region is mostly rural and therefore far less populous, the number of executed witches makes up for 75% of the total number of executions of the Southern Netherlands. The figures are particularly high for Namur and Luxembourg. The proximity to the Trier witch trials, where between 1581 and 1591 around 350 people were executed, the influence of the demonological treatises of Peter Binsfeld, and local experts in witch-finding (Hexenausschüsse or Monopoles) who trawled the villages looking for every possible rumour concerning witchcraft, all certainly played a decisive role in these high figures. The number of executions in the French-speaking part is estimated at minimum 478 and maximum 578 people, in the German -speaking part - Duchy of Luxembourg - 358 people, bringing the total of this area to 836 to 936. Dutch-speaking areas - north of the language border Only around 1589 witch trials really broke through the language boundary, with initial peaks to 1612 (Brabant) and 1628 (Flanders), a ‘revival’ around 1630/45 and – at least for Flanders – the final executions after 1650. The total number of executions is 314, while the population was considerably higher compared to the French- and German speaking area's. In the merchant city of Antwerp only one women was burned at the stake in 1603, a remarkably low number for such an important and populous city. The essential difference between the Dutch-speaking regions of the Southern Netherlands and the Northern Netherlands lays more in the chronology than in the intensity of witchcraft prosecutions. The end The Witch trials in the Spanish Netherlands gradually became fewer after the 1630s. In 1684, Martha van Wetteren became the last person to be executed for sorcery in Flanders, and after 1692 no more witch trials were held. Gender The proportion of women executed as witches in the Southern Netherlands is entirely comparable to those for early modern Europe as a whole with an average is 80% women. In the County of Flanders that was the exact proportion (162 of the 202 executed). In the Dutch-speaking parts of Brabant however 94% of those put to death were women. In Hainaut only women were executed and in Namur 92% of executed were women. But Luxembourg (75%), Cambrai and Artois (64%) paint a somewhat different picture, although this may also be due to a lack of archival sources. See also Witch trials in the early modern period Werewolf witch trials