Witch Trials in Seventeenth-Century Târgu Mureş

In: Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai. Historia, Band 67, Heft Special Issue, S. 27-41

Abstract

"The witch trials from Târgu-Mures are typical ones and fit together with the other cases from the early modern period. We can identify the same processes and elements as historiography and ethnography had described. On the other hand, these cases are slightly different because these witch trials were less bloody than usually in the seventeenth century. In the Hungarian Kingdom, the zenith of the witch hunts was in the middle of the eighteenth century. Perhaps the intensity of witch hunts in a medium town was smaller. This paper aims to describe and analyse the witch cases from the seventeenth-century Târgu Mures. These cases are not that remarkable, but we can gain insight into the juridical processes through them. Keywords: Târgu-Mureş, witch trials, seventeenth-century, protocols"