Accusations Of Witch Hunts In 16th Century Europe

In response to The Hammer of Witches and the papal bull issued by Pope Innocent VIII, major witch hunts broke out in Europe. Moreover, these were aided by new technology, the printing press, which helped to spread the mania, even across the Atlantic to America. It is not surprising that the witch hunt started around the13-15th century. During this time, Europe was overpopulated and in a poor condition with dirty streets, crime and diseases everywhere. There had to be a scapegoat for all of the mess which the church decided was witchcraft. A complex social matrix was created once an accusation was made: the accusers would try to prove the source of what had been troubling them, and ideally to gain control over that source by forcing her to back away and remove the

It is important to understand the meaning of witchcraft to be able to identify what caused the massive witch-hunt in Europe. During the medieval to the early modern period witchcraft was identified as the practice of harmful, black or maleficent magic caused by a witch (Levack, 1987, p. 4). They also describe them as evildoers that associate with the Devil, kidnap children, and murder others. These accusations were untrue rumors made by the Catholic Church to promote Christianity and punish those who did not follow the church beliefs. (Levack, 1987, p. 7)

Women in these situations were made even more vulnerable by the changes occurring during the reformation which removed the church’s support for women, who often spoke on behalf of accused women because women weren’t allowed to themselves. The susceptibility of people to be accused of witchcraft also depended on their location, such as unorganized, uneducated and weakly governed areas where religious instability (Protestant vs Catholic) was present. Another factor that worsened the witch hunts was the invention of the printing press which printed images of witches doing otherworldly things, adding to the paranoia and fear of witchs. If a person was accused of being a witch or evidence was found to create suspicion, the accused could be subject to a variety of gruesome tortures such as the torturing of sexual organs, and if found guilty of these charges (which they often were) they would often be burned or hanged. Nearing the end of the witch hunts when things began to get back under control, a new judicial system was introduced to Europe that commanded stricter rules for witchcraft prosecutions and

Witches were usually people who were considered inferior due to physical appearances like women and the elderly. In Document 2 of Group D, over 75% of the executions that were analyzed were female which fits into the perspective of society starting in the early days of the church.

The large-scale witch-hunts that occurred from 1638 to 1651 gathered momentum via major happenings in the political, societal, and religious domains developing at the time. Individuals who had either political, religious or economic power in society, also known as elites, together had absolute control over the pursuit and prosecution of individuals who partook in witchcraft. The clergy played a crucial role in the witchcraft prosecutions and were slower than the state and localities to desert their beliefs in the reality of witches as the prosecution of witchcraft was, in their eyes, an effective tool to eradicate social deviance. Though local authorities and the Parliament did contribute to the witch-hunts significantly, without the kirk of Scotland declaring and encouraging this sanction on witchcraft, both other parties would not have taken the actions they ultimately did. This essay will provide a brief description of events that took place from 1638 to 1651 and then utilize evidence from a multitude of sources to argue that the religious elites were the most influential of these forces during the witchcraft prosecutions that occurred in the 1640s.

Were the witch-hunts in pre-modern Europe misogynistic? Anne Llewellyn Barstow seems to think so in her article, “On Studying Witchcraft as Women’s History: A Historiography of the European Witch Persecutions”. On the contrary, Robin Briggs disagrees that witch-hunts were not solely based on hatred for women as stated in his article, “Women as Victims? Witches, Judges and the Community”. The witch craze that once rapidly swept through Europe may have been because of misconstrued circumstances. The evaluation of European witch-hunts serves as an opportunity to delve deeper into the issue of misogyny.

From the late 15th century to the 17th century, a flow of fear for witches swept through Europe. This all happens during a period of change in Europe, such as scientific revolution and the Reformation took place around this time period. Germany has one of the largest executions and trials. A witch was an individual who mysteriously injures other people. Women mainly widows are often accused of practicing witchcraft.

Before Christianity spread throughout Europe, village societies had “cunning folk” (McLean). These men and women were believed to have practiced magic and act as healers for the members of society (McLean). When Christianity collided with folk culture, many townspeople viewed the Christian clergy as similar to the cunning folk (“The European Witch Hunts”). Eventually, the clergymen claimed that their powers came directly from God, and any other magic was the work of the Devil (McLean). They called the people who practiced this magic, the people formerly known as “cunning folk,” witches (“The European Witch Hunts”). Witches and witchcraft were observed with fear and condemnation but very little violence. Around 1000 CE, as the “concept of Satan, the Biblical Devil, began to develop into a more threatening form,” the idea of witchcraft began to be seen as a dangerous and terrifying to Christianity and God (McLean). While there were witch hunts between the 11th and 14th centuries, the prevalence of the Black Plague caused a staggering increase in the amount of accusations (Lewis). In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull condemning witchcraft, and later that decade, in 1486, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger published Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of Witches, which detailed how to discover and try witches (Lewis). These two actions sparked a long period of constant witch hunts (McLean). With the invention of the printing press, the mania was

