The Würzburg Witch Trials — 900 Burned Under a Zealous Prince-Bishop (1626-1631)

The Würzburg witch trials, overlapping chronologically with the neighboring Bamberg trials, were perhaps the single deadliest witch persecution in European history. Under Prince-Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg, approximately 900 people were burned at the stake between 1626 and 1631 — a staggering toll for a territory with a total population of only about 100,000. The victims included members of every social class: children as young as nine, university students, canons of the cathedral, and the prince-bishop's own nephew. The Würzburg persecution was organized with bureaucratic efficiency, using standardized questionnaires and systematic torture protocols. A surviving document known as the 'Burning List' records the names and occupations of victims in clinical detail. The trials only ended when the accusations began to reach the prince-bishop's own inner circle and when the Swedish invasion during the Thirty Years' War disrupted the territory's administrative capacity. Von Ehrenberg himself died in 1631, and his successor, who had been accused of witchcraft himself, halted the persecution.