Northern Moravia witch trials

The Czechs were unwilling to abandon their Protestant religion after Bohemian lands had been re-taken by Austria during the Thirty Years' War.

Jesuit priest Arnold Engel was the first person who had pointed out to the alleged witch practices in North Moravia.

In order to draw attention of Emperor Leopold I, he wrote a special memorandum describing alleged public mocking of Catholics by Protestants.

[1] He notes, that "... so many dead men, who didn't die in good faith, but had connections with the devil, are getting up from their graves, and cause heavy damages to both the residents and their livestock.

At Easter 1678, Marie Schuhe from Vernířovice (Wermsdorf) attended church, and during the mass, she was observed taking the bread of communion from her mouth into her prayer book.

The local aristocrat, Countess Angelia Anna Sibyla of Galle, was advised to form a witch commission.

When four women were burned in September 1680, the crowd watching the execution cried for Jesus to forgive them.

König died in 1682, just avoiding an arrest, as Boblig was ready to present his witch charge against him.

The accused were made to confess to have committed incest and sex with demons at the witches' sabbath.

Otakar Vávra's film Kladivo na čarodějnice (Malleus Maleficarum, also translated as Witches' Hammer or Witchhammer, 1969) is based on Václav Kaplický's book Kladivo na čarodějnice (1963), a novel about witch trials in Northern Moravia during the 1670s.