![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In a trial such as Dorothea Rieger's, which was predicated on compelling a spiritual conversion, and where physical evidence of witchcraft – if it at all existed – was almost absent from the trial record, the accused’s behaviour, their comportment on trial, and above all, their "interior states" were all investigated for signs of guilt. 2 In a court of law, establishing whether someone was a witch or not necessitated the interrogators – both spiritual and judicial – to examine the accused's conscience, their soul, their emotions. It centrally concerns the impact of emotional states on physical ones. 1 Witchcraft, at its most fundamental, involves wishing harm to others. Witch-trial narratives are fascinating sources for the early modern historian, particularly for looking at the history of emotions. Rieger had come to the attention of the authorities because of her suicidal thoughts and her "feeble-mindedness", which had led her to confess that the Devil had "used her sins" and that she "belonged under the gallows". The trial of Dorothea Rieger thus came relatively late in the history of the early modern witch-hunts, and was not an altogether "typical" case. She was tried in Besigheim, approximately thirty kilometres north of Stuttgart, in the southwestern duchy of Württemberg, an area that experienced relatively low levels of witch-hunting. Dorothea Rieger was put on trial for witchcraft in 1678, some fifty years after the height of the "witch-craze" had swept Germany between 15. ![]()
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