Anne de Chantraine
Anne de Chantraine (1603 – 18 October 1622) was one of the many people to be accused and burned for witchcraft in the Great Witch Hunts of the 17th century.[1]
Life and death
In March of 1620, Anne De Chantraine, was arrested and accused of witchcraft in the village of Waret-la-Chaussee in France. She was 17 years old, lively, intelligent and unusually pretty. Anne de Chantraine was held in prison for six months before being interrogated. Although she had avoided torture by confessing freely to being a witch, the Magistrate who interrogated her wanted to gather more information, so he ordered that Anne be put to the question. Three times Anne was subjected to the most brutal and cruel interrogations, before the court, finally satisfied, condemned her to death for witchcraft. But the sentence was not executed immediately, Anne was held in prison for another year, which means that she had spent two years in jail. During that time doubts about her sanity arose, and her jailer testified that "the prisoner was stupid, and did not understand what she said, though sometimes she seemed quite right in her mind." At the age of 19 Anne was strangled and burned at the stake in October 1622.
http://cibercastillo.blogspot.co.uk/2006/12/anne-de-chantraine.html
Extracts of Anne de Chantraine's trial
At the beginning of March 1620, the sergeant of the court of Warêt-la-Chaussée arrested a girl of seventeen, Anne de Chantraine, who had recently come to live in the village with her father and was reputed to be a witch. locked up in the prison of Warêt-la-Chaussée, she appeared in the first fortnight of the month in front of the mayor, Thomas Douclet, and the aldermen of the district. She made no trouble in telling her hateful life and made the most shameless confessions.
Born in the town of Liège to a traveling merchant father, she barely knew her mother who died when she was two years old. Her father placed her in the orphanage convent school of the black sisters Soeurs Noires at Liège. The child remained there ten years, and received an education rare for her time and certainly above her station: reading, writing, catechism, needlework. At twelve years old she was placed by the good sisters with a widow of the city, Christiane de la Chéraille, a second-hand clothier by trade. Anne mended old clothes there the whole day long.
One evening she saw her mistress rub grease on her body as far as her girdle and disappear up the chimney. Before leaving, Christiane de la Chéraille recommended her to do the same, which she forthwith did. Passing up the chimney in a gust of strong wind, she found herself in the company of her boss in a huge room, filled with many people, in which there was a large table covered with white bread, cakes, roast meats, and sausages. There was much joyful feasting and banqueting. Anne was timidly approaching the table when a young man, "with a look of fire," accosted her politely and asked if he could "have to do with her." frightened by the audacity of the teenager, Anne was confused, and she uttered an ejaculatory prayer, accompanying it with the sign of the cross. Immediately table and food, banqueting room, and revellers all disappeared. She found herself alone in the dark, imprisoned among the empty casks of her boss's cellar, from which she was released by Christiane the following morning.
This was Anne de Chantraine's first contact with the infernal powers. The contacts which followed were not so furtive, and the awakening of fleshly desire to be a witch was first occasioned in her through Christiane de la Chéraille. She then gave herself to the witches Sabbath with all the violence of her youth. She went there three times a week-on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday-and took part in all the rites: back to back dances dos-a-dos, sex with the devil, adoration of the devil in the form of a goat, etc. She received the magic powder and the power of witchcraft.
Laurent de Chamont, brother-in-law and lover of her mistress, king of the witches in that region, very quickly noticed Anne. He was chief of a group who knew how to take a very practical advantage of their Satanic initiation; they entered peoples houses at night by magic and stole money, jewels, clothes, and food. It was Laurent de Chamont who cut hairs from his own sexual organs and, placing them on the palm of his hand, blew them into keyholes; for it was thus, by the help of the devil, that doors of houses and locks of chests were opened.
But the gang of witches were finally caught. Laurent de Chamont and Christiane de la Chéraille were both burned alive at the stake, their accomplices fled. Six weeks later Anne was also arrested, after being tried she was sentenced to banishment. Leaving the principality of Liege, she was brought to her father, who had settled at Warêt, but not daring to remain with him, she hired herself as a milkmaid to a farmer called Laurent Streignart.
