Warning: As a potential Death Trope for successful examples, many unmarked spoilers are ahead.
Burn the Witch! in Literature.
- Averted in the 1632 series, on account of the uptimers not being fans of it. In one short story, "A Witch to Live" a down-time noble wants to burn an accused witch in an American town, and won't take no for an answer. He gets shot.
- In Federico Andajhazi's The Alchemist, this is how Inés de Torquemada and her daughters die, though in a subversion they suffocate in the pyre rather than burn to death.
- In Laurell K. Hamilton's early Anita Blake books, where the supernatural is known to exist, there is occasional mention of the last time a witch was burned in the U.S. — in the 1950s. It was captured on photograph, and the photographer got a Pulitzer Prize out of it. Anita wonders if a Pulitzer makes the nightmares easier to live with. Possibly justified, as popular assumption might have been that witches were burned in that universe, much as it is in ours.
- In Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch, as the villagers get involved in the story of the seventeenth-century "witch" Margaret Redfern, the spectre of this is discussed, including the popular belief that the "swimming" of witches, was a Morton's Fork. The vicar's wife Lilian Bunting also describes other methods of interrogation/torture, condemns the very idea of torturing other people for such specious reasons, and is visibly distressed at the prospect that the villagers will learn that such was Margaret Redfern's fate.
- Emelius, in Bedknob and Broomstick, is subjected to the dunking stool, then has to be rescued from the post by Miss Price.
- The nomadic tribes in Burying the Shadow aren't fond of soulscapers and are known to lynch them if agitated.
- In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story The Hour of the Dragon, Orastes nearly met this in the Back Story.I was cast forth from my order because of my delving in Black Magic. But for Amalric there I might have been burned as a magician.
- David Drake's short story "The Dancer in the Flames" involves a witch who reaches through time while being executed in this way and contacts an officer in the Vietnam War via his pyromania. It ends badly for him.
- Sorcha from Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest nearly falls victim to this trope; her husband only manages to get her off the stake at the last possible second.
- In Patricia C. Wrede's Daughter Of Witches, the main character's parents are burned as witches. Understandably, this gives her serious issues about her own magical powers.
- In the Deptford Mice book The Crystal Prison Audrey Brown is nearly burned for witchcraft. The village leader begs the mice not to do such a barbaric thing... so they agree to hang her instead. She's saved at the last minute by Twit.
- In Devonsville Terror by Ulli Lommel the only actual witch of the three women killed suffers that fate.
- From Terry Pratchett's Discworld
- Carpe Jugulum:Oats: Well... your colleagues keep telling me the Omnians used to burn witches...
Granny: They never did.
Oats: I'm afraid I have to admit that the records show —
Granny: They never burned witches. Probably they burned some old ladies who spoke up or couldn't run away. I wouldn't look for witches bein' burned. I might look for witches doin' the burning, though. We ain't all nice. - I Shall Wear Midnight, sadly, proves that Granny's surmise is incorrect: The Cunning Man, at least, did successfully capture and condemn at least one genuine witch in his lifelong career. She pulled him into the fire to die with her. Too bad that wasn't the end of the matter...
- According to other Tiffany Aching books, this also used to happen in some parts of the Chalk. The suspected witch in the barony was just kicked out of her cottage and left to starve. It may bear mentioning that this incident inspired Tiffany to become a witch herself to make sure nobody dared try that again.
- In some other areas they follow the advice in the Maganevatio Obtusis (Witch-hunting for Dumb People) and drown them... after supplying them with soup, a nice cuppa, and a good night's sleep, since the book says all these things will render them powerless. The book was written by traveling witch (and strong swimmer) Miss Tick.
- Played with in A Tourist's Guide to Lancre, which notes that "It's not a proper Witch Trial without a big bonfire afterwards"... meaning of course, that once witches have demonstrated their skill in an organised competition, it's nice to have a bit of a carnival atmosphere and baked potatoes.
- Carpe Jugulum:
- Doctrine of Labyrinths:
- Witches who practice non-sanctioned magics are burned at the stake by the wizard-dominated government of Marathat; however, their official crime is "heresy" rather than witchcraft per se.
- A more standard occurrence affects the travelers in Kekropia's backward southern duchies, where the annemer, or magic-free, peasants will happily burn any magic-user they can get their hands on.
- During his apprentice years, the wizard Raistlin Majere from the Dragonlance Chronicles was almost burned at the stake by a bunch of enraged and superstitious villagers after he had tried to expose a fake cleric as a charlatan. He was rescued just in time by his twin brother, the fighter Caramon, and the rest of the main characters. That incident didn't really help improve Raistlin's cynical nature.
