Alice Kyteler and Ireland’s first witch trial

When

November 1324 date from records made at the time

Where

Kilkenny – Kyteler’s House, St Kieran’s Street, Ireland

Verdict

Explained

A wealthy Kilkenny widow was accused of sacrificing cocks to a demon and poisoning her husbands. She fled; her maid Petronilla went to the stake.

What happened

Alice Kyteler was a wealthy Kilkenny moneylender who married four times: to William Outlaw, Adam le Blund, Richard de Valle and Sir John le Poer. When her last husband fell ill and the children of her husbands’ earlier marriages felt cheated of their inheritance, in 1324 they accused her of poisoning her husbands and of sorcery. The case was taken up by the Bishop of Ossory, the Franciscan Richard de Ledrede, trained in France and appointed by Pope John XXII, a pontiff obsessed with the threat of sorcery. The charges read like a catalogue of demonology: renouncing the faith, sacrificing nine red cocks and peacocks’ eyes at crossroads to a demon called Robin son of Art, brewing potions in the skull of a beheaded thief, and an ointment for riding on a staff. Alice’s kinsman, the seneschal Arnold le Poer, had the bishop jailed for over a fortnight, but Ledrede would not back down. Alice fled, most likely to England, and vanished from the record. Her son William Outlaw was ordered to re-roof St Canice’s Cathedral with lead. Her maid Petronilla de Midia, flogged repeatedly, confessed to everything and on 3 November 1324 was burned in Kilkenny – the first person in Ireland put to death at the stake for heresy and witchcraft.

Witnesses

A contemporary Latin narrative of Bishop Ledrede’s proceedings (Harleian MS 641, edited by Thomas Wright in 1843); the chronicle of the Kilkenny Franciscan John Clyn.

Explanations and hypotheses

Historians see the case above all as a dispute over money and power: a wealthy woman was accused by people who stood to lose by her inheritances, while Bishop Ledrede, a zealous heresy-hunter, was also fighting the local aristocracy. Petronilla’s testimony was extracted by flogging, and the demon Robin appears only in her forced confession, not in the original charges. The trial is one of the earliest in Europe to link an accusation of witchcraft with a pact with the Devil. Kyteler’s Inn still trades in Kilkenny and happily claims Alice’s legend.

Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.

Sources

More: Wikipedia (en)