Case file · Witch trials
Angèle de la Barthe, the 'first witch burned' (Toulouse)
Many books say Angèle de la Barthe was burned in Toulouse in 1275 for bearing the Devil's child, the first execution for witches' sabbath.
1275 CE · 43.60, 1.44 · status: hoax
The account
The story, like the great Carcassonne and Toulouse 'witch trials' of the 1330s, comes from Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon's 'Histoire de l'Inquisition en France' (1829).
The sceptical view
Historian Norman Cohn showed in 1975 that Lamothe-Langon fabricated these trials; no record exists in the Inquisition archives.