Tanneken Sconyncx

Tanneke Sconyncx was born around 1560 in Gottem.
She was a beautiful and wealthy woman, married and mother of four children. The bailiff had set his sights on her, but Tanneke had not accepted his advances. The man, well aware of his power, decided to accuse her of witchcraft and unnatural relations with the devil.

On Christmas Eve 1602, she was imprisoned in the Tielt prison, at the corner of Hoogstraat and Sint-Jansstraat. She was interrogated and tortured in the bell tower (town hall tower) of Tielt and died on June 2, 1603. Salomon Marcx, a surgeon from the city, explained that medically speaking, it was the devil himself who had killed Tanneke during the bloody interrogations. The bailiff managed to impose a trial with a conviction and became rich from a part of her belongings.

The ultimate punishment was her burial in unconsecrated ground in the village of her birth, in Gottem, near a pond, still called the witch's well.

In Tielt, there is a statue of Tanneke Sconyncx in the form of an angel flying to heaven. The Tanneke of Tielt is a sweet blonde beer that has been brewed since 1994 in Lochristi.

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