Saturday, June 14, 2008

Rehabilitation for Swiss Miss

From: Europe's Last Executed Witch to be Cleared
"Swiss authorities are preparing to exonerate the last woman in Europe to be executed for witchcraft.

Anna Goeldi, a maid in the small alpine region of Glarus, was beheaded in 1782 for being a witch after she confessed under torture to conversing with the devil and poisoning the daughter of the house. Campaigners claim she was the victim of a conspiracy between the eastern town's judical and Protestant church authorities.

Goeldi was employed by the family of a rich married politician, who after having an affair with her denounced her for witchcraft claiming she made his daughter spit pins and suffer convulsions. The trial and beheading in the village of Mollis was carried out at a time when witch trials had disappeared from most places in Europe.

She was executed even though the law at the time did not impose the death penalty for nonlethal poisoning, it added. Goeldi's torture and execution was even more incomprehensible as it happened in the Age of Enlightenment when "those who made the judgment regarded themselves as educated people," the government said in a statement.

Several thousand people, mainly women, were executed for witchcraft between the 14th and 18th centuries in Switzerland, as they were elsewhere.

The ruling will be referred to the Swiss Parliament for final approval."

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