Henry Boguet, the Witch-Finder of Burgundy

Author of the French witch-finder's bible, Discours des Sorciers, and Supreme Judge of Burgundy's St. Claude district, Boguet was France's most cruel inquisitor. Hundreds found themselves at the mercy of his torturers.

Boguet employed many tortures and punishments, including the rack, the wheel, crucifixion, whipping, branding, and the tearing of flesh with red- or white-hot pincers. He disposed of countless accused witches, sorcerers, and werewolves by burning them to death at the stake.

One of the more peculiar theories Boguet held was that sorcerors could "shed no more than three tears from their right eye." Many of those tortured were so terrorized that their tear ducts remained dry. Boguet kept phials to measure the tears of his victims, but even if they wept rivers, they might still be tortured. Boguet was known to have discreetly disposed of the collected tears and then resumed the tortures.

Regarding the tear philosophy, Boguet claimed in his Discours des Sorciers,

The doctors esteem it one of the strongest presumptions that exist as a test of the crime of sorcery. I wish to report what has come to my knowledge. All the sorcerers whom I have examined in quality of Judge have never shed tears in my presence: or, indeed, if they have shed them it has been so parsimoniously that no notice was taken of them. I say this with regard to those who seemed to weep, but I doubt if their tears were not feigned. I am at least well assured that those tears were wrung from them with the greatest efforts. This was shown by the efforts which the accused made to weep, and by the small number of tears which they shed.

Yet if I spoke to them in private they shed tears and wept with all possible vehemence. The same happened when they confessed. They then showed themselves more lively and joyous than they had previously been, as if they had been delivered from a great burden. Besides it is probable that sorcerers do not shed tears, since tears serve principally to penitents to wash away and cleanse their sins.

Nevertheless, if you demand of sorcerers why they do not shed tears, they answer you that it is impossible for them to weep because they have the heart too much oppressed at seeing themselves disgraced by the imputation of a crime so detestable as that of sorcery (Farrington 64).

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Henry Boguet, the Witch-Finder of Burgundy copyrighted 1996-1998 to Shantell Powell.