- The Dresden Files: In White Night, Harry and Murphy encounter someone who is using the passage in the Book of Exodus which says "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" to justify killing magic-users. Harry tells Murphy (accurately) that the original phrase in Hebrew meant "someone who casts harmful spells," or, in other words, only kill people who use dark magic, but that King James changed it to just witches in general when he translated the Bible because he didn't like them. The White Council of Wizards' own approach to people who use black magic is completely in line with the older meaning: Their punishment for a first offense is usually decapitation, and ignorance of the laws of magic or having good motives is no excuse. It's possible to be spared, but only if another wizard speaks up for them, agrees to train them and ensure it never happens again, potentially at the cost of their own life if they do relapse.
- Eldraeverse: The seeress Merriéle
, founder of the Church of the Flame, was executed in Somáras by the traditional fire of purification, resulting in her ascension via a pillar of light and flame that not coincidentally turned the city of Somáras into the bay of Somáras. Modern eldraeic hypotheses suggest that either she was carrying a Precursor artifact that contained antimatter or the Transcend somehow traveled back in time to inspire her "visions" and nuke her executioners from orbit.- Incineration is still the Empire of the Star's preferred method of capital punishment, though they reserve it for crimes that cannot be recompensed like murder rather than silly notions like "heresy", and they prefer to use a fusion torch.
- K.A. Applegate's short-lived Everworld series gives a reason for why witches are burned or hanged in the eponymous alternate world: their blood is poison to crops, which means no one can really afford a beheading.
- In H. P. Lovecraft's "The Festival", the unburned corpse of a wizard (or, presumably, a witch) can give rise to a walking humanoid mass of worms, which collectively become host to the dead spellcaster's mind when they consume its rotting flesh. Why it's necessary to burn such people alive is not explained, however.
- Inverted in John Varley's Gaea Trilogy, where the Coven, a space colony founded by lesbian separatists, adheres to an extreme offshoot of witchcraft: one grown so intolerant, in its isolation, that suspected Christians are burned at the stake.
- Averted in Gallows Hill by Lois Duncan. The protagonist is actually writing a paper about the Salem Witch Trials at her new high school. She learns through research and visions that in a former life she was Betty Parris, the delightful little child that set the trials in motion. And all her new classmates? The reincarnated souls of all the innocent women she accused, which were hanged.
- Good Omens:
- Agnes Nutter was burned at the stake but, in a twist, filled her underwear with as much gunpowder and nails as she could, causing an explosion which destroyed the whole village. The authors Shown Their Work and it's lampshaded that witch burning was not common in England, although it's ascribed to the English just being "crass and indolent race, unlike Germans or Scots."
- Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell is asked by the angel Aziraphale if he has ever read The Bible. The only part Shadwell has read is the above verse. Well, he glanced at the following verse once -"which was about putting to death people who lay down with beasts - but he had felt that this was rather outside his jurisdiction".
- In Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, one of the ghosts Bod befriends was killed as a witch for tormenting the town. They were partly right: she was a witch, but she hadn't hurt anybody... until they killed her, that is.
- Harry Potter:
- Referenced in the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. On the rare occasions where Muggles managed to catch a real witch, they used a flame-freezing charm to protect themselves — then pretended to be dying in agony. It was noted that the charm made the flames 'ticklish', such that some wizards would purposely allow themselves to get caught repeatedly. This ended less enjoyably when witch hunters caught other Muggles.
- The Tales of Beedle the Bard mentions that a wizard or witch could be killed if they lost their wand. Specifically, it was stated that the ones most at risk were young magical children who hadn't yet learned to control their abilities. In his annotation to "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot", Dumbledore notes that during the European witch hunts, witches and wizards considered using magic to help Muggle neighbors like "volunteering to fetch the firewood for one's own funeral pyre".
- Averted in Anthony Esler's Hellbane, where the witchfinder's victims are hanged. (And HALF of them were actually practicing witchcraft.) However, witchcraft qua witchcraft was not yet a capital offense in Elizabeth's reign.
- At first averted in His Dark Materials, as in Lyra's world the prejudice against witches doesn't seem to go beyond considering them evil (in fact, some witches did join the church), though in the second book it's implied that, in other worlds, witches are in fact burned.
- Played with in Robert A. Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice. In an Alternate Universe where the dominant religion is Wicca, the young Wiccan convert rejects the flame her parents worship because "fire means the way they kill us."
- The philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who was a materialist and did not believe in witchcraft, nonetheless argued in his book Leviathan that witches were justly punished, as if they believed it, their attempts to harm people with magic were still criminal (apparently he felt all accusations were true), much like a person who tries to shoot somebody dead with a gun that turns out to be unloaded.
- In Lore Lay by Clemens Brentano, Lore Lay is accused of sorcery. When she stands trial before the bishop, she asks to be burnt as a witch, because she does no longer want to live.