Such were the confessions of Anne de Chantraine, They were enough to start the prosecution. Her trial was started immediately. On March 17 the mayor of Warêt demanded from the Provincial Council a prosecutor for the accused, and the advocate Martin of Namur was named. but because of contemporary troubles, the number of cases under consideration, her case remained six months in suspense. Anne spent the whole spring of 1620 in the prison of Warêt.
On September 13 Anne was informally examined. She confessed freely to being a witch. That same day the tribunal decided to send one of it's members to Liege to obtain more complete information. This step had grievous results for the accused. Together with the report of the interrogation of Laurent de Chamont and of Christiane de la Chéraille, the alderman returned with the evidence of Gaspard José, who was for a few weeks her employer after the arrest of Christiane, and that of Jean Agnus, her accomplice in flights about the city. All these taxed her with evildoing, with witchcraft and witchflights.
Recalled on October 9, Anne admitted to all the horrors of the accusation, and in particular to having given herself to an unknown man dressed in black, with cloven feet, who appeared to her while she was blaspheming because the heat of the day had dispersed her herd of cows. As a result, she confessed, the cows had gathered themselves.
On the fourteenth of the same month, three women of the village came forward as witnesses against her. The first said she knew that Anne had the reputation of being a witch, and one day when she felt ill, she was convinced she had been bewitched by Anne. Accordingly she complained to the accused, and Anne prepared some pancakes for her. When she had eaten the first, she began to vomit and immediately felt better. The second witness was a friend of the accused and had received certain confidences from her which she made known to the tribunal-common- places about the Sabbath and the magic powders. She could give only one definite fact: one of her children had been poisoned and cured by Anne on the same day. The third witness declared on oath that the prisoner had cured two bewitched children by taking away a spell, but that she had also procured the death of a young girl living in Waret.
Another questioning took place on February 15, 1621, in the course of which Anne revealed to the judges how Christiane de la Chéraille had taught her to cure the bewitched: "When a poisoned person was brought to her to be cure, she said: 'Devil, do you wish me to remove the poison from this person in whom you have placed it?' - and having said this, she seized him under the arms, turned him one way and then the other, saying the same words and touching the hand of the poisoned person, declaring that he was cured and ending with further curious ritual." She admitted to having received money for the cure of a girl.
On April 15 the executioner of Namur, Léonard Balzat, proceeded to torture. It was decided that Anne should be submitted to the torture of cold and hot water, and two days later the torture was repeated. This time the torturer poured water which was almost boiling through a funnel placed in Anne's throat, already in a terrible condition. In spite of these two sessions, the judges failed to gain their ends, for Anne de Chantraine did not reveal her accomplices.
Two months passed. On June 14 Léonard Balzat returned. He submitted Anne again to the same fearful torture. She persisted in her declarations, but still nothing more could be found out.
Two days later five witnesses came from Liège to testify on her morals. They were Conrad de Phencenal, from whom she had stolen many tin plates; Anne de Chevron, who had lost linen and jewels; Léonard de Vaulx and his daughter, who brought a theft of 300 florins against her. A young merchant tailor, Wautier Betoren, declared he had been her victim to the extent of a piece of linen, but that a friend of Anne, had given him twenty florins by way of indemnity.
Since she now was established as a thief, confessed to being a witch, her sentence from the Provincial Council can hardly astonish us. On July 16 Guillaume Bodart, the deputy commissioner, brought to the mairie sentence of death against her, "for the confessed crime of witchcraft, and for having assisted at several larcenies by night, by means of the same witchcraft, in the houses of citizens in the city of Liège." On July 23 the sentence was made known to Anne, and the unfortunate girl in a burst of despair denied all her confessions. In this way she gained time, for only confessions freely admitted counted in law.
