Original article (in Serbian) was published on 6/9/2024; Author: Marija Zemunović
A reader reported to our editorial office an article from the web portal Nova portal whose title seemed suspicious to him: “The Last Witch in Europe Was Burned in Serbia”. In its article, Nova presents certain data about the torture and killing of witches in our regions, and in one of the passages, it makes the following claim, highlighted in the article’s title: “Wikipedia has a special chapter on the persecution of witches in Serbia, where allegedly the last witch in Europe was burned—in 1803. Or maybe it happened a bit later…”
We found this information on many other domestic web portals (Nova, Srbija danas, Glas javnosti, Lepote Srbije, Informer, Krusevac grad, Storyteller, Krstarica) as well as on YouTube (1, 2, 3). However, this information is incorrect.
To begin with, we checked the mentioned Wikipedia article and found no information that the last witch in Europe was burned in Serbia in 1803. By reviewing the page’s edit history, we concluded that there is no trace that such information was ever in this article.
Nova’s article was also mentioned by Aleksandar Mihajlovic in his 2022 work “Witchcraft in Healing Diseases – A Gender Approach to One Form of Presumed Female Action/Work”. Mihajlovic states that “the author refers to ‘a legend’ according to which the last witch was burned in Serbia, and that it happened at the beginning of the 19th century. Through a play on words, the question arises whether the witch-burning was last conducted in Serbia in the 19th century, or if the last witch on European soil was ‘according to legend’ burned in Serbia in the 19th century, with a clear connotation of the cultural primitivism of the environment where it happened”.
In this context, we could pose three questions:
Was the last witch in Serbia (and Europe) killed in 1803?
Was the last witch-killing in Serbia done by burning?
Who was the last witch burned/killed in Europe?
Was the Last Witch in Serbia (and Europe) Killed in 1803?
As explained by Aleksandar Matkovic, who has researched the topic of witch persecutions in our regions, if the question is whether the last witch in Europe was burned in 1803, the answer is—no. “Burnings occurred in Serbia even after that year, for example, in 1806, during the 1820s, and as far as I know, 1803 is not even mentioned in the few sources as a year when burnings happened here”, Matkovic explained to FakeNews Tracer.
In the work Matkovic co-authored with Ivana Novakov (“Legal Characteristics and Psychosocial Determinants of Witch Persecution among South Slavs”), the latest recorded case of burning a “witch” in Serbia happened in 1841. In a letter from the captain of the Macva District, the killing by burning of a woman believed to be a witch was described.
What is Mentioned in the Captain’s Letter?
“In the village of Crna Bara, in the area entrusted to me, for more than a month now, some kind of plague has struck the children, causing them to fall like sheaves. Thirty children, both male and female, have died to this day. The lamentation in the villages and at the graves is so great that it can be heard to the heavens, and there is no benefit from prayers or from the processions that are carried out in the villages…” (…) “The first host in the village, and the one in charge, is recognized as Father Spasoje; they reasoned and reasoned and finally concluded that this deadly plague is caused by Granny Stamena, from the same village of Crna Bara, for they saw her wandering around the village draw well, performing her spells, and then going to the Brest crossroad and turning around. Therefore, Father Spasoje and then the other hosts determined that Granny Stamena should be caught in the river and burned alive at the site as a proclaimed witch so that the plague of children would end. And what they concluded, they did around sunset. Granny Stamena burned completely with her bones, and then Father Spasoje put on a red garment, recited great prayers, and with the people he went around the village, sprinkling it with holy water…”
It is important to note that the characteristics of witch persecutions in Balkan countries, including Serbia, were different from those in Western Europe, which Matkovic and Novakov also write about in their work.
From their work, we learn that in the present-day territories of Croatia, Slovenia, and Vojvodina — areas under Catholic influence — the persecution of witches spread “according to the standard European model only in the 17th century, when this phenomenon began to fade in most European centers”. On the other hand, they note, in Orthodox regions of the Balkans, such as Serbia and Montenegro, “there was no formally organized witch persecution, nor officially institutionalized court processes”, so during the 18th and 19th centuries, the local community spontaneously organized persecutions on its own.
