Witches & Outlaws

 1728. Thirty-five years after the witch trials in Salem, Massachusettes, Szeged saw the one of the worst witch trials of the region (1). Unlike the Salem witch trials that only lasted for a year, the trials in Szeged stretched out for sixteen years. These trials were covered in newspapers as far away as Ireland (2)  Twenty-one people, primarily women, were tried as witches (3).  According to our guide at the museum, there were two tests to determine whether one was really a witch. First they would weigh the suspect--witches do not have bones and will thus be lighter than moral human beings. The second test was the water ordeal in which suspected witches were  to thrown into the river to see if they would float. If they floated,  they were witches. If they drowned, I suppose they were exonerated. According to Ildiko Kristof, a Hungarian historian, in the Szeged witch trials of 1728, three of the suspects drowned in the Tisza River,  thirteen were burned at the stake along the riverbank, and three died in prison. Other historians, Gabor Klaniczay and Eva Pocs (2017) found that four of the males indicted in the witch trials in Szeged from 1728 to 1744 were released from prison after eight months.

What motivated others to accuse their neighbors of witchcraft? With some of the nobles, particularly in Transylvania, it was a way of solidifying their power (4). In some cases, particularly in Szeged, the accused were healers whose patients had died 5). The accusations and victimizations were born of a time of unrest: 1709, plague; 1712, flood; 1722, plague and drought brought about when the witches sold the rain to the Turks; and 1728, the defeat of the ruling party (6).  Landlords accused their tenants. Tenants accused their landlords. Beggars accused magistrates (7). In Hungary, the most common accusation was that the victim had not asked the accused to be the midwife or godparent (8). Who said accusations had to make sense? That reminds me of Sleeping Beauty, though in the fairy tale, the king and queen did not take the disgruntled fairy to court. In the1750s, Empress Maria Theresa put a stop to the witch trials (9).

One hundred years later, Szeged saw yet another trial. This was more reminiscent of the Wild West. The man on trial in 1838 was Rozsa Sandor, a horse thief. He escaped from jail. Though he stole from farmers, killed thirty people, and robbed trains, which makes me think of Billy the Kid, the museum guide hailed him as the Robin Hood of Hungary. He once tried to mend his ways and applied to be a cop, but was turned down because of illiteracy and was forced back into the life of a law-breaking citizen. He was sentenced to hanging, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The man that folklore espoused as having been endowed with magic by witches died in prison at the age of 65 with tuberculosis.(10)

References
1. Pavlac, B.A. (2009). Witch Hunts in the Western World: Persecution and Punishment from the Inquisition to the Salem Trials. Greenwood Press. Google Books
2. Klaniczay, G. & Pocs, E. (2017) Witchcraft and Demonology in Hungary and Transylvania. Palgrave McMillan. Retrieved from Google Books
3. Kristof, I. (2013 ). Chapter 19: Witch-hunting in Early Modern Hungary in K. Levac (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America. Oxford University Press. Google Books
4. Pavlac
5. Klaniczay & Pocs
6. Ibid
7. Kristof
8. Klaniczay & Pocs
9. Pavlac
10. Sandor Rozsa. Wikipedia

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