There's a gruesome illustration circulating on Facebook of a woman impaled on a stake being carried by some soldiers in 17th century kit with a caption claiming that the Emperor Charlemagne ordered this for women "...simply because a woman was found collecting herbs in the forest. She was labelled a witch."
In point of fact, Charlemagne passed a law in the Council of Paderborn of 785 prohibiting the execution of witches, under the penalty of death, something that the pagan Saxons he was fighting against were still doing.
The illustration, a cropped version of which is shown below, really comes from page 345 of a book written in England in 1658 by Sir Samuel Morland called "The history of the Evangelical churches of the valleys of Piemont : containing a most exact geographical description of the place, and a faithfull account of the doctrine, life, and persecutions of the ancient inhabitants ; Together, with a most naked and punctual relation of the late bloudy massacre, 1655.."
The incident depicted was part of the Piedmontese Easter massacre of Protestants in what is today northern Italy in 1655. The accompanying text reads: "Anna, Daughter to Giovanni Charboniere of La Torre, had a long Stake thruft into her Privities, by fome of the Souldiers, who in a barbarous way carried her upon their fhoulders in manner of an Enfign, till they had wearied thermfelves, each man in his turn, arid then they ftuck the other end down into the ground and fo left her hanging in the ayr upon the Stakes end, as a moft formidable and horrid fpectacle to all that passed by that way."
The book was published during the anti-Catholic Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, and the events described may have been exaggerated
Article with the uncropped image: The Waldensians’ massacre, 1655
Sightings: Rewritten to claim that Charlemagne was doing this to Hindus who were practicing Ayurvedic medicine.....
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