In Croatia, institutionalized trials lasted until the mid-18th century: in 1756, Maria Theresa issued a resolution requiring the cessation of witch trials in Austria-Hungary.
In Serbia, it was not until the early 19th century that Karadjordje’s Criminal Code (adopted in 1807) prohibited the persecution and killing of witches with Article 31: “Whoever dares to seek out and kill witches, and to torture women as they had been subjected to such foolishness, or to throw them into the water, whoever does such a madness, for which the Serbs are mocked by the world, for such foolishness, we condemn him: what he would do to those witches, let it be done to him”.
Was the Last Witch Killing in Serbia Done by Burning?
Although we often think of witch persecutions as involving burnings at the stake, witches were killed in various other ways. “When a certain woman became the target of accusations, an enraged mob, often led by a local priest, would brutally punish the woman by throwing her into a pit, burning, stoning, stabbing, or shooting her”, Matkovic and Novakov state in their work.
A similar account is found in the book “False History: 101 Things That Never Happened” by Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse: “In most cases, witches were hanged, drowned, buried alive, or boiled alive, and so on. In many instances, even if a witch was burned at the stake, she was first strangled”.
Considering all known methods of killing witches, the latest recorded case from Serbia—according to Matkovic and Novakov—occurred in 1846. In that year, villagers in Brdo complained to a Turkish commandant about an old woman “whom they believed to be a witch and responsible for the death of children and livestock”. The commandant killed the woman with a cudgel, along with other women she had named as practicing witchcraft.
Who was the Last Witch Burned/Killed in Europe?
If the last witch in Europe was not killed/burned in Serbia in 1803, the question arises as to who is considered the last witch killed and/or burned in Europe. The answer to this question is also not clear.
The witch hunt predominantly occurred between the 15th and 18th centuries and led to the deaths of around 60,000 individuals, mostly women. The areas with the most intense persecution were those that now belong to Germany, Switzerland, and France. Different countries had various laws and practices under which witches were trialed.
“The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic” by Owen Davies notes that by the end of the 17th century, the witch hunt in Europe began to wane, and by the end of the 18th century, official persecution of witches had completely ceased in much of Europe.
Furthermore, Wolfgang Behringer in his book “Witches and Witch Hunts: A Global History” provides a chronology of the last official executions of witches in various European countries. According to this book, the last official witch execution in England was carried out in 1685, in Italy in 1717, in Scotland in 1727, in Silesia in 1746, in Bavaria in 1756 and in Switzerland in 1782.
However, as we have seen in the case of Serbia, the official prohibition of witch hunts did not mean that this practice completely ceased in reality. Matkovic explains: “The problem with determining the last murder of a witch also relates to the legal classification of such a criminal act since certain cases of persecution in Western Europe were recorded even after the official cessation of witch hunts in those areas, whereby some alleged witches were still prosecuted and/or killed under somewhat different formal charges, but actually for witchcraft”.
This is precisely the case with two women who are concurrently mentioned online as “the last witch killed in Europe”. Anna Goldi, who was killed in Switzerland in 1792, was not explicitly tried for witchcraft. Similarly, for the case of Barbara Zdunk, who was killed in Poland in 1811, it is questionable whether it can be classified as part of the witch hunt, although she is sometimes also referred to as the last witch killed in Europe.
It is important to note that even in 19th-century Europe, there are recorded cases of women being killed under the pretext of being witches: for example, an Irishman killed his wife in 1895, believing her to be a witch. We might wonder whether the killing of “witches” ever truly stopped, considering that there are still cases of women being killed today under such accusations.
Note: By the time this article was published on the SeeCheck website, portal Nova.rs had corrected the false statements in accordance with professional standards.
