Superstition and the Witch-hunts in Early Modern Britain Essay

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

In the Puritan religion, there was a strict code to follow. Children couldn’t even have an imagination, and no one could sing or dance either. This was because everybody was all scared of the devil. If one person went off track of the religion by just a little bit, they were thought of as helpers of satan, or as they were called witches. Once the whole hysteria started, people grew even more scared of the devil and even the smallest bit of suspicion that one person was disobeying the religion, they would be accused. Once you were accused, you it was hard to be let off the hook. Most people would just confess to being a witch so they would just go to jail. On the other hand, if you denied it, you would most likely be hanged. I the end, religion was a huge factor to the start of the Salem witch trials.

In the mid-seventeenth century there was a great increase in the number of witchcraft accusations, more precisely in a little country located in southern Europe called Malta. At this time in Europe there was a system of tribunals, a court of justice, created by the Catholic Church called the Roman Inquisition (Carmel. 1993: 316-317). According to Caramel Cassar, the purpose of these tribunals at first was to keep the Catholic faith alive and to eliminate the spread of the Protestant faith (Carmel. 1993: 316-317). Unfortunately at the start of the seventeenth century the Catholic Church had a bigger

From the time of the 1690’s the entirety of Salem, Massachusetts were Puritans. “The Puritan lifestyle was restrained and rigid: People were expected to work hard and repress their emotions or opinions. Individual differences were frowned upon.” (Salem Witch Trials, The World Behind the Hysteria). These people believed that doing anything sinful would result in punishment from God. Just as much as they believed in God, they also believed in the Devil. Keeping up with the Puritan code, it led to the first women being accused of witchcraft. They were viewed as pariahs, and seen differently. Had the Puritan government let the afflicted defend themselves, not be so dependent on religion, not investigating the facts or scrutinize the trials the killing of many could have been prevented. The hangings from the trials would ultimately be the last in America.

Before the 1500s, prosecution of witches was rare. Trials were conducted against those who were seen as suspects of “practicing harmful magic and occasional mass trials" (Bever, 2009, p. 263). These accusations were often made by children and that of their imagination. The decline; however, occurred not through the prosecutions but through its “suppressing roles” and the overall “decline in witch beliefs” (Bever, 2009, p. 285). The title of the article is “Witchcraft Prosecutions and the Decline of Magic” and it is written by Edward Bever. Bever is the Associate Professor of History, SUNY College at Old Westbury.

The view that religious beliefs were behind the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 is predominantly incorrect. While the Puritan culture’s strong Christian beliefs did dictate the behaviour of New England society, for the authorities that instigated the Witch Trials, religion was a mere justification for their actions that allowed them to gain support by instilling in the masses the fear of a higher power. Their true motives lay in the political and social issues of the time, with Salem Town’s division due to two disputing families, the ever-present fear of smallpox, and the male population’s immense opposition to female independence and sexuality. Thus, while society had strong religious beliefs, they were merely a pretext for the political and social factors of family conflict, disease, and fear of women that were the true bases for the accusations dealt in 1692.

During the late fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, thousands of individuals were persecuted as witches. It was thought that these individuals practiced black magic and performed evil deeds, the deeds of the devil. This all happened during a time of great change in Europe, during the time of the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the consolidation of national governments. They were persecuted for a variety of reasons, but three major ones were religious reasons, social prejudices, and the economic greed of the people. Religious leaders such as Martin Luther and John Calvin influenced the ideas of their followers. Religion dominated the time period and it’s easy to see how many opinions

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.

These individuals may or may not have been witches, yet the jury many times chose to hang any accused individuals with or without reasonable cause. Today, much like during the Witch Trials, people are sent to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. Of course, many guilty people are sent to prison and rightfully so, but sometimes good lawyers are able to convince the jury unjustly sending innocent individuals to a life in prison. Though, Americans are not scared of being sent to jail for witchery, they are scared of being in the wrong place at the wrong time due to the fear of governmental polices.

The evidence of witchcraft and related works has been around for many centuries. Gradually, though, a mixture a religious, economical, and political reasons instigated different periods of fear and uncertainty among society. Witchcraft was thought of as a connection to the devil that made the victim do evil and strange deeds. (Sutter par. 1) In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and twentieth century, the hysteria over certain causes resulted in prosecution in the Salem Witch Trials, European Witchcraft Craze, and the McCarthy hearings. These three events all used uncertain and unjustly accusations to attack the accused.

The Salem witchcraft trials resulted from a climate of repression, religious intolerance, and social hierarchy combined with fanaticism and the oppression of women. The Puritan leaders used the trials as a way to control the community and to prevent change in the strict social hierarchy. The trials ensured that the teachings of the church would be followed - anyone not following the church was simply accused of being a witch and punished accordingly. Witchcraft was considered a crime, and punishment was severe. The first recorded incidents of Witchcraft originated in the mind of a young girls who would supposedly use crystal balls to try and predict their future.

Witch hunting was the persecution and possible execution of individuals considered to be ‘witches’ loyal to the devil. It was an all too common occurrence from 1603-1712 all over Europe. However in order to understand why this happened the context must be taken into account. It was a time of change, the Renaissance - the rebirth of culture, ideas and attitudes to living. The Reformation had also only been implemented in England in the last 80 years back from 1603, when it had previously been catholic for centuries. The English civil war from 1642 to 1651 is argued to have played a part in the intensification of the witch hunts in England due to the peak in executions whilst it was on going. Some historians have taken the view that in time of crisis certain groups can be victimised like in wars, famine, disease outbreaks and changes in society structure.

An English witch is believed by the public to be someone who causes harm and hurts others. Not someone who finds lost goods or a person who cures diseases. For someone to be accused of being a witch the public had to believe that someone was trying to do harm to them. An example of this would be a curse that was uttered by a witch in order to do harm to a person or a group of people. The common clergy as well as the common people believed that cursing was an evil act and they used prayer and counter spells in order to remedy anything that could happen as a result of a curse being uttered.2 Another aspect that the popular belief supported finding witches and witches who performed maleficent magic. The populace was not afraid of the common cunning man, however, they where afraid of magic that did harm to them or their property.3 Because of this the English witches where usually not common practitioners of magic. Rather they where people who where believed to be practitioners of maleficent magic. Cursing someone was one type of maleficent magic that could be performed. Witchcraft as perceived by the common man was not the helpful acts of the cunning persons but the hurtful acts of witches who practiced the maleficent or bad magic.

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