The Doruchów witch trial was a

witch trial A witch hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. Practicing evil spells or Incantation, incantations was proscribed and punishable in early human civilizations in the ...

which took place in the village of

Doruchów Doruchów is a village in Ostrzeszów County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Doruchów. It lies approximately east of Ostrzeszów and south-east of the regio ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

in the 18th century. It was the last mass trial of

sorcery Sorcery commonly refers to: * Magic (supernatural), the application of beliefs, rituals or actions employed to manipulate natural or supernatural beings and forces ** Goetia, ''Goetia'', magic involving the evocation of spirits ** Witchcraft, the ...

and

witchcraft Witchcraft is the use of Magic (supernatural), magic by a person called a witch. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic to inflict supernatural harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meanin ...

in the

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, also referred to as Poland–Lithuania or the First Polish Republic (), was a federation, federative real union between the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ...

. The trial allegedly resulted in the execution of 14 women in 1775, and led to the ban on witch burning in Poland. However, a reassessment of the original documentation places the trial in 1783, with 6 victims, and having no effect on any of the laws concerning witch burning.

History

According to the older historians who believed the first version of the event, in 1775, the inhabitants in the village of Doruchów asked for the authorities in the nearby city of

Grabów nad Prosną Grabow is a town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in north-eastern Germany. Grabow may also refer to other placenames derived from ''grab'', the Slavic word for hornbeam: Places in Germany *Grabow (Amt) an Amt in the district of Ludwigslust, Mecklenburg ...

to halt the investigation of sorcery, which had been initiated in the village. Previously, in 1768, the Polish

Sejm The Sejm (), officially known as the Sejm of the Republic of Poland (), is the lower house of the bicameralism, bicameral parliament of Poland. The Sejm has been the highest governing body of the Third Polish Republic since the Polish People' ...

(Parliament) had banned local magistrates from handling witchcraft cases; so, the trial was conducted by the court of Grabów, which judged 14 people guilty of witchcraft and sentenced them to death. This trial allegedly led to the Polish government to ban torture and witch trials in 1776. Still according to that version, the reason for the accusations and trial was the illness of a local nobleman's wife. Women from the village were accused of having caused the noblewoman's sickness by use of magic. Fourteen women were said to have been arrested, of whom three supposedly died of the torture and eleven were burned at the stake. Modern Polish historians – such as Janusz Tazbir — have, however, questioned whether the Doruchów witch trial really took place in 1775, whether it happened as described, and whether it had the claimed effect on the law. Tazbir points out that the most detailed account of this event was given by early-19th-century writer

Konstanty Majeranowski Konstanty Majeranowski (1787–1851) was a Polish journalist, poet and writer. 1787 births 1851 deaths Polish journalists 19th-century Polish poets {{Poland-writer-stub ...

, who has been found by later historians to have authored several historical hoaxes. Tazbir notes that the existing primary sources can prove that only six – not fourteen – women, were sentenced to death, and it is not even clear whether they were actually executed. Further, the documents examined by Tazbir indicate that the trial took place not in 1775, but later, in 1783 or shortly before – in any case, after 1776, because it has been recorded that the judges who conducted this trial were punished for pronouncing the sentence, in defiance of the law abolishing witch trials, which had been issued in that year. Therefore, the trial could not have influenced in any way the 1776 Sejm legislation that led to the ban on torture and witch trials, because it occurred when that law was already in force. There is no trace of such a trial in the rich collection of documents of the Polish Sejm or in the contemporary press in 1776. In 1793, however, another – certainly the last —

took place in independent Poland. During the

second partition of Poland The 1793 Second Partition of Poland was the second of partitions of Poland, three partitions (or partial annexations) that ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by 1795. The second partition (politics), partition occurred i ...

that year, a local judge in the city of

Poznań Poznań ( ) is a city on the Warta, River Warta in west Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business center and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John's ...

cited the partitions and transition from Polish to Prussian authority as a basis for the voiding of Polish laws banning trial and executions of witches. With that justification, he accepted the accusation of two women with inflamed eyes, who were said to have enchanted their neighbor's cattle. They were judged guilty of witchcraft and burned.Wanda Wyporska
''Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland, 1500–1800''
p. 30 "... unverified trials reported in Poznań (1793) and Doruchów (1775) ..." In 1811 Barbara Zdunk was executed, but it is dubious as to whether the trial should be regarded as a witch trial or not.

History

See also

References

Further reading