witches were burnt in Lorraine; between 1627 and 1629, no
fewer than one hundred and fifty-seven persons, old and
young, and of all ranks, were burnt at Wurtzburg, in
Bavaria; in 1634 a clerk named Urbain Grandier, who was
parish priest at Loudon, was burnt on a charge of having
bewitched a whole convent of Ursuline nuns; in 1654 twenty
poor women were put to death as witches in Brittany; in
1648-9 serious disturbances on account of witchcraft took
place in Massachusetts; and in 1683 dreadful persecutions
raged in Pennsylvania from the same cause; in 1692, at
Salem, in New England, nineteen persons were hanged by the
Puritans for witchcraft, and eight more were condemned,
while fifty others confessed themselves to be witches, and
were pardoned; in 1657 the witch-judge Nicholas Remy boasted
of having burnt nine hundred persons in fifteen years; in
one German principality alone, at least two hundred and
forty-two persons were burnt between 1646 and 1651,
including many children from one to six years of age; in
1749 Maria Renata was burnt at Wurtzburg for witchcraft; on
January 17th, 1775, nine old women were burnt at Kalish, in
Poland, on a charge of having bewitched and rendered
unfruitful the lands belonging to the palatinate; at
Landshut, in Bavaria, in 1756, a young girl of thirteen
years was convicted of impure intercourse with the Devil and
put to death. There were also executions for sorcery at
Seville, in Spain, in 1781, and at Glarus, in Switzerland,
in 1783; while even as late as December 15th, 1802, five
women were condemned to death for sorcery at Patna, in the
Bengal Presidency, by the Brahmins, and were all executed.