Petronilla de Meath(1300 — 1324)

Petronilla de Meath was a simple maidservant in the service of Alice Kyteler, a wealthy aristocrat from Kilkenny who had been married four times, with three of her husbands having died under suspicious circumstances. When Bishop Richard de Ledrede accused Alice of witchcraft, it was her servant—more vulnerable and unprotected—who paid the heaviest price.

Before her execution, Petronilla was publicly whipped six times on the bishop's orders to extract a confession. Under torture, she eventually 'confessed' that she and her mistress practiced magic and that Alice was the greatest witch in the kingdom.

On **November 3, 1324**, Petronilla de Meath was burned alive in Kilkenny: she is considered the first person executed for heresy and witchcraft in Ireland. Her mistress, Alice Kyteler, managed to flee to England and escaped the stake.

The accusers claimed that Alice Kyteler and her accomplices gathered at night to renounce Christ, sacrifice animals to a demon named Robin Artisson, and brew potions from macabre ingredients in the skull of a beheaded thief. These accounts make the Kyteler affair one of the first trials to merge heresy with the diabolical sabbath.

The Petronilla case occurred nearly two centuries before the great witch hunts of the Renaissance. It shows how, as early as the 14th century, the Church used accusations of heresy as a weapon, and how poor, isolated women were especially vulnerable to such charges.