Women were viewed as being spiritually weaker than men, and more susceptible to demonic influence, and this meant that women tended to be suspected of being witches much more often than men. However, this was not a consistent pattern found throughout Europe. In some regions, there were more men convicted of witchcraft than women, in the Lorraine region of France for example, and in Iceland, where the overwhelming majority of convictions were of men. Overall though, about 75% of those executed for witchcraft were women. So ultimately what this suggests about women in the 16th and 17th centuries is that women were not nearly as important as men in society during this time.

The witch trials in continental Europe, which lasted from the late 1300s until around 1650, resulted in an execution of "between 200,000 and 500,000 witches, 85% or more of whom were women."1 There is wide debate between historians arguing about whether or not this is a mass act of sexism—some stating that large groups of men gathered together to blame women for all of their village 's misfortunes, while others state that there were still a high number of males executed for witchcraft, and that anybody could be considered a witch. There is no getting around the fact that gender was a very important factor in the European witch trials, seeing as a majority of victims across the country were women. That being said, the idea of witch-hunts being sexist and specifically targeted towards women is false, rather, the label of "witch" was more frequently added onto powerful women who were viewed as sinful threats to society, resulting in the high number of executed females.

One of the most interesting aspects of the European witch trials between 1450 and 1750 is the frequency with which accused witches confessed to the crime of witchcraft throughout the legal proceedings. While some confessions were offered voluntarily, most were not, and extreme measures were often employed by prosecutors to force confessions from the accused. Among the questions this raises, a prominent one is why obtaining confessions to witchcraft was so crucial. This paper argues that confessions were so important in continental Europe because of the critical developments they facilitated: namely, confessions allowed prosecutors to secure convictions of witchcraft within a judicial system that required high standards of proof; they produced information that was invaluable to the creation and spread of the concept of witchcraft; and they validated the guilt of the accused, the reality of

During my study of witchcraft I looked into a number of sources to help me gain insight into the period of 1560-1660 in order to put forward a strong argument in my coursework. A valuable source was Levack “The witch-hunt in early modern Europe”. It offers the reader a thorough and objective examination of witch-hunts and is consistent with the numbers of explanations given from religion to the misogynistic argument. The explanations provided are both easy to understand and therefore have been beneficial to help me form my own conclusions. His book is easily followed with its layout of various tables, charts and references to specific witch-hunt episodes in addition to a bibliography provided for further research.

Witch hunts blazed across Europe over the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries not just killing innumerable innocent people, but stripping women of much of the power they had once held, and changing society's perceptions of women all together. The economic hardships, religious rivalries, and troubled politics of the time made accusing your neighbors of witchcraft convenient. Where there was war and poverty, or merely bad luck, peasants would assume witchcraft and rush to blame an old, defenseless woman in trials which involved unbelievable cruelty and horrible sadism. As religion and the Catholic Church began to complement and perpetuate the increasing hysteria, European society as a whole could do nothing but

The Rise of Witch Hunts in Europe During the Early Modern Period Tens of thousands of people were persecuted and put to death as witches between 1570 and 1680 – known as the great age of witch-hunts. Europeans had an extensive range of magical beliefs and practices, mainly due to the Christian belief that magic exists. The elite believed in magic as fervently as the most ignorant peasant. It was believed that some members of the society sold their soul to the devil giving them power to inflict pain on others and take part in supernatural performances.

Through a historical standpoint, humanity can be seen as a cyclic development in which old inclinations are further manifested to suit new social orders. As a result, issues that caused mass hysteria in an earlier era are often repeated again and we, just as the people of the old eras, are unable to recognize the flaws in our logic until it is too late. The witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries are perfect example, in that looking back today they seem like a stain on the history of mankind, but at the time being not many people stopped to think about the horrific acts they were committing As time progressed, and people no longer felt the need to ruin entire villages in order to fulfill their own philological desires, witch hunts, like many other trends, also came to an end. As of now, this end in mass witch-hunts can often be symbolized by the story of Anna Göldi, who not only signifies the change in how people thought, but also signifies the occurrence of excessive accusations in times of fear and ignorance.