Johannes Junis
Between 1624 and 1631, the town of Bamberg in Germany was seized by witchcraft fever. No one was a safe – even senior city official, as the fifty-five-year-old Mayer of Bamburg, Johannes Junis found to his cost. In 1628, based on the evidence of other local dignitaries he was arrested and taken to the Bamburg witch prison where he was tried and condemned.
The trial began on June 28, 1628. According to the evidence presented, the mayor initially swore his innocence. Then the torture started. At first, Junis held up well, resisting the agonies of the leg screws and thumbscrews that wrecked his hands so badly he could not use them for a month. He even had the wit to quip that ” if he were such a wretch [a witch] he would not let himself be so tortured.”
The torturer found a “bluish mark, like a cloverleaf” located on the right side of Junis’s body, which, when pricked it three times, did not bleed or cause him any pain. This mark was taken to be proof he was the devil’s disciple. But still, the former Mayor did not confess. So the torture continued.
However, eventually, the pain became so severe that Junis “thought heaven and earth were at an end.” He finally realized no one wanted the truth- just a story, any story, so long as it fitted their agenda. “Whoever comes into the witch prison must become a witch, or be tortured until he invents something out of his head, “ he later wrote. Junis’s concilatory tale was of a demonic woman who bullied and coerced him into renouncing god and becoming a witch.
Finally satisfied, on August 6 the court condemned Junis to burn. He was left in prison for some weeks before the sentence was carried out. While he waited, he wrote his final letter, which a sympathetic guard smuggled out to his daughter Veronica. “Innocent have I come into prison, innocent have I been tortured, innocent I must die, “ he wrote, explaining how the pain coerced him into a false confession.
Junis’s final letter reveals something more. For he tells Veronica how, once he had confessed, his tormentors forced him to name others. This process was the same one applied to those who had named Junis. His tormentors took him through the streets of Bamburg, demanding a certain number of names from every location. Junis, broken by the pain could only comply. Having walked the same path as the witnesses against him, he found it was easy to forgive them.