Witchcraft and Great Powers

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

"At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suffered teach us the opposite. Many perished precisely because they were young and beautiful."

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

Bever clarifies why he believes historians often focus only on the rise of witchcraft rather than their decline. He believes the reason this occurs is because, historians assume “their defeat seemed self-evident” (Bever, 2009, p. 264). The author explains how the rise of witches occurred, “chain-reaction trials started with a few stereotyped suspects but gradually widened to include previously unsuspected commoners and eventually friends” (Bever, 2009, p. 272). Bever also gives discusses of how witchcraft came to affect the society and how it became “an integral part of late medieval culture and society” (Bever, 2009, p. 288). The work relates more specifically to the field of the first centuries of colonization because, although some ideas presented in this article can be inferred, most are not that of the general

In this study she addresses the accused and the accusers, the young, the old, the poor, and the cute. In chapter seven she constructs an interesting analysis and a statistically significant interpretation of those females who were possessed, and why these particular females responded to their possession in Puntan society. In order to prove her case she used evidence associated with those who were the accusers and the accused during the witchcraft trials. On the whole, she proved that women who were out of the social norms of colonial society were more likely to be suspect of witchcraft. In Puntan New England this was mainly non-married women, widows, and non-conformist females. These distinctive behaviors and demographics were seen as potential threat to New England Society, especially during a period of great change or social upheaval.

As Europe began to modernize, people began to move from rural villages into the crowded urban areas. Because of the rise in population density, disease was able to spread very quickly. When the Black Plague struck these overpopulated cities, many people began to die. Minorities, such as witches, were blamed for the high mortality rate because people did not yet understand bacteria and germs. Not only were witches blamed for the high mortality rate during the Black Plague, they were also blamed for other misfortunes.

From the late fifteenth century throughout the seventeenth century, witches were being persecuted for these three major reasons religion, fear, and deliberate deception in Europe. During this period the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Reformation, the consolidation of national government occurred which caused and help the 3 major reasons. Women were considered weaker emotionally and physically and there was a popular belief in magic and most this power was thought to have come from the devil causing men with power to believe that women can be witches. Witches were usually suspected to be old, poor, married and unmarried women.

The rise in witch hunts was a way to take control over women. Women typically played vital roles as caretaker, healers, and nurturers using

The witchcraft phenomenon of the Renaissance period was shaped by a wide range of cultural factors; witchcraft was not necessarily subject to a single cohesive idea or concept, and it was often instead a conglomeration of many different societal concerns, concerns which spanned through all spheres of society. Textual evidence from this period provides insight into the way in which witches were conceived, and how witches were dealt with, while visual images present a companion visualisation of the tensions, which influenced created the witch, and the imagery, which came to be associated with witchcraft.

By the mid-fourteenth century, much of Europe had heard of a plague which ravished central Asia decades prior. Rumors of awful pestilence and death spread though the continent, yet most would not be able to fathom the awaiting catastrophe. Between 1347 and 1351, the mysterious force of the Black Plague was estimated to have killed off one-third to one-half of Europe’s entire population. Although there is now a medical explanation for the occurrence of the plague , religious fanaticism, ignorance, and superstition pervaded the consciousness of Europe’s population. Those attributes, mixed with a great unrelenting plague of unknown origin, led to the inevitable search

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.

Karlsen tells us that witchcraft was mainly associated with females. In fact, Karlsen points out that there were 344 people accused of witchcraft. 267 of that 344 were women and only 75 were men. A large number of these women were widows or just simply single. Others were convicted on the grounds that they were related to or were close to someone who had already been deemed a witch. The men convicted were usually the husbands of accused witches. Karslen claims that women were more prone to these accusations because it was men who were judging them. Women had no voice in this society. Men were also given different treatments. Karlsen gives an example of a man who came right out and confessed to being a witch. As his punishment, the courts declared

Prior to the fifteenth century, rural European women were highly revered and respected pillars of rural community life; not only considered mothers and wives, but seen as community leaders, physicians, and sources of strength and wisdom. Women had a special and imperative role in rural life, and even those that lived on the fringes of society were well respected as the village healers and wise women. These old women would possess the wisdom of the ages and pass it on to others. This respect for women quickly deteriorated, however, during the witch hunts. The belief spread that women were morally weaker than men and driven by carnal lust, therefore making them more susceptible to being tempted by the Devil, and thus practicing witchcraft. (Levack p. 126) As people took this belief to heart, it is apparent that society would be affected indefinitely by such intolerance.

The witches of folklore were often told as stories by villagers were based on old traditions and sometimes pagan beliefs