Two Sensational Trials
Two high profile witchcraft trials involved influential men and their powerful adversaries. The first involved Dietrich Flade, perhaps the highest-ranking victim of any witch hunt in European history. A prominent and wealthy citizen of Trier, Flade headed the secular courts in the 1580s when the number of witchcraft trials escalated, stimulated by failed harvests and economic difficulties. His restraining influence over these trials angered anti-witch zealots, including the Suffragan Bishop Peter Binsfeld, who joined with the Governor in accusing Flade of witchcraft. Under torture, Flade confessed to his presence at sabbats, sex with the devil, and acts of maleficia, including the destruction of crops, and finally he named his accomplices. On September 18, 1589, Flade was burned at the stake after being “mercifully and Christianly strangled.”
The most famous witchcraft trial in Europe involved Father Urbain Grandier, an opponent of clerical celibacy, a known philanderer, and most important, a critic of the powerful Cardinal Richelieu, the Chief Minister of France. Grandier gained the enmity of the Mother Superior at a local convent in Loudun. She and a group of nuns claimed to be under demonic possession and accused Grandier of bewitching them. Although he was acquitted in the first trial, Richelieu ordered a new one, conducted by his special envoy Jean de Laubardemont, a relative of the Mother Superior. Even under extreme torture, Grandier refused to confess to any charges of witchcraft, although he did repent for abusing women and girls. Nonetheless, he was found guilty and burned alive at the stake in 1634.
