ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to shed light on trial competing processes through an in-depth case study of a witch trial that occurred in a small town in southwestern Germany in 1616, which ended in acquittal. In early modern Germany, where capital punishment could be - and routinely was utilized in trials of witchcraft, it is hard to see how an accusation and eventual trial process against a neighbour, friend or even relative could ever be a means to reconciliation. Alison Rowlands has pointed out that witches were often old by the time of their trial not because their age was a signifier of their identity as a witch, but rather because they had a long-standing reputation for witchcraft which had finally culminated in an official denunciation. The witch-trial record provides the historian glimpses of the interaction between the parallel attempts to shape the criminal process.
