1324: Petronilla de Meath, the first Irish woman burned for heresy

ExecutedToday.com ^ | November 3, 2011 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1324, Ireland entered the witch-burning club by burning to death servant Petronilla de Meath for the infernal traffickings of her escaped mistress.

Alice Kyteler, the stock of a successful family in the prosperous medieval trading hub, was the real target of what Jeffrey Burton Russell reckoned “complex machinations prompted by politics and greed.”

Kyteler was on to her fourth husband and had done well from her previous matches: a little too well, in fact. The various stepchildren from Kyteler’s various marriages were aggrieved that she took the assets she married into, and lavished them on her own son from the first union — a lad sporting the unfortunate handle of William Outlaw, and the unfortunate profession of moneylender.

When these restive relations presented to the local bishop a complaint couched in a supernatural hocus-pocus, family spat met an emerging and violent continent-wide jurisprudence around hunting impiety. That bishop was English-born and French-trained Franciscan Richard de Ledrede, who saw behind the tissue of rumor and folklore a diabolical hand bent on tearing down the edifice of faith.

In this he was merely a man before his time. Civil law in these parts had previously treated witchcraft as a petty criminal offense, but in the century to come it would be promoted to existential menace, with the body count to match. That transformation was already well underway closer to Europe’s continental heart....

[Sans-Culotte]

Sad end for poor Petronilla.