In the Oscar winning film The Third Man, made in 1949, actor Orson Welles was playing the leading role of the baddie, Harry Lime. At the end of the film, Lime mocked the concept of peace and honesty as epitomised by the Swiss. He sneered that after centuries of peace all the Swiss had ever produced was the cuckoo clock.
He clearly did not know that it was in the beautiful mountains of Switzerland, in Simmental, the first ever medieval witch hunt took place, and that this created the blueprint that would be copied across Europe and resulted in hundreds of executions of innocent women, and men too.
Around 1400, several people were accused of witchcraft in the Simmental in the Bernese Oberland. The centre of attention was a man from the village of Boltigen who had allegedly used magic to cause miscarriages, damage livestock and destroy crops. Under torture, he confessed to having made a pact with the devil. He named others, and they dragged in even more people.
Stories also started to spread about sorcerers who belonged to a sect who worshipped the devil, murdered children and practised cannibalism. They were all sentenced to death. All this can be found in the book Formicarius by a German, Johannes Nider. Written in 1430, the book, a moral treatise to instruct young Dominican Friars, became a central source for the infamous Hexenhammer, a textbook laying out the programme for witch hunts that claimed thousands of lives across Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries.
These reports contributed significantly to the spread of the belief in witches and in particular the idea of the witches’ Sabbath in Europe, according to Catherine Chêne, a historian at the University of Lausanne who specialises in early witch hunts in Switzerland.
Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg argues in his book Witches’ Sabbath – Deciphering a Nocturnal History that in the 14th century it was church-led pogroms against Jews, the persecution of lepers and finally the great plague that struck Europe from 1347 onwards, that prepared the ground for the first witch hunts in Central Europe. However the ideas for enemies expanded from the small circle of lepers to witches and sorcerers, who would in fact just be people who others thought were outcasts. Perhaps they had disabilities, or were poor, or just despised for no logical reason at all.
However it was in Simmental that the first cases appeared. Central elements of later witchcraft accusations were recorded there for the first time, such as the pact with the devil, the evil Sabbath and the idea that the witches and sorcerers could use the devil to cast damaging spells.
Catherine Chêne’s historical research in local archives shows that there were trials against sorcerers in the region from the early 15th century. However, belief in the witches’ Sabbath did not yet play a role, unlike in the French-speaking part of the diocese of Lausanne.
The records of trials are sparse, but they were without doubt significant, and spread to surrounding nations as hysteria is contagious. Fanatical judges encouraged scared people to inform on their neighbours. Once one person claims that they have seen a local elderly woman turn into a black cat, others say they have too, as they fear being accused themselves.
Simmental in Switzerland saw the first of these organised witch hunts, seeking out non existent evildoers. So Harry Lime was wrong, Switzerland did invent more than just the cuckoo clock. Perhaps it would have been better for countless thousands who hung, or were burnt at the stake, if they had focussed on fun timepieces.