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A virulent witch panic driven by many diabolically possessed parishioners of Mattaincourt in Lorraine caused about fifty deaths for witchcraft between 1627 and 1631. Sixty years before Salem, this episode constitutes the largest such tragedy yet found in Catholic Europe, where episodes of collective demonic possession were usually confined within female convents. Mattaincourt’s parish curé, St. Pierre Fourier, was then supervising the approval for two reformed religious orders at Rome and was unable to control events in Mattaincourt; a wealthy benefactor was among those burned. Fourier resigned his benefice when the outbreak subsided. This episode was apparently unknown to Catholic authorities during the modern procedures for Fourier’s beatification and canonization.

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