Pierre de Lancre

(1553 - 1631)

Born in Bordeaux in the mid-1550s, Pierre de Lancre studied at the College of Clermont in Paris in the 1570s and became a lawyer in his native city in the 1580s. In either late 1608 or early 1609, Henry IV commissioned him to assess the validity of witchcraft allegations in the Basque-speaking Labourd region of France. Lancre stayed for four months, during which he tortured and killed at least fifty persons he deemed guilty of black magic.