The Valais witch trials consisted of a witch-hunt including a series of witch trials which took place in the Valais (today part of Switzerland) between 1428 and 1447. It can be considered as the first series of witch trials in Europe, fifty years before the phenomenon became widespread. The victims were also accused of being werewolves. The persecutions started in French-speaking lower Valais and spread to German-speaking upper Valais and to nearby valleys in what are now the Swiss and French Alps.
The number of the victims of the prosecutions is unknown; there were at least 367 people killed of both genders.
Read more about Valais Witch Trials: Background, Quotations From The Trials, The Procedure, Accusations, The Executions, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words witch and/or trials:
“The witch turned as red
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Her eyes began to melt.
She was done for.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Why, since man and woman were created for each other, had He made their desires so dissimilar? Why should one class of women be able to dwell in luxurious seclusion from the trials of life, while another class performed their loathsome tasks? Surely His wisdom had not decreed that one set of women should live in degradation and in the end should perish that others might live in security, preserve their frappeed chastity, and in the end be saved.”
—Madeleine [Blair], U.S. prostitute and “madam.” Madeleine, ch. 10 (1919)