The "witch hunt" that raged in the Middle Ages in the civilized European countries forever darkened their history. Russia at that time looked like a much more humane and sane country. However, the fashion to look for the intrigues of evil spirits in all troubles also touched her.
Perhaps, in Russia, they treated witches and sorcerers more leniently due to the fact that they did not see a great threat in them. It was hard to believe that some village sorceress grandmother could cause a storm or drought. And their tricks in the form of stealing milk from other people's cows, causing damage and love conspiracies did not cause much concern among their fellow villagers. Particularly zealous wizards could be beaten or dragged by the hair, but they were not often burned alive. Only if they were considered guilty of the death of people.
Since ancient times, burning has been used as a punishment for witches and sorcerers. In ancient Russia, magicians were considered evil wizards. They were mostly burned - both for sorcery and for magic. This type of execution was especially popular in Novgorod. For "seduction" of the people and rejection of the Christian faith, by order of Prince Gleb, Novgorodians burned the sorcerer in 1071, and in 1227 they burned four wise men, although the boyars wanted to prevent this.
When a plague epidemic broke out in Pskov in 1411, 12 women were burned to death on charges of causing the disease. In 1446, Prince Ivan Mozhaisky publicly burned together with the wife of the boyar Andrei Dmitrievich - for magic.
Tsar John the Terrible fought most zealously against witches and sorcerers. He seriously believed that the enemies of his three wives had tortured him with sorcery and tried to send him to the next world, and therefore he was fierce when he suspected someone of witchcraft. By his order, the Novgorod Archbishop Leonid was captured and accused of witchcraft. Together with the archbishop, 15 witch-wives were arrested, who were subjected to cruel execution - they were quartered and burned. Ioann the Terrible and Prince Vorotynsky were accused of conspiracy with the "whispering women".
It is curious that the grandmother of Ivan the Terrible, Princess Anna Glinskaya herself had a reputation as a sorceress. The rumors were aided by the fact that the Glinsky family descended from the Tatar Murza Leksad. They said about Anna that she took out hearts from the dead and put them in water, which she then sprinkled on Moscow streets. Therefore, when a terrible fire broke out in Moscow in 1547, which destroyed the city center in a few hours, including the Kremlin and Gostiny Dvor, the people considered the Glinskys to be responsible for the disaster. The Glinsky estate was plundered, the servants and children were killed, and Yuri Glinsky was killed by the crowd in the Assumption Cathedral, where he sought refuge.
During the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1638, the case of the Zamoskvoretsk witches caused a great public outcry. It turned out that the evil spirits are not hiding in dense forests, but are creeping up to the very royal chambers.
One royal gold embroiderer, having quarreled with her friend Nastasya, loudly announced that she was a witch, pouring ashes on the sovereign's trail. Kind people reported about it where necessary, and soon the friend of the gold embroiderer found herself in a torture chamber. Since it turned out that Nastasya's husband is a foreign citizen of Lithuania, Yanko Pavlov, they tried to give the case a political aspect. Nastasya was accused that she, by order of the Polish and Lithuanian king, damages the Russian Tsar and Empress. But even being pulled up on a rack, Nastasya continued to insist that there was no malice in her actions. And she poured the ashes on the royal trail "not for a dashing affair, but in order for the sovereign or the empress queen to pass over the ashes, and whose petition will be at that time, and that will be done."
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Maybe they believed Nastasya and would have released her in peace, but, to her misfortune, a pestilence attacked the royal family. In 1639, the five-year-old Tsarevich Ivan Mikhailovich died of illness, followed by the newborn heir Vasily Mikhailovich. Few doubted that the chain of deaths caused the damage that the Zamoskvoretsk witches had sent. As a result of cruel torture, Nastasya and her friend Ulyana died in prison. Several more Zamoskvoretsky gossips were sent into exile.
Several executions of witches and sorcerers during the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich became famous. So the old woman Olena was burned in a log house on charges of sorcery. She herself admitted that she spoiled people with magic papers and herbs and taught some witchcraft.
Agafya and her teacher in witchcraft Tereshka Ivlev were subjected to the same execution in 1647, who were accused of having killed several peasants to death with the help of spells and "the thread of a dead man with a sentence".
Under Fyodor Ioannovich, they burned a sorcerer who corrupted the Tatar prince Muryut-Girey. In 1671, Prince Dolgoruky burned an old woman accused of witchcraft in a log house. In Astrakhan in 1672, Kornilo Semyonov was burned - he found conspiracies.
The Russian Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich died at the age of 20 in 1682. Popular rumor immediately attributed the blame for his death to the boyars Naryshkins, who allegedly wore out the king with the help of the magic of sorcerers from the German settlement, among whom the physician Daniel van Gaden was considered the main one.
The dispersed archers broke into the Kremlin. They did not find the sorcerer Daniel van Gaden, but they took away their souls by throwing another foreign doctor - Gutmensch from the porch onto the spears. Princess Sophia tried to intercede for Van Gaden, but her words had no effect. Sagittarius in the house of van Gaden found snake skins and a multi-legged animal, clearly of witchcraft origin, in alcohol, so they had no doubts that it was found with evil spirits. So the octopus in alcohol became the main proof of the doctor's guilt in the death of the king. The archers severely beat Van Gaden and then chopped him to pieces.
They say that the head of the streltsy order, the okolnichy Fyodor Shaklovity, sent a warlock to Preobrazhenskoye to exterminate Peter I. What happened to the warlock is unknown. But it is known that on Bolotnaya Square, Dorofeyka Prokofiev and his assistants were publicly burned in a log house "for their theft and for their state health for an evil magic and God-canceling intent." In 1869, Prokofiev was hired by the tsar's steward Andrei Bezobrazov, so that he would magically inculcate the sovereign not to send him as a governor to the Terek. And he hired it quite cheaply: for a ruble of money, a quarter of rye flour, half an octopus of wheat flour, an octopus of peas, half an octopus of cereals, half a stew of meat and half a bucket of wine. Oh, this wine with a snack to the magician and his accomplices hiccuped when they burned in the log house. The steward Bezobrazov did not escape execution.
Generally speaking, Prokofiev was a “folk healer”. During interrogations in the Order of Investigative Affairs, he said that he cures dental disease, persuades aches and blood speaks. And Fyodor Bobylev, a Nizhny Novgorod horseman, taught him this craft. True, Dorofeyka admitted that he had really made and launched a conspiracy against Tsar Peter Alekseevich, so that he was more affectionate to Bezobrazov.
By the middle of the 18th century, justice towards sorcerers became more liberal. Perhaps the last sorcerer sentenced to death was a peasant from the Solvychegodsky district, Andrei Kozitsyn, who, during the investigation, without the use of torture, told that on Easter 1752 he entered into an alliance with satanic forces, renounced God and the Orthodox faith and received demons into personal submission, the eldest of whose name was Erokhta. He let these demons with spoilage on his fellow villagers.
On the basis of this confession, Kozitsyn was sentenced to be burned in a log house. In January 1763, the verdict was sent for approval to the Arkhangelsk Provincial Chancellery. However, the verdict was not approved there, referring to the Senate decrees, which ordered to replace executions with corporal punishment. As a result, Kozitsyn, who had sold himself to the devil, was punished with 40 blows with a whip, tore out his nostrils and sent to the Nerchinsk penal servitude.
In the 19th century, punishment for sorcerers and witches began to be limited to flogging. Mikhail Chukarev from the city of Pinega, Arkhangelsk province, at the slander of his sister Afimya Lobanova, was sentenced in 1815 to 35 lashes with a whip and church repentance. The “corpus delicti” in this case consisted in the fact that he allegedly blew this woman by making her hiccup.
Now sorcerers and witches are not prosecuted for their activities. Moreover, they are happy to be promoted in newspapers and on television. Meanwhile, one gets the impression that today's sorcerers and witches are much more cruel than the ancient witches and wise men.
Ekaterina Vishnyakova, a resident of the city of Onega, had a reputation as a witch with her friends. Therefore, when in July 2007 she invited her friend to hold a ceremony on the return of her husband to her to pay off a debt of 9 thousand rubles, she readily agreed. To perform the witchcraft ritual, Catherine lured her acquaintance to the cemetery at night, and there she tied her to a tree, blindfolded her and began to strangle her. Fortunately, the gullible lady managed to escape and run to the cemetery hut, where she took refuge from the pursuit of the witch. For the attempted murder of Vishnyakova, she was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Oleg Loginov
