One of the territories in the heartland of the European witchcraft persecution of the

16th and 17th centuries was the Duchy of Lorraine. Lorraine was a small

duke done between France and modern-day Germany next to Alsace, a world of

forests, hamlets and harsh climates in the uplands, while on the plains, fields of

wheat and oats were punctuated with long winding villages of single streets. It was

so small that its capital, Norsi, was no more than 60 miles from the Duchy's

borders at any point. Yet this small kingdom was a place of deadly witch hunting.

Some 3,000 people were executed here. Remaining trial documents offer us, as

today's guest had written, a rare chance to penetrate the world of ordinary

villages from 400 years ago so that we can find out what was going on.

My guest is the eminent historian Robin Briggs. Robin is an emeritus fellow of

All Souls College where he spent his illustrious career. It's a particular

pleasure for me to invite him onto the podcast for this exceptionally gifted

historian was my doctoral supervisor and more than any other historian, Robin

has been my intellectual pole star. Among his many books on early modern France,

he's the author of two seminal works on the history of witchcraft, witches and

neighbours, the social and cultural context of European witchcraft and the

witches of Lorraine. And this latter especially is based on his reading of all

the surviving witchcraft trials in Lorraine, which is no mean feat written as

they are in a poorly illegible handwriting and running to many thousands of

pages. Today he and I consider two of these Lorraine witchcraft trials, the

convictions of Françette Camel in 1598 and Nicola Rambel in 1604.

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