A Religious Nut School Headmistress Almost Got 50 of Her Students Burned at the Stake for Witchcraft
A girl’s boarding school in Lille, France, experienced a witch scare in 1639 that almost ended in tragedy, all thanks to the headmistress, a religious nut who had founded the school. Antoinette Bourignon, the headmistress, entered the classroom one day in 1639, and imagined seeing a swarm of little black demons flying around her students’ heads. Alarmed, she told the schoolgirls to watch out for Satan, whose little black imps were buzzing all around them.
Madam Bourignon became obsessed with the little black demons she kept seeing hovering around her wards’ heads, and kept warning the girls every day to watch out for the Devil. As a result, the impressionable children started believing that there actually were little black demons flying all around them. Before long, they too began to imagine that they could see them. Soon, Satan and satanic possession became almost the sole topic of conversation in the school.
Eventually, one of the schoolgirls ran away, too scared to stay in a school infested with little black demons who might possess her at any moment, as Madam Bourignon never tired of warning the children. When she was brought back, the schoolgirl claimed not to have run away, but to have been carried away by the Devil. For good measure, she added that she was a witch, and had been one since age seven.
When they heard what their schoolmate had said, about fifty other schoolgirls started having fits. When they came to, they joined in a “me, too!” rush, and claimed that they were also witches. In their eagerness to confess, the children competed to outdo each other with ever more sinister details of their supposed dark deeds. Some girls claimed to ride on broomsticks. They were topped by others claiming an ability to pass through keyholes. They in turn were trumped by schoolgirls claiming to feast on the flesh of babies, or to have attended the Domdaniel, the gathering of the demons.
Some of Lille’s citizens and clergy were skeptical about the hysterical claims, but most thought that the children’s confessions were valid, and a formal investigation was launched. Before long, most of the locals were baying for the schoolgirls’ blood, and pressuring the authorities to take a stand against witchcraft burning all fifty girls at the stake as witches.
The children’s lives were only saved when some of the skeptical clergy, aghast at what was about to happen, insisted that the investigators dig in deeper. That was when they discovered what Madam Bourignon had done to fill the girls’ heads with thoughts of demonic possession. The children were absolved, and the blame was shifted to Madam Bourignon. She barely escaped punishment after the authorities, unsure of her sanity and tired of the whole affair, brought the investigation to an end.