- The non-fiction Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay* has a section that details some of the enduring memories and records of the men, women, and children who were killed because of the hunt for witches, often purely on malicious accusations. The inhabitants in a small area in the north of Germany at Würzburg, who refused to bow to the Catholic Church or pay taxes to the nobles who illegally claimed the land, were accused of witchcraft and killed in many ways, including burning at the stake.
- Ms. Wiz has an episode involving time travel. Nabilla first references that Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake as a witch, but when she and Ms Wiz get sent back to an Elizabethan village - the girl they accuse of being a witch is about to be ducked. They think her stutter is actually "devil talk".
- In Hermann Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund, which takes place during The Black Death, a young woman who nearly had this fate is found by Goldmund.
- The perpetrator of Never Burn A Witch only burned one Witch at the stake, but he also hanged one, drowned another, and tried to kill the narrator, a practicing Witch himself, by hanging.
- Oddly Enough: In "The Passing of the Pack", the narrator's friend Wandis is sentenced to burn for performing witchcraft, and the narrator too when he tries to stick up for her. Fortunately, the wolves come and save them.
- The One Who Started Fires plays with this trope, by having the title character undergoing self-immolation without intending to.
- The Power: Early on, some people burn girls with the Power as witches. Sister Veronica at the convent also proposes doing so, but she's killed before anything can happen.
- In Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, the switched Prince Edward witnesses how two low-class women were executed like this merely for not professing Anglicanism. Their daughters try to self-immolate themselves as well so they won't be orphaned. The epilogue says that Edward, once he's restored to his proper place and made King, had the orphaned girls located and made sure they'd be well looked after.
- In the Realm of the Elderlings series, Witted people who are caught are hanged over water, chopped to pieces and burned. Superstition holds that this is done because otherwise their spirit might escape or even allow them to come back to life. It's considered a horribly evil thing to do by those of Old Blood, but the Wit does allow this to happen under very specific circumstances.
- The Redemption of Althalus features a village priest who made a habit of this. His latest target actually has unusual (but not evil) powers, but that's not why he's targeting her — the priest exclusively burned beautiful young women, because he reasoned that, as a moral person, only witchcraft could be to blame if he struggled with his vow of celibacy over feeling attracted to someone.
- In The Red Tent, a midwife named Inna loses a (very young) woman and her child during delivery, despite her best efforts. The father goes berserk and accused Inna of being a witch, killing his wife and child For the Evulz, and strangles her, threatening to take her to the village elders. Inna flees, knowing that despite being the most respected midwife in the area, it won't go well with the elders because their leader has a beef with her for refusing to marry his son. To prevent being executed as per this trope, she joins up with her apprentice Rachel and leaves the village.
- The Rifter: According to the laws of the Payshmura theocracy, burning is the penalty for witchcraft (along with quite a few other crimes). There are lots of burnings. Metal posts for doing so line the Holy Road, and it’s even become a standard finale to the Harvest Festival.
- In Rudyard Kipling's The Second Jungle Book, the villagers, having driven out Mowgli as a witch, decide that his adoptive parents are also witches.But meantime the village had got hold of Messua and her husband, who were undoubtedly the father and mother of this Devil-child, and had barricaded them in their own hut, and presently would torture them to make them confess they were witch and wizard, and then they would be burned to death.
- Shadow Police: In Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?, the Circle of Hands includes a symbolic witch-burning as part of the ceremony to open their conference. This shows that they understand very little about the actual supernatural world, and are running mostly on partly-remembered rituals and traditions.
- Discussed in the Simon Ark short story "The Witch is Dead". When the eponymous witch is found burned to death inside her locked trailer, The Watson wonders if she was burned for being a witch like at Salem. Simon points out that the witches at Salem were hanged (with one pressed to death).
- A Song of Ice and Fire:
- Daenerys Targaryen burns the witch Mirri Maz Dur alive. Unusually, Mirri Maz Dur was actually guilty of the crimenote she was accused of (although she may have been justified). Also, the choice of burning as a punishment was not based on the traditional method of killing witches, but rather Dany's family affinity for fire.
- The trope is then inverted from Book 2 with the introduction of Melisandre, a fire-worshiping witch that burns the effigies of what she deems "false gods", as well as the "heretics" that speak against her and her beliefs.
- Spellbinder (1996):
- This happened to a 17th century French witch named Suzanne Blanchet and her siblings: after they were tortured into confessing to witchcraftnote , Suzanne was Forced to Watch as her young siblings were burnt at the stake before being burnt alive herself. It's unsurprising her ghost has a murderous grudge against humans.
- Played with in the novel's climax. After Thea accidentally released Suzanne's vengeful spirit, she and Eric re-enact the burning with dummies in the attempt to draw the spirit away from the school dance and trap her.
- Spellbreaker have the titular hero coming across a ruined village where a young woman suspected of being a witch is being tried for witchcraft and will soon be set on fire. As it turns out, she's innocent, and the accuser is the true sorceror.