The embarrassment occasioned to the judges did not last long. As soon as they were informed, the delegates of the Provincial Council condemned Anne de Chantraine to death, on July 26 this condemnation was immediately read to the girl. She was then asked if all the confessions she had made were true, and she said that they were. The clerk of the court and the jailer then retired, and a religious came to confess her.
Why was Anne not executed? No document justified such shirking of duty. Had Anne's denials in extremis moved the magistrates of Warêt? Were motives of law, reasons of force majeure added to the documents we now possess? The whole matter is wrapped in mystery. It remains true that the condemned lived on for almost a year in the scabrous village prison. It would seem that she was forgotten.
However, during the winter of 1621 the mayor made another visit to Namur. On December 9 he received an answer that "in view of the inquiries held by a deputed commission since the sentence pronounced in the court of Warêt on July 21, the aldermen should see to it that the said sentence be carried into execution according to due form and tenor." On the following day this new sentence was read to Anne de Chantraine. She said to her confessor, that she was glad to die for her sins, but that she persisted in her denials.
Again Anne was still not executed. The judges temporised, and months went by without a solution. In the summer of 1622 the Council decided to re-examine the facts confessed by the accused. Two new councillors were appointed, and in order to facilitate the inquiry, the accused was taken to Namur, where she was imprisoned in the Tour de Bordial, on the bank of the Sambre, at the foot of the citadel.
Proceedings began again. Did torture have to play its part, or had the two years of hopeless imprisonment so weakened Anne that she confessed freely; or did the judges simply ignore her denials of being a witch? We do not know, for this part of the trial is surrounded with mystery. It would seem that the judges were particularly interested in the sanity of the accused. At the beginning of September they asked the jailer if he had remarked anything abnormal about Anne. On September 12 he replied that "in daily conversations, himself, his wife, and others have not noticed that she is in any way troubled in mind or in judgement."
On the same day the jailer, armed with scissors and razor, visited Anne, he cut her hair and shaved every part of her body. He took away her clothes and left only a gown for her to wear.
But the councillors began to have scruples. They were not satisfied with the jailer's report, and they recalled him. When questioned again on the mental state of Anne, he was less sure in his answers than he had been. He said that "the prisoner was stupid, and did not understand what she said, though sometimes she seemed quite right in her mind."
On 27 September, there was still worry about the understanding of the situation with Anne. The judges summoned the jailer's wife. When she was asked if she had noticed anything odd and strange about Anne's behavior, when having daily conversations with her in prison, she replied that she had not noticed anything.
On October 17, 1622, the definitive sentence was brought in: death by fire with preliminary strangulation. From that day Anne was brought back to Warêt-la-Chaussée, the place fixed for the execution. During the following night Léonard Balzat and his assistant prepared the pyre, a huge heap of a hundred fagots bought in the village itself. In the centre, sheaves of straw were placed, and a hollow was made in the straw large enough to contain a stool.
At dawn Anne was awakened by the jailer the clerk of the court, and a friar minor, who announced the fatal news to her. She was led out. The executioner was waiting with the cart, and the condemned girl climbed into it. When they reached the end of the village where the pyre was prepared, Anne collected all the strength that remained to her. In a loud voice, she denied that she was a witch, acknowledged her sins, and admitted to no accomplice. Léonard Balzat helped her to climb the pyre, seated her on the stool among the straw and then with his own hands he abruptly strangled her. The executioner then set fire to the straw and the fagots. Acrid smoke quickly enveloped her, and the crackling flames took her into their arms. The pyre burned for two days. At dawn on the third day Anne's ashes were dispersed to the four winds. Anne was nineteen years old when she was burned at the stake for witchcraft.
The full 113 pages of Anne de Chantraine's trial rests at the archives of Namur in France.
https://livres-mystiques.com/partieTEXTES/Etudes_satan/Satan.html#repression_appendice
In popular culture
Anne de Chantraine is a playable character in Nightmare/Atmosfear,[1][2] a series of interactive board games. She is a witch in the series, and has thus far appeared in all but two games.[3] She hosted the third installment of the series.[4]