Strange

Last 'witch' beheaded in Europe finally cleared

by LotusFlower | August 27, 2008 at 10:56 pm

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History is littered with 'witch hunts' of various types and one wonders what will be judged as our modern witch hunt when future societies look back on the present day for it's certain that the majority of citizens at the time of the European witch hunts thought it entirely reasonable to find and execute so many women for the crime of witchcraft. Well here's news that the last witch to be beheaded in Europe has at last been cleared by the Swiss authorities of witchcraft. Who will future authorities be clearing of present societal crimes in the future?

Anna Goeldi was executed for being a witch more than 220 years ago, the last one beheaded in Europe. On Wednesday, the Swiss cleared her name. The parliament of the Swiss canton (state) of Glarus decided unanimously to exonerate Goeldi as a victim of "judicial murder", said Josef Schwitter, a government spokesman.

Several thousand people, mainly women, were executed for witchcraft between the 14th and 18th centuries in Switzerland, and elsewhere in Europe. Yet Goeldi's trial and beheading in the village of Mollis was in 1782, when witch trials had largely disappeared from the continent.

Goeldi, a maidservant for a prominent burgher, Johann Jakob Tschudi, was convicted of "spoiling" the family's daughter, causing her to spit pins and have convulsions. Yet Tschudi, a doctor and magistrate, was said to have had an affair with Goeldi; if that had come out, his reputation would have been seriously damaged.