Marigje Arriens or Marichgen Ariaens (c. 1520 – 18 December 1591) was a Dutch alleged

witch Witchcraft is the use of magic by a person called a witch. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic to inflict supernatural harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning. According to ''Enc ...

, long thought to be the last to be executed for sorcery in the

Dutch Republic The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands ...

Biography

Marigje Arriens was born c. 1520, in Poederoijen. Arriens was active in medicine. There are two theories of why Arriens was accused of being a witch. One theory is that she was accused by an unsatisfied patient. The second theory is that a young boy saw Arriens practice witchcraft. The tale goes that she touched the boy's hair and that his hair shrank as a result. She was judged guilty of sorcery and sentenced to be strangled, after which her body was burned to ashes. She was long thought to be among the last people executed for sorcery in the Dutch Republic, a country where the witch hunt ended earlier than in many other European countries. One of the reasons for this misconception was that the year of her death had been believed to be 1597 instead of 1591. Even so, people in the republic were executed for sorcery after 1597; as of 2014, the last known such person was Anna Muggen, who was put to death in the same fashion in

Gorinchem Gorinchem ( ), pronunciation respelling, also spelled Gorkum, is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality covers an area of of which is water. It had a population of in . The munici ...

in 1608.Maartje Vermeulen
Ariaensdr., Marichgen

Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland ''1001 Vrouwen uit de Nederlandse geschiedenis'' is a compilation of 1001 biographies of famous women of the Netherlands spanning roughly 1700 years. Project The book is the result of a research project called the Digital Women's lexicon of the ...

, 13 January 2014. However, she was nonetheless among the last people executed for sorcery in the Dutch Republic, where executions for this crime did end around this time. Witch trials and burnings lasted longer in the

Spanish Netherlands The Spanish Netherlands (; ; ; ) (historically in Spanish: , the name "Flanders" was used as a '' pars pro toto'') was the Habsburg Netherlands ruled by the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs from 1556 to 1714. They were a collection of States of t ...

, including the 1613

Roermond witch trial The Roermond witch trial, which took place in and around the city of Roermond in the Spanish Netherlands in 1613, was the largest witch trial in present-day The Netherlands.L. Dresen-Coenders, p. 227 It caused the death of sixty four people by bur ...

, where 64 people were burnt at the stake. She died 18 December 1591, in

Schoonhoven Schoonhoven () is a city and was a former municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. Since 2015 it has been a part of the municipality of Krimpenerwaard, before it had been an independent municipality. The former mu ...

Legacy

The song " Born for Burning", by the Swedish black metal band Bathory, was dedicated to Arriens.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Arriens, Marigje 1520s births 1591 deaths 16th-century Dutch women Dutch people executed for witchcraft People executed by the Dutch Republic People from Zaltbommel Cunning folk Executed Dutch women

Biography

Legacy

See also

References