The Witches of Lorraine
Not Just the Tudors
History Hit
4.8 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2021
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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 | Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb. |
| 0:02.6 | If you'd like not just the Tudors ad-free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. |
| 0:10.5 | With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, |
| 0:16.0 | including my own recent two-part series, A World Torn Apart, The Dissolution of the Monastries, and enjoy a new release every week. |
| 0:25.2 | Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. |
| 0:32.2 | I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, host of the Not Just the Tudas podcast. |
| 0:37.1 | I want to tell you about a new podcast series, The Mystic and the Mayor. |
| 0:42.0 | As a historian, I'm fascinated by stories of witchcraft and magic. |
| 0:47.1 | For centuries, accusations of sorcery have brought down even the most rich and powerful. |
| 0:52.7 | But this isn't a story from the pages of distant history. |
| 0:57.1 | In February 24, in the glamorous French coastal town of Agde, a respected mayor was arrested for |
| 1:04.7 | corruption. His defence. He claims he was bewitched by the town's beautiful clairvoyant. |
| 1:11.8 | The case has got it all. |
| 1:13.7 | Phone calls from the Archangel Michael, seances where the dead speak through the living, |
| 1:18.9 | a mayor who believed he was receiving supernatural guidance. |
| 1:23.5 | Hosted by the broadcaster Anna Richardson, |
| 1:26.7 | The Mystic and the Mayor is a modern-day tale of sorcery |
| 1:29.9 | that could have come straight from the history books. |
| 1:32.7 | The dark arts, it seems, are alive and well in the 21st century. |
| 1:37.6 | Binge the whole series of The Mystic and the Mayor on Wondry Plus |
| 1:41.8 | through Apple Podcasts, Spotify or in the Wondry app. |
| 1:57.1 | One of the territories in the heartlandry persecution of the 16th and 17th centuries was the Duchy of Lorraine. |
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