Witches. Chronicle of 13 Trials

In 1590, women accused of witchcraft were tried in Edinburgh. The trial, which began as a local inquiry, became a nationwide event. The king himself, James, attended the trial. In 1692, the quiet Puritan colony was shaken by unprecedented events—local residents were accused of consorting with the devil. They faced only torture and executions, and the name of the town would forever be etched in history: Salem. In the 1730s, Marie-Catherine Cadier accused a priest of seducing her. Rumors spread everywhere like a plague. By the beginning of the trial, both Marie-Catherine and the priest were suspected of witchcraft. The young woman was destined to become the heroine of one of the most notorious and significant trials of the 18th century. A heroine and a victim. Sabbaths and folk healing, the 'Hammer of Witches' and treatises on Satanism, medieval Scotland and witch killings in the 1940s. Who were all these women and men whose names are known to us only in connection with witchcraft? What surrounded them, how did they live? And what do witches represent today? 'The witch trials are an expression of power over other people: they can be made to suffer, their mouths can be shut, they can be judged and killed. If we do not feel their pain, do not rebel against their fate, we will not understand the illegality, the egregious injustice of the persecutions. If we do not feel, then how can we fight?' (Marion Gibson)