The Witches of Lorraine
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2021
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
Between 1570 and 1630, there was intense persecution and thousands of executions of suspected witches in Lorraine, a small duchy on the borders of France and the Holy Roman Empire. In some cases, suspicious citizens waited decades to report their neighbours as witches. But why did they take so long to use the law to eliminate the supposedly dangerous figures who lived amongst them?
Robin Briggs - Emeritus Fellow at All Souls College Oxford - has delved into perhaps the richest surviving archive of witchcraft trials to be found in Europe. In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, he talks to Professor Suzannah Lipscomb about his conclusion that witchcraft was actually perceived as having strong therapeutic possibilities: once a person was identified as the cause of a sickness, they could be induced to take it off again.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History, what an absolute pleasure it is for me to introduce |
| 0:06.1 | my colleague, Professor Susanna Lipscomb and her podcast, the sibling podcast of Dan Snow's |
| 0:12.5 | History, not just the tutors. Today we've got a crossover episode. She is talking on this |
| 0:16.8 | field about the Witches of Lorraine, between 1570 and 1630, which is by the way, right in Susanna's |
| 0:23.6 | wheelhouse. There was a giant wave of persecution against suspected witches in Lorraine, which |
| 0:29.0 | as you know is a small dutchy. Well now on the border between Germany and France, |
| 0:34.0 | I'll sass the rain. I mean, you know, whole podcasts about assassin rain folks in 19th, |
| 0:38.0 | 20th century history of the Arctic, I'd love to know. But things were kicking off. Lorraine seemed |
| 0:41.5 | to be troublesome. It seems to have previous, troublesome place because there was this massive |
| 0:46.7 | outburst of people reporting their neighbours or witches. We've all been there, but this really got |
| 0:51.3 | taken to a different level. Susanna is joined as you'll hear in this podcast by Robin Briggs, |
| 0:55.8 | his emeritus fellow All Souls College Oxford. Together they went into the richest surviving archive |
| 1:01.6 | of witchcraft trials to be found in Europe. If you find witch hunts fascinating, you can love this |
| 1:10.2 | episode. It's just a brilliant episode. So go and check out Not Just The Tutors, wherever you |
| 1:15.0 | get your podcasts. That is a podcast dealing with the glories of, I guess you call it an |
| 1:20.4 | Asals, the very early modern, I guess 16th century around the world. Not Just The Tutors, but a |
| 1:26.0 | fascinating and rich period of world history to study. It's a great love for me to have Susanna |
| 1:30.1 | Ellipscomb as a part of this pod family. I met her 15 years ago, and I was doing a talk I think |
| 1:35.8 | about the seven years war at Oxford. And we became friends. And we've been friends ever since, |
| 1:40.9 | and it's she went on to great things. And I started a podcast network and I convinced the joy |
| 1:44.9 | of me. So it's brilliant. So thank you to her. Thank you all for listening. If you wish to |
| 1:49.2 | listen to all these episodes of all these pods without the ads on them, I have been told the ads |
... |
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