Background
In 1428, the duchy of Savoy had been tormented by a civil war from 1415–1419, between clans of the nobility, where people had been severed between the sides for and against the Raron family, which other noble clans had rebelled against, and society was in a state of great tension.
On 7 August 1428, delegates from seven districts in Valais demanded that the authorities initiate an investigation against alleged, unknown witches and sorcerers. Anyone denounced as a sorcerer by more than three people was to be arrested. If they confessed, they were to be burned at the stake as heretics, and if they did not confess, they would be tortured until they did so. Also, those pointed out by more than two of the judged sorcerers were to be arrested.
The events began in Val d'Anniviers and Val d'Hérens in southern French-speaking Valais and spread north to the German-speaking Valais (Wallis). Within one and a half years, between one and two hundred people had been burned to death. The hysteria had by then spread to the French and Swiss Alps, from Sankt Bernhard, Thuringia in Savoy to Briançon in Dauphiné. From these territories, it then spread over the valleys in Drance, Argentière, Freissinières and Valpute, resulting in one hundred and ten women and fifty seven men being tortured or burned to death, until the persecutions stopped in 1447.
The witch trials of Valais are poorly documented; the best source is the contemporary chronicle made by the clerk of the court, Johannes Fründ, (1400–1469), an eyewitness to the events. His document, however, was written in the middle of the trials (circa 1430, seventeen years before their termination), and therefore lacks a complete coverage.
Read more about this topic: Valais Witch Trials
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