Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Wicked Wednesday - The Roermond Witch Trials

Yesterday afternoon, a friend of mine mentioned that she was distantly related to someone who was accused of being a witch at Salem.  I'm related to one of the jurors at one Salem witch trial, so we had a little fun there.  Later, as I was thinking of what to write about for Wicked Wednesday and scrolling through my bookmarks when I stumbled upon a bit of information I discovered years ago (researching another book) about the witch trials in a place called Roermond.

Roermond took place in what was the Spanish Netherlands with the first recorded trial in 1522.  They were big on the witch thing back then in that particular place, so that wasn't the last.  Several more took place between 1525 and 1611.  But the biggie was held in 1613. 

Not much is known about the trials.  Most of the information has been lost to time.  But, from what I can gather, 64 witches were arrested and accused of causing all manner of things they couldn't possibly have done.  (Like every other witch trial in every other place.)  Of course, it didn't help that at least one of the accused 'confessed'.  Yeah, I bet they did.  :eyeroll:

Over the course of a month, the good people of Roermond burned two witches a day until all 64 were dead.  There's nothing about how the awesome burgh of Roermond suddenly became free from strife afterwards, of course, but those things rarely make the news.

Funny.  You'd think that after supposedly killing around a thousand people and six thousand critters, someone would've noticed how much healthier everyone was.  Then again, if they were witch enough to kill, they should've had some magic to get them out of being killed themselves.  Strange how that works. 

Anyway, if that ain't wicked, I don't know what is. 

Have any of you ever been accused of something you didn't do? 

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