The Labourd witch-hunt of 1609 took place in

Labourd Labourd ( eu, Lapurdi; la, Lapurdum; Gascon: ''Labord'') is a former French province and part of the present-day Pyrénées Atlantiques ''département''. It is one of the traditional Basque provinces, and identified as one of the territorial c ...

French Basque Country The French Basque Country, or Northern Basque Country ( eu, Iparralde (), french: Pays basque, es, País Vasco francés) is a region lying on the west of the French department of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. Since 1 January 2017, it constitu ...

, in 1609. The investigation was managed by

Pierre de Lancre Pierre de Rosteguy de Lancre or Pierre de l'Ancre, Lord of De Lancre (1553–1631), was the French judge of Bordeaux who conducted the massive Labourd witch-hunt of 1609. In 1582 he was named judge in Bordeaux, and in 1608 King Henry IV commande ...

on the order of King Henry IV of France and III of Navarre. It resulted in the execution of 70 people. The area suffered from instability after the French religious wars. The process began with a dispute between the Lord of Urtubi and some people who had accused him and his men of being witches. This dispute evolved in sporadic fight and soon the authorities of Donibane-Lohizune asked for the intervention of the Judge of Bourdeaux, who happened to be de Lancre. In less than a year some 70 people were burnt at the stake, among them several priests. De Lancre wasn't satisfied: he estimated that some 3,000 witches were still at large (10% of the population of Labourd in that time). The Parlement of Bordeaux eventually dismissed him from office. In his ''Portrait of the Inconstancy of Witches'', de Lancre sums up his rationale as follows:

To dance indecently; eat excessively; make love diabolically; commit atrocious acts of sodomy; blaspheme scandalously; avenge themselves insidiously; run after all horrible, dirty, and crudely unnatural desires; keep toads, vipers, lizards, and all sorts of poison as precious things; love passionately a stinking goat; caress him lovingly; associate with and mate with him in a disgusting and scabrous fashion—are these not the uncontrolled characteristics of an unparalleled lightness of being and of an execrable inconstancy that can be expiated only through the divine fire that justice placed in Hell?''Tableau de l'Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons'', page 5, Scholz Williams translation

The Labourd witch-hunt influenced the

Basque witch trials The Basque Witch Trials of the seventeenth century represent the last attempt at rooting out supposed witchcraft from Navarre by the Spanish Inquisition, after a series of episodes erupted during the sixteenth century following the end of milit ...

, which begun the same year.

References

{{Witch Hunt 17th century in France 1600s in France 1609 in France Witch trials in France 1609 in law Basque history

See also

References