- Split Heirs: Clootie gets misblamed as the culprit behind Arbol's supposed transformation to a girl (she was actually always female), with being burned alive one punishment suggested. Before, they'd threatened Lady Ubri with it (since she first was blamed) and any Gorgorian woman around as well. He's saved though.
- A subversion occurs in A Swiftly Tilting Planet when a Native American woman who has married a Welsh settler in Puritan America is denounced as a witch and sentenced to be hanged. The evidence against her: that she didn't scream during childbirth.
- In Tales of Wyre, this is the Inquisition's preferred punishment for heretics.Brey: As unrepentant apostates, heretics, idolaters and blasphemers, ...I am authorized to inform you that the entire adult population of Trempa will be condemned to burn.
- In Terminal World, tectomancers are regarded with fear and suspicion by the superstitious and must conceal their distinguishing birthmarks or risk being burned.
- The Thieftaker Chronicles takes place in the pre-Revolutionary American colonies where suspected witches are still hanged or burned. This makes life obscenely difficult for the actual conjurers hiding around.
- Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch by Dorothy K Haynes. Beatrice tricks the intellectually disabled Jinnot into accusing Beatrice's love rival of witchcraft; the woman is "ducked" to test whether she is a real witch, and drowns. Subsequently, Jinnot comes to believe that she herself is a witch, and tries to use her "powers" to curse Beatrice. When Beatrice's baby dies suddenly after a visit from Jinnot, Jinnot is instantly suspected of witchcraft, and thrown into the river. She is terrified and thinks she'll drown - but she floats, and is summarily burned as a witch.
- In Mika Waltari's The Wanderer, the protagonist's wife is accused of witchcraft. She is the first woman he's ever met who loved him (back), but being a rather naive 16th century man, he doesn't dismiss the possibility of her being a witch until he witnesses the trial, which is a turning point for his life and he becomes more cynical. The trial itself plays this trope straight, although instead of the swim test, they use more conventional torture methods. And of course, she gets burned in the end, but only after "confessing" that her accomplice was the witch catcher who caught her. (Which causes a chain reaction as the witch catcher "confesses" that pretty much everyone he's had troubles with is an accomplice and a servant of Satan.)
- In Anne Rice's The Witching Hour, Lasher, the spirit that haunts the Mayfair family for centuries, is originally conjured by a woman in a small Scottish town. When the locals attempt to burn her for a witch, she unleashes Lasher on them, who wrecks the town and kills the inhabitants.
- Diana Wynne Jones uses this trope in her book Witch Week. The main characters are all afraid of being outed as witches, and one even goes to the lengths of burning himself with a candle to remind himself to be careful not to use magic.
- In Wizard's First Rule, a mob confronts Zedd, Richard, and Kahlan, attempting to burn Zedd on charges for witchcraft. After the obligatory "men are warlocks, women are witches" reference, Zedd invites the mob to mention exactly what they think a warlock is capable of doing. After several relatively innocuous suggestions, such as the ability to turn a cow's milk sour, the mob begins to embellish its examples when its earlier ideas did not seem sinister enough. After over an hour of this, Zedd puts a stop to it, applauding the mob's courage for daring to confront what must surely be an unstoppable Faustian demigod who kills by the hundreds and drinks blood by the liter. The mob meekly apologizes and attempts to flee, though not before Zedd convinces them that he's made their privates disappear. They got better.
- The Lotus Guild in The Lotus War trilogy have a nasty habit of burning Yokai-kin (people who can talk to animals, but sometimes interpreted more broadly as anyone with supernatural abilities) alive. They do have an ulterior motive for this beyond simple fanaticism: the Guild are really an Apocalypse Cult, and the blood of Yokai-kin can purify the land rendered uninhabitable by the hell-plant the Guild cultivate.
- The Wheel of Time: The Whitecloaks and their stronghold nation of Amadicia criminalize use of the One Power or simply training in the White Tower, and see all Aes Sedai as witches. Since only women can channel without going mad, this creates a Reverse Psychology effect in Amadicia where men are more trusted than women to be healers even though male channelers are more dangerous, simply because the perceived threat of female channelers is far more present. In the past, the Whitecloaks managed to kill one Amyrlin Seat, although a formal execution was considered difficult considering that she could actually channel the One Power. Instead, they had to opt for simply murdering the Amyrlin and hanging her body in the Fortress of the Light after she was already dead.
- Wise Child: Burning isn't involved, but it's otherwise played straight because it still involves persecution and death. Wise Child's mentor, Juniper, is arrested, trialed, and threatened with execution after being scapegoated by Sinister Minister Fillan and the local villagers for the winter famine that beset the village. Without Wise Child and Colman's intervention to rescue her, she would most certainly have been killed.
