The execution of Louis Gaufridi

Louis Gaufridi, a Provence priest accused of bewitching a nun, was executed at Aix-en-Provence on 30 April 1611 after confessing under torture to sorcery.

Louis Gaufridi was a priest of Provence. Encyclopedia.com records the charge that he had seduced a number of women, a nun among them, and that the nun said he had bewitched her to save herself. He was arrested and imprisoned, then tortured until he confessed to being a magician who had corrupted the women through his breath and other enchantments. Under extreme pain he also described the witches' Sabbat at length.

He was executed on 30 April 1611. Wikipedia describes him bareheaded and barefoot with a rope around his neck, asking God's pardon before he was handed to the torturers. He survived the strappado and the squassation, and archers then took him to the place of execution by a five-hour march through Aix, dragging him along the streets. Executed Today adds that his body had been shaved to expose the Devil's marks.

The accounts differ on how he died. Wikipedia says he was strangled first as a mercy, and his body was then burned to ashes. Thomas Wright's 1851 history says judgment was given on the last day of April, carried out the same day, and that he was burnt alive.