The small German prince-bishopric of Eichstiitt became one of the most notttrious centers of witch-hunting in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Witch trials occurred in 1494, 1532, 1535 and 1562, generally a time when German witch-hunting was a lull. The account of the 1532 trial was particularly widely distributed. There was a severe persecution, of which little record survives, during the first peak of German witch-hunting in the late sixteenth century. Several dozen people were burned from 1590 to 1593, while the principality was ruled by the zealous Catholic Reformation bishops Martin V(.)n Schaumburg, bishop from 1560 to 1590, and Caspar von Seckendorf, bishop from 1590 t(t 1595. Eichstiitt was viewed as a model witch-hunting state in the legal opinion issued by the law faculty of the University of Ingolstadt in 1 590, recommending harsher witch persecution in Bavaria.
The next peak in Eichstiitt witch-hunting occurred under one of the most notorituis of the Franconian “witch-bishops,” Johann Christoph von Wester-stetten (1565-1636). Fresh from initiating the great Ellwangen persecution as prince-provost, Westerstetten was appointed prince-bishop of Eichstiitt in 1612. Witch-burnings began in 1617, a time of active persecution, but although many states abandetned witch-hunting in the early 1620s, Eichstiitt continued, eventually executing witches every year from 1617 to 1630. Incomplete preservatittn of the records make it impossible to know the precise number of witches executed, although the witch-commissioner, Dr. Maximilian Kolb, active in Eich-stiitt from 1624 to 1628, claimed to have perst)nally examined 274 witches that had subsequently been executed. The identities of 150 executed witches are documented. Like many German Catholic ecclesiastical states, Eichstatt had a special government body devoted to witch-hunting, the Witch Commission. The hunt was characterized by unrestrained torture and an obsessittn with getting tortured witches to name other witches. Two women from a village near the city of Eichstatt, one a fishwife and one a peasant, named 223 and 261 acettm-
Plices, respectively. Like all the great German witch-htints, the Eichstiitt hunt reached high into the social scale, ttften attacking the women associated with Eichstatt’s male elite. Victims incltided three former burgomasters, eight hurgo-masters’ wives, several innkeepers and brewers, the wife of the Town clerk, the daughter of the bishop’s provincial administrator and other leading figures. The most distinguished victim was Maria Richel, wife of Chancellor Bartholomaus Richel. Maria was burned at the stake in 1621, after which Bartholomaus left Eichstiltt and entered the service of the dtike of Bavaria. One acctised witch, the priest Johann Reichard (1573-1644), himself the son t)f a woman from the Bavarian town of Wemding who was burned as a witch in 1609, was tortured several times with great brutality, despite his priesthood. Reichard stubbornly reftised to confess, passing the rest of his life in hcxise arrest. Another priest residing in Eichstatt, the Jesuit and former Ingolstadt professor Kaspar Hell (1588-1634), bravely criticized the witch-hunt but had no ability to stop it. The hunt actually ended in 1630 during the general move against large-scale witch-hunting associated with the meeting of the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire held at Regensburg that year. Westerstetten was driven frttm Eichstatt by the Swedish army and died in exile.
REFERENCE: Wolfgang Behringer. Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria: Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry, and Reason of State in Early Modern Europe. Trans. J. C. Graysr)n and David Ledcrer. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1997.
World History
