THE BASQUE WITCH-HUNT

In June 1609 two judges left Bordeaux for a territory at the very edge of their jurisdiction a Basque speaking province on the Atlantic coast called the Pays de Labourd In four months they executed up to 80 women and men for the crime of witchcraft causing a wave of suspects to flee into Spain and sparking terror there Witnesses many of them children described lurid tales of cannibalism vampirism and demonic sex One of the judges Pierre de Lancre published a sensationalist account of this diabolical netherworld With other accounts seemingly destroyed this witch hunt France s largest has always been seen through de Lancre s eyes The narrative re told over the centuries is that of a witch hunt caused by a bigoted outsider Newly discovered evidence paints a very different still darker picture revealing a secret history underneath de Lancre s well known tale Far from an outside imposition witchcraft was a home grown problem Panic had been building up over a number of years and the region was fractured by factionalism and a struggle over scarce resources The Basque Witch Hunt reveals that de Lancre was no outsider he was a local partisan married into the Basque nobility Living at the Franco Spanish border the Basques were victims of geograp