Lilias's Bones
The story of the only witch in Scotland with a grave and the search for her stolen bones.
In this podcast, American journalist Breena Kerr goes to Scotland to understand what happened during the European Witch Hunts, why hundreds of thousands were murdered, and the legacy that still endures today.
Lilias's Bones
Episode 4: Under the Weight of Words and Chains
In this episode, host Breena Kerr dives into some of the more lurid aspects of the witch hunts and attempts to separate what can so often be blended in pseudo-historical retellings and ghost stories: the horror of what witch hunters did on one side and the fearsome lore built up around witches on the other.
She interviews writer and witch-hunt artifact collector Leonard Lowe. And, she explains the origins of one of Europe's most famous and influential witch-hunting manuals, the "Malleus Maleficarum," also known as "The Hammer of Witches." Released at the dawn of book printing, the Malleus became a best-seller of its time, surpassed only by the Bible. Despite being printed more than 200 years before Lilias Adie was persecuted, the misogyny and fear-mongering in its pages cast a long shadow, one that potentially even reached Adie and generations beyond.
