Witch trials in France

Northern France was under the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Paris, and all sentences of local witchcraft trials therefore fell under its jurisdiction. This proved to have an inhibiting effect on witch trials in Northern France. Between 1568 and 1625, the Parliament of Paris only confirmed one hundred death sentences for witchcraft and thus confirmed less than five percent of the cases from local courts which were put before it.[1]

The Parliament of Paris refused to follow the example of other countries and make witchcraft an "Exceptional Crime". In 1588, the Parliament issued regulations to prevent what they termed as "excessive" zeal and exaggerations in witchcraft persecutions. [1] However, it is known that local courts ignored the recommendations of the Parliament of Paris,[1] and those local witchcraft sentences which were never reported or appealed to Paris, is unknown or unconfirmed.[1]

In 1624, a new law required all sentences made by a local court in Northern France to be confirmed by the Parliament of Paris before they could be carried out.[1] With one exception, the Parliament of Paris stopped confirming death sentenced for witchcraft after 1625.[1] However, local witch trials who did not report their cases to be confirmed by Paris would still go undetected.

Southern France was not under the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Paris, and a number of large witch trials were conducted there during the first half of the 17th-century, among them being the famous Labourd witch-hunt of 1609 and the Aix-en-Provence possessions (1611).

The North East of present-day France, particularly Lorraine and Franche-Comté (at that time a part of the Holy Roman Empire), was an area strongly affected by witch hunt. About 800 witch trials took place in these areas with numerous executions in the period of 1603-1614 and 1627-1632, and again in France-Comté with 100 executions in 1658-1661.[2]

Peronne Goguillon has been referred to as the last woman to be executed for witchcraft in France in 1678. There have been different opinions as to whether the Affair of the Poisons (1679–1682) should be defined a witch trial or not. While the accused of the Affair de Poisons had indeed positioned themselves as professional witches, they were prosecuted and executed for poison and murder rather than for witchcraft.

The 1682 Edict of Louis XIV of France described witchcraft as fraudulent magic, a definition which did not as such prevent witch trials, but made it more difficult to convict people of witchcraft. [3]

A few witch trials were conducted in France during the 18th-century, some of which resulted in death sentences for men. The execution of an alleged male sorcerer in Bordeaux in 1718 has traditionally been referred to as the last. However, a donkey-driver and the nobleman des Chauffors were in fact executed for the same crimes in Paris in 1724 and 1726 respectively.

The last witch trial resulting in an execution in France was likely that of Louis Debaraz, who was executed in Lyon in 1745. His was executed as the last of several men implicated in the Lyon witch trial in 1743–1745, in which several men were charged with making a Devil's pact in order to find hidden treasures, following the case of Bertrand Guilladot. As late as 1768, a woman was tried and convicted of witchcraft in France, but she was only given a fine.