Zła sława Małgorzaty Ludwiczki. Przyczynek do procesów o czary, historii kobiet i dziejów jednej z kujawskich wsi na początku XVIII wieku
The Ill Fame of Małgorzata Ludwiczka. A Contribution to the Study of Witchcraft Trials, Women’s History, and the History of a Kuyavian Village at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century

Summary/Abstract: The article examines two witchcraft trials of 1702 and 1707 involving Małgorzata Ludwiczka, an innkeeper and later a shepherdess residing in the Kuyavian village of Żołędowo. While the first trial led to an acquittal, the second saw the delivery of a death sentence. An analysis of both trials clearly demonstrates how the court’s composition affected the verdict in each of the cases. The surviving records of both trials provide an account of a woman, a resident of a Polish village, who owes her presence in the historical narrative entirely to the witchcraft charges brought against her. Furthermore, these records offer an insight into the daily lives of the other inhabitants of Żołędowo in the early eighteenth century, providing the only extant source on the village’s history of that time.

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