The Witch's Hammer Summary

This article is about witchcraft and its different varieties of practices in different cultures. This article explains how witchcraft exists and plays an essential part in structural and functional aspects of a society. It also sheds the light on the journey of witchcraft from being profane and wicked to acceptable part of a culture.

Those who were considered social outcasts like peasants, old people and even disliked officials were targeted through the reformation. In Document Group D, number 1, a chart of the occupations of all the husbands of the women who were accused of witchcraft. This chart showed that nearly all of the wealth standings were either laborers or farmers yet hardly any upperclassmen had to deal with such accusations. Not only were those who were poor but those who were non-religious were also attack. In those days, those who tried to spread a different faith or did not believe at all were heretics that were also attacked. In Document 6 of Group A, the brother of a Chief Justice points out a certain judge that believed in witches and immediately went into detail that he is the cause of much of the troubles by not handing the woman from the trial to the Inquisition attendants. Such decisions are looked down upon and immediate draw attraction to the person who does not become involved with the

To completely understand the history of New England witchcraft you have to understand the role of colonial women. The author of this book, Carol Karlsen, used a lot of Secondary and primary sources to support her thesis. She uses first hand accounts of witch

On October 31, 1517, when monk Martin Luther nailed The 95 Theses to the door of a cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany, he had no idea that he was sparking the Protestant Reformation (Greengrass 44-45). These 95 theses consisted of Luther’s complaints and disagreements with and regarding the Catholic Church, particularly on the use of indulgences – a “remission of temporal penalties for sin” sold to individuals seeking salvation (Greengrass 6, 44). The indulgences were claimed to lessen the time an individual’s soul spent in purgatory, commissioned by the Pope of the time, Leo X, and in collaboration with various bishops and archbishops (Linder 22). When Luther nailed his theses to the door, they quickly spread, spurning uproar. First, the theses were sent to Archbishop Albrecht, the superior of an indulgence-selling monk that parishioners of Luther had come into contact with. Then, the document (originally published in Latin) was translated to German and spread throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Luther verbalized many common complaints in his theses and became a sort of hero. The ability of the printing press enabled Luther’s theses to widely circulate as he was thrust into public eye and began the path of Reformation (Linder 23-24).

For example, in 1631 Friedrich Spee, published criticism of the persecution in Germany after being confessor of the witches sentenced to death. Spee wrote about a woman named Gaia who was accused of witchcraft and subject to torture. “For not only is there in general no door for her escape, but she (Gaia) is also compelled to accuse others, of who she knows no ill, and whose names are not seldom suggested to her by her examiners or by the executioner, or of whom she has heard as suspected or accused or already once arrested and released. These in their turn are forced to accuse others, and these still others, and so it goes on: who can help seeing that it must go on without end.” Spee’s account echoed the idea associated with communal witchcraft of being the accused and then the accuser; the concern was not specific to the Basque

(Roper pg. 236) This evolution of who could be a witch altered as time progressed in the 15th century it was the possibility everyone could be a witch as seen children, men, and women. (Roper pg. 6) However, as the 18th century progressed the evolution of who would fit the profile of being a witch became any women who gave herself to the devil. (Roper pg. 253) In 1854 the Grimm brothers use the story book of Hansel of Gretel to show the evolution of the world from the past of witch hunting in Germany. The story of the witch craze, focuses on the evil nature of witches, women, and children (Roper pg.

Germany during the early modern period was a part of the Holy Roman Empire, made up of territorial states and independent cities ruled by prince-bishops. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull, known as the Witch Bull, and appointed two inquisitors, Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Krämer, to rid Germany of witchcraft (Sallman, 1994; Wilson, 1996). In 1486 Sprenger and Krämer published the Malleus maleficarum, a book which condemned witchcraft as heresy, connecting witches’ magic with diabolism (Levack, 2016). It also claimed women were more susceptible to witchcraft by their nature (Wiesner-Hanks, 2013). During the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, women were the primary victims of accusations and executions (Levack,

is one of the most famous medieval treatises on witches. It was written in 1486 by Heinrich

The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, now in its fourth edition, is the perfect resource for both students and scholars of the witch-hunts written by one of the leading names in the field. For those starting out in their studies of witch-beliefs and witchcraft trials, Brian Levack provides a concise survey of this complex and fascinating topic, while for more seasoned scholars the scholarship is brought right up to date. This new edition includes the most recent research on children, gender, male witches and demonic possession as well as broadening the exploration of the geographical distribution of witch prosecutions to include recent work on regions, cities and kingdoms enabling students to identify comparisons between countries.

What shaped this source is the confession of witches upon the act of worshiping the devil, trial, conviction, and execution occurred due to harming civilians and enemies. The influencing part of this text is the confession acts by three women detailed about their relationship with the devil, temptation by devil and flight to the sabbath and copulation with the

I don’t know about you, but for me so far, all of our author’s attempts to get an explanation about what witchcraft is has failed. We know that witchcraft is the cause of misfortunes and personal injury sustained by the Azande people through what they believe to be no fault of their own, but I think we have yet to have any understanding of what causes witchcraft itself. Where does it come from, who causes it, and is it in any way like a sort of karma believed to be punishment for bad deeds like in eastern philosophies? I think we need to take a deeper look into witchcraft and what the Azande people are actually talking about, because from what I’ve gathered so far, the Azande believe that witchcraft is an unexplained phenomena of independent events that in no way should have had any reason to take place simultaneously

Heinrich Kramer, a Dominican friar, wrote the Malleus Maleficarum in 1486. He believed witches to be “members of a vast conspiracy directed against Christian society that was allowed by God to cause immense physical and spiritual hardship” (Behringer 716). Therefore, Kramer believed the real way to rid witches was through physical eradication. The start of the manuscript came from his experience in witchcraft trials in Upper Germany.

The 1500s have had an enormous influence on Christianity, in both the Catholic and Protestant churches. These two churches were constantly lashing out and fighting with each other. As Protestantism rose and became more popular in parts of Europe, certain members of the Protestant reformation constantly opposed Catholic ideology which sparked a chain reaction of arguments between the two churches. I have recently read the Instructions for Selling Indulgences Albrecht written by Brandenburg, Martin Luther’s Selections from the Ninety-five Theses, and his letter “Against the Murdering and Robbing Bands of Peasants”, John Calvin’s Institutes on Predestination and the Elect, his Religious Law and Order in Calvin’s Geneva, The Trial of

Introduction In the 15th to 18th-century people of Europe and America had a common made up belief in Witches. They had many beliefs on witches and why they were dangerous, so everyone was against them.But Witches were just Innocent men or women that were told to be people with magical and mystical powers to harm everybody. The Belief Unfortunate events were occurring in Europe and America, such as disastrous weather. This drove people to search for a scapegoat, because of this, society created the idea of witches, where they accused innocent people of these unusual events.These events usually consist of magic.This had occurred in 1654, Katherine Grady was traveling to Virginia on a ship when it suffered through a storm.Katherine was accused of being a witch who had created the storm to harm the travelers. For this reason, she was hung like all the other “witches” that

In the Northern European Renaissance lived a scholar by the name of Erasmus. Erasmus was particularly concerned with the corruption going on within the Church. Since he was so intrigued by the abuses of the church, he decided to write an essay titled, “In Praise of Folly”. In this essay, Erasmus describes many different hypocritical actions and thoughts played out by the church. One of