For a medieval European accused of witchcraft, burning at the stake was one of the most humane sentences. The unfortunate person could be tortured for months with the help of sophisticated devices: they could put him in the cradle of vigil or use a “pear” that opened inside the human body.
Throughout Europe, the fires of the Inquisition blazed, and priests invented instruments of torture that could traumatize an impressionable person with just one look. The territory of modern Belarus was a safe haven for heretics. Historians believe that this is largely due to the Orthodox tradition. Witches were promised severe punishment in the afterlife, but nowhere was it mentioned about the need to persecute them during their lifetime.
In the 11th century, a woman practicing witchcraft was ordered to be fined and punished. It was not the death penalty that was meant, but the "re-education" of the sinner. In one of the documents of that time it is said that the sorcerer, first of all, must be dissuaded from sinning with a word, and if he does not obey, then “execute violently”, but not to death - “neither circumcise these bodies,” that is, in no case inflict accused of injury, but simply to carry out "prevention".
The first real laws against magic appeared in the GDL three hundred years after the creation of the Inquisition in Europe. And the largest number of court cases fell on the 17th century. At this time, Catholicism and the ideas of the counter-reformation became widespread in the Belarusian lands. The Counter-Reformation brought the "Hammer of the Witches" and an intensified struggle against the heretics.
In 1625, the wife of the Pinsk carriage driver of Vechorka Vysotsky, Fedya, decided with the help of witchcraft to destroy her enemy from the world - the wife of Nikolai Yelsky, the Pinsk old man. The woman dug up a human bone, iron nails from a coffin and some sand in the cemetery. Fedya gave all this to her niece Sazonovna, the servant of Yelsky's wife, and promised to make her free and to marry her for the service. Svetlana Ishchenko describes the case in the article "Cases of Witchcraft in the Mock Courts of the 17th Century", referring to the materials of the acts of the Vilna Archaeographic Commission.
Sazonovna had to scrape the bone three times, mix it with sand and pour it all into the victim's morning drink - warm beer with butter. And if the lady leaves somewhere, Sazonovna had to take the bone with nails and sand, go around them three times around against the sun, saying, “As that bone is dead, as that bone is numb, so be my lady. The objects of magic, wrapped in a scarf, were handed over to Sazonovna by the servant of Vechorka - well done Philip. Soon, from witchcraft, Yelsky's wife was to die in agony. And so it happened. The spell broke when examining the body of the deceased.
Promotional video:
Sazonovna was tortured, and she confessed everything. As a result, Fedya was sentenced to death. But her husband denied the charges and wished to appeal to the Chief Lithuanian Tribunal. At first, the court did not allow this, but unexpectedly Nikolai Yelsky voluntarily allowed Vechorka to appeal. After interrogation, Philip was released as an innocent, and Sazonovna, for whom there was no one to intercede, was sentenced to death.
The punishment for witchcraft was usually one - death. The archives, for example, contain information about the tragic love story of Yanka Kozlov and a certain Ulyana. The lovers stole some of the property of the Yankee wife. Later, the guy himself testified that Ulyana, sitting on his knees, pulled out some hair from his head and took it for herself, and Yanka gave hers: "I am your wife, and you will be my husband." In addition, Ulyana begged Yanka to take the trail of his wife and some earth from under the threshold of their house. But Janka refused to do it. Nevertheless, both Yanka and Ulyana were sentenced to death: the man was hanged, and the woman was drowned as a witch.
True, the magistrate did not consider all the accusations sufficient. It happened that the court, on the contrary, punished the informer who committed slander. In 1637, in Mogilev, the tradesman Kharka Kuzmich accused his neighbor Arina Turtsova of sorcery, who looked after his property and raised children. There were many charges: from sorcery to theft. But the neighbors, who were called as witnesses, denied everything. On the contrary, they called Arina and her father good people. Turtsovaya was acquitted, and Harku Kuzmich and his wife were punished for slander: "Aboi in the kun for shyya, for three days, after the ninth year, right up to the tenth, they will be guilty."
Another happy ending story happened in 1638. In the village of Bolotchichi, the mother-in-law of the local pan found in the porridge that the servant gave her, toad skin. The girl was interrogated. She said that the skin was given to her by the servant Nastya Kushnerka and ordered to cook it in porridge for the lady.
Already at the trial, a witness was found who claimed that his wife had died, and the neighbors said: "Not because of Nastya?" The second peasant said that his wife was ill after she took the cuttings from Kushnerka, but had already recovered. The court wanted to acquit Nastyukha, but the prosecutor, the local master, cursed the assembly and the guarantors, and sent the defendant to Slutsk. The woman suffered for three weeks in prison from cold and hunger, but then the pan, for whom Nastyukha served, nevertheless released her under the patronage of the local gentry.
Breaks in the rye were considered a very serious crime. Spinning the ears in the field meant doing the most dangerous witchcraft to the death or illness of the owners of the field or their livestock. The owner, who found such kinks among the crops, was horrified, and the peasants believed that if a person who was not versed in charms pulled out the twist, his hand would dry up or another disease would happen.
A bit of mysticism. At the end of the 17th century, in the village of Novošići, a mobile court considered the case of magic and theft in the possessions of Pan Andrzej Bukraba, treasurer of Novogrudok. At night, someone mowed hay and rolled rye in a peasant field. Bukraba complained that every year hay and grain were stolen from him, and that they caused damage to horses, livestock, crops and slaves by charms. Pan Andrzej suspected that his neighbor Gabriel Wisniewski and his wife were plotting against him. He sued them for PLN 1,500. The brother of Pan Gabriel, Petro Vishnevsky, joined Bucraba, who said that he had also spun rye and that he suspected his relative's servant of this. They demanded from Vishnevsky to bring her to the trial. But Gabriel attacked the participants of the meeting with his people armed with butts and sabers, insulted his brother Petro Vishnevsky, as if he was a thief and a sorcerer himself,and refused to extradite the accused.
Even when Gabriel Vishnevsky died, the sorcerers did not give Bucraba peace. The most famous and terrible sorcerers in the area were considered Kirill Adamovich and his son Fedor. A lot of wonderful things were told about them. Cyril, for example, to recover from his illness, brought a mare to the cemetery at midnight, which "fell and died there." Son Fedor even surpassed his father in sorcery abilities. At the fair, he so fascinated the local musician's tune that she stopped playing, and the poor man with tears asked him to disenchant the instrument.
Another witch who pestered Bucraba, Seiginava's Palashka, collected dew in the fields for Saint George, and then took milk from the cows. Like, a nasty woman came into a peasant yard owned by Bukraba, milked a cow, and she began to run every day to the mistress from her calf, bellowed, lost milk and died, and cost 30 zlotys.
The Pinsk Grodsky court considered the complaint of Pan Andrzej Bukraba and sentenced all of the above magicians "to the torment of the executioners."
Mass trials ended in the Belarusian lands at the end of the 18th century. They were abolished in 1776 by the Soym constitution. One of the last official proceedings related to sorcery took place in the Belarusian lands in 1758. The Mogilev woman and the sorcerer, whom she turned to in order to bewitch her lover, were shackled and thrown into prison.
And in world practice, the official witch hunt ended a little later. The last time, according to the verdict of the court, the servant Anna Geldi was executed for witchcraft in the Swiss city of Glarus on June 18, 1782. The woman spent 17 weeks and 4 days shackled and chained. The church saved Geldi from being burned alive. Her head was cut off.
Author: Alexander Chernukho
