Burning Witches

Burning

It was once commonly believed that a witch's power could be nullified by blooding her or by destroying her blood in a fire, hence the practice of burning at the stake. Sometimes uncooperative witches were burned with green wood, which took longer to kill them. Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Templars, was "slow roasted on a spit" (Ashley 154).

By far the most well-known punishment for witches was death by burning, a fate reserved also for heretics. Perhaps the most famous death by burning was the execution of Joan d'Arc for heresy.

St. Augustine (354-430) declared that heretics, pagans, and Jews would burn forever in eternal fire unless saved by the Catholic Church. Partially as a result of this declaration, victims were burned to death in order to give them a taste of what was coming.

In France, Germany, and Scotland, expenses concurred by the trial, the stay in jail, and the burning were billed to the victim's estate or relatives.

The burning of a witch was usually a great public occasion. The execution took place shortly after the sentencing, just long enough to hire an executioner, construct the execution site and gather the fuel. In Scotland, a witch burning was preceded by days of fasting and solemn preaching. The witch was strangled first, and then her corpse--or sometimes her unconscious or semiconscious body--was tied to a stake or dumped into a tar barrel and set afire. If the witch was not dead and managed to get out of the flames, onlookers shoved her back in. Records of trials in Scotland report that burning a witch consumed 16 loads of peat plus wood and coal (Guiley 1989 29, 43, 44).

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Punishment, Torture, and Ordeal copyrighted 1996-1998 to Shantell Powell.