Alice Kyteler: The Devil's Handmaiden
Alice Kyteler: The Devil's Handmaiden
In 1277, young Eithne enters service to Alice Kyteler, a merchant's wife in medieval Kilkenny. Over the next forty-seven years, she witnesses Alice marry four times, each husband dying suspiciously while enriching their widow. She observes Alice studying forbidden texts, performing nocturnal rituals, and invoking a demon named Artisson. But she also sees a brilliant businesswoman navigating a world that denies women power through any means necessary.
When Bishop Richard de Ledrede arrives in 1317, he brings Continental witch-hunting methods to Ireland. His prosecution of Alice in 1324 becomes the first major witchcraft trial in Irish history-a clash between ecclesiastical and secular authority, between Continental inquisitorial procedures and English common law. Alice escapes to Flanders, but her devoted servant Petronilla de Meath becomes scapegoat, tortured into false confession and burned as Ireland's first witch-burning victim.
Decades later, the elderly Eithne completes her chronicle: an unflinching examination of power, gender, survival, and the impossibly thin line between victim and villain. Was Alice a murderous witch or a woman destroyed for refusing patriarchal constraints? The chronicle refuses simple answers, preserving instead the dangerous complexity of a woman who defied every convention-and the innocent servant who paid the price.
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