Witches. Chronicle of 13 Trials

In 1590, women accused of witchcraft were tried in Edinburgh. The trial, which began as a local inquiry, became a national event. King James himself attended the trial. In 1692, a quiet Puritan colony was shaken by unprecedented events – local residents were accused of being in league with the devil. They were faced with nothing but torture and executions, and the town's name would forever be etched in history: Salem. In the 1730s, Marie-Catherine Cadier accused a priest of seducing her. Rumors spread everywhere like a plague. By the beginning of the trial, both Marie-Catherine and the priest were suspected of witchcraft. The young girl was destined to become the heroine of one of the most notorious and significant trials of the 18th century. A heroine and a victim. Witches' sabbaths and folk healing, 'The Hammer of Witches' and treatises on Satanism, medieval Scotland and witch killings in the 1940s. Who were all these women and men whose names we know only in connection with witchcraft? What surrounded them, what did they live by? And what do witches represent today? 'The witch trials are a manifestation of power over other people: they can be harmed, silenced, judged, and killed. If we do not feel their pain, do not outrage at their fate, then we cannot understand the entire illegality, the egregious injustice of the persecutions. If we do not feel, then how can we fight?' (Marion Gibson)