300 years later, Italian town to retry woman beheaded for witchcraft
Better late than never.
It took Massachusetts about two decades to recognize and make amends for the injustice of the Salem witch trials in 1692-1693, during which 20 people were executed.
One Italian town is planning to do the same, albeit three centuries later.
The Guardian reports that the Italian town of Brentonico plans to retry the case of Maria Bertoletti Toldini, a 60-year-old woman tried and found guilty of witchcraft in 1715. She faced various accusations, including that she threw a 5-year-old into a pot of boiling cheese, The Guardian reports, and was found guilty and publicly beheaded.
The plan to exonerate Toldini will involve a real judge and court, as a formal legal reversal of the obvious wrongs of the case.
In colonial Massachusetts, officials passed a law in 1711 restoring the good names of those put to death and offering compensation to their families. Even so, Massachusetts did not formally apologize for the executions until 1957, almost 250 years later.
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