince Archbishop of Cologne. This itinerant role provided him with a wide sphere of influence along with the authority to influence and overrule local authorities, and much like his fellow German arbitrator Benedict Carpzov, he used this to ensure hundreds of suspected witches were condemned to death throughout many parts of Germany.
Buirman never wrote about his hatred toward witches, but he made his feelings known through his actions, singling out alleged sorcerers throughout Cologne and the nearby towns of Julich and Kleve. However, it was his savage deeds during his visits to the small villages of Rheinbach, Meckenheim and Flerzheim in 1631 and then again in 1636 that cemented his reputation as an unrelenting pursuer of pagans. Buirmann rode into Rheinbach and chose his first victim to be marked for punishment.
Christine Boeffgen was an unusual choice as scapegoat. Boeffgen was a well-heeled widow who garnered considerable respect from her neighbours, however this failed to prevent her arrest by Buirmann and she soon found herself blindfolded before the court. Her popularity caused five of her seven court assessors to refuse to sit in judgment, but Boeffgen was subjected to some gross indecencies without reproach. She was shaved from head to toe for visible signs of the Devil and when none were found she was pricked to reveal invisible indications before being exorcised. Buirmann then took to torturing the rich old woman by placing her legs in a vise, which resulted in the crucial admission of guilt. When the clamps were relaxed she recanted her confession, leaving Buirmann with no choice but to continue with the torments. Declining to name names at every turn, Christine Boeffgen endured four whole days of torture before breathing her last. For Buirmann, it was a satisfactory conclusion, not only because another witch had been wiped from the face of the earth but because he took posession of all her assets, including her property. Such appropriation allowed this witch- hunter to amass a considerable fortune over the years and explains why Buirmann chose to point the accusatory finger at those with money rather than condemn the destitute.
A further illustration of Buirmann’s immorality is revealed with the conviction of Frau Peller, the wife of a Rheinbach court assessor. She fell foul of the witch- hunter’s wrath by simple association. Her sister had rejected Buirmann’s advances, leaving him rebuffed and plotting quick revenge. Unbeknown to the town officials, Buirmann had Peller arrested early the following morning and by the afternoon he was subjecting her to despicable tortures. Like Christine Boeffgen, Frau Peller found herself shaved, searched and exorcised before the court, only she had to suffer the terrible ignominy of being raped by the torturer’s aide during the process; her cries for help were stifled by a filthy handkerchief forced into her mouth by Buirmann. Under such emotional and physical distress, Frau Peller became delirious and, when asked to inform on her accomplices, she provided so many names the question had to be dropped. Buirmann performed a damning prosecution that led to her inevitable conviction and she was forced to undergo the Rhineland custom of being burnt alive in a hut of dry straw.
With such convictions under his belt, Buirmann must have believed in the unshakable force of his work and he even went after the mayor of Rheinbach, Herr Hilger Lirtzen. Confession-inducing torture was imposed upon the high-ranking magistrate but the pressure administered by Buirmann and his leg vises was not enough to make Lirtzen admit to any crimes of witchcraft. The witch-killer began to get creative, tying his victim to an X-shaped St Andrew’s Cross and fitting a spiked collar which cut through his neck whenever the cross was shaken. But Lirtzen gave him nothing. His powers of endurance were tested further still when he was placed in the witch’s chair – a metal seat under which a fire was lit but this was still insufficient to extract a confession. Lirtzen continued to hold up under torture for a further twenty-four hours before Buirmann’s staying power ran dry. Two days later the Mayor of Rheinbach was burnt at the stake.
Five years later, during his second visit to Rheinbach, Buirmann clearly had not had his fill of mayoral encounters. He had been publicly opposed by the well-educated Doctor Schultheis Schweigel during the trial of Christine Boeffgen and so, on his return to the town, Buirmann arrested Schweigel for being a witch sympathiser and subjected him to seven hours of constant torture. This town official perished under the strain. Buirmann had his body unceremoniously dragged from his cell and burnt while also filling his own coffers with the small fortune Schweigel had bequeathed to the poor. His unscrupulous behaviour knew no bounds, leaving no one safe from his merciless authority. He even turned on his own staff when, during a visit to the river town of Siegburg, he discovered that his own executioner was guilty of witchcraft. Familiarity bred contempt in the worst possible way when Buirmann promptly had his employee burnt at the stake.
It is unsurprising, then, that Buirmann was faced with opposition wherever he went. A known frequenter of bars, Buirmann was reported to have been attacked outside one such tavern, suffering a broken arm at the hands of the relatives of a witch he had executed. By the time Franz Buirmann was done with the town of Rheinbach, he had tortured and burned alive 150 convicted witches out of 300 households, leaving an entire community broken.
PART FOUR: IMPALEMENT
Impalement
Driving home a point
Impalement is a method of execution whereby the prisoner is pierced with a long (usually wooden) stake. Penetration can occur through the sides, the rectum, the vagina or the mouth. The stake, which is planted in the ground acts as a plug, preventing severe blood loss and, thereby, prolonging the victim’s suffering. Death by impalement is extremely painful and can take up to three days to kill. For this reason, one might be forgiven for thinking that it was reserved for serious criminals who were themselves guilty of unspeakable acts of violence and depravity. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Many victims of impalement were wholly innocent of any real crime – they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Method
Methods of impalement have differed depending on the whims of various tyrants throughout the ages. Sometimes the stake was sharpened to cause ripping of the vital organs and agonising pain, and on other occasions the stake was left blunt and simply greased with animal fat at the inserted end, which had the effect of pushing and squeezing the organs aside. This method was also extremely painful, especially when organs burst under pressure, but prolonged the victim’s suffering even further.
The Unfortunate Pappenheimers
The story of the unfortunate Pappenheimers demonstrates just how easily innocent people found themselves on the receiving end of an impaler’s spike. The Pappenheimers were a vagrant family from Bavaria in the late 1500s. They took seasonal employment as privy cleaners and beggars. Duke Maximilian
of Bavaria needed a show trial to teach the community that ‘crime does not pay’. He rounded up the Pappenheimer family and had them charged with as many unsolved crimes as he could think of, including murder, and he roped in other criminals to perjure themselves in order to help prosecute them.
One night while they were sleeping, the Pappenheimer’s lodgings were raided and the inhabitants (including their children) arrested. They were kept in the custody of a man named Alexander Von Haslung, who was initially put in charge of their torture and ultimate destruction. He decided that the Pappenheimers were in league with Satan, and accused them of witchcraft. Haslung was not particularly interested in the Pappernheimers’ case and thought this would get them taken out of his custody. He was correct and the Pappenheimers were transported to Falcon Tower in Munich.
Once installed in the tower, the Pappernheimer family were tortured using methods such as strappado (the pendulum), squassation (weights attached to the body during the process of strappado), rope burns and torch burns, among others. At first they insisted upon their innocence, but as the torture sessions drew on, becoming more intense, they eventually changed their plea. Between them they ended up confessing to almost every major and minor unsolved crime committed in Bavaria during the previous decade and implicated at least 400 other people, some of whom did not even exist.