In 1678, Jindřich František Boblig arrived in the small town of Velke Losiny in Northern Moravia. It was the beginning of a horrifying nightmare for the region. Boblig was one of the Inquisition’s witch-hunters.

As early as 785 AD, the Roman Catholic Church expressly forbade condemning people as witches. The Church at the time knew this was inhumane and based on superstition¹.

Pope Innocent VIII changed the church’s position in 1484. He issued a papal bull authorising the ‘correcting, imprisoning, punishing and chastising‘ of devil-worshippers². This bull acknowledged the existence of witches. The Vatican wrote it after southern German priests prevented an Inquisitor from investigating witches³. It looks like a power play between the Inquisition and local bishops led to this resurgence in witch-hunting.

In what is now Czechia, it all started with a farmer called Marie Schuhova. She had diseased cows that couldn’t give milk. Someone advised her to feed a consecrated communion wafer to her cows⁴. She stole one from her church on Easter Sunday in 1698^{5 4}.

The superstitious Countess Angele Sybille Galle lived in the nearby château at Velke Losiny. She summoned the zealous representative of the Inquisition, Austrian lawyer J. F. Boblig⁴, to her estate. Within a year they burned this young woman, together with three others, at the stake for witchcraft⁶.

Her estate is open for viewing as a country château. As I walked through the beautiful grounds I found it hard to reconcile the peace and quiet with the shocking stories from those days.

In each case, Boblig tortured women for information. This led to more names, which is not surprising because you would say anything to stop the torture. Furthermore, if they didn’t confess after torture, Boblig took this as a sign they must be working with the devil⁴.

Logic was not his strong point.

Within a few years he decapitated and burned another five women. Boblig, who seemed to be an enthusiastic assassin, started burning entire families at the stake. Even suggesting the trials were unfair, was enough to have you accused of witchcraft. A local priest, beloved by his congregation for his kindness and tolerance, objected and he was burned too⁷.

I find it hard to understand why someone would be so enthusiastic about killing people. Was it just about the inspiration they thought they had in their interpretation of religion? It turns out that Boblig was allowed to keep the belongings of anyone he prosecuted. This changes the nature of the story. Now Boblig becomes nothing more than a thief, hiding behind his religious beliefs.

More recently there have been well-documented cases of proper investigations into mysterious phenomenon

There also was a psycho-sexual motive behind these witch hunts. One of the first step in interrogating a witch was to strip the person, looking for ‘the mark of the devil’. It’s easy to imagine he would look forward to stripping unsuspecting women for his own gratification⁷.

In total Boblig sentenced about 100 people to death, 56 in Losiny⁴. His reign of terror only came to an end because he died of natural causes⁷.

Have you heard of witchcraft stories in your town? Leave a message below!

References

1. Two deluded inquisitors lit the first flames of Europe’s tragic witchcraft hysteria; Dominic Selwood; The Telegraph; 2016-12-05[↩]
2. Witchcraft in Europe, 400–1700: A Documentary History; Kors, Alan Charles; Peters, Edward; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (2000) [↩]
3. The Bull of Innocent VIII; Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger; Malleus Maleficarum; 1928[↩]
4. Tour guide at Velke Losiny; As witnessed by author; 2018-07-22[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
5. Witch hunt; Wandering through the Czech past; 2004-11-14; (Article in Czech) [↩]
6. Velke Losiny Chateau; Czech Tourism; Retrieved 2018-03-05) [↩]
7. Chateau Velke Losiny; Atlas Obscura; (Retrieved 2018-03-05) [↩][↩][↩]

Remember: links were correct at time of publication.