Open Access

Ioana Constantin

• Transylvania was not exempt from the witch hunt of the 17th century; the city of Sibiu itself witnessed a series of trials and death sentences. While the phenomenon itself has been widely studied and written about in Western Europe, it has been scarcely mentioned in Romanian history works. The original documents from the Transylvanian archives, written down in German, have not been translated and presented to the Romanian public. The present paper intends to present aspects of the witch hunt in Sibiu during the 17th century starting from the case of a midwife judged and condemned to death by burning in 1692. This case will be presented through the original documents of the trial, found in the National Archives of Sibiu and containing the depositions of witnesses, of the accused herself, as well as the sentence passed. We hope that this will be the starting point for a selection and translation into Romanian of the German written documents, in order to make them available to the Romanian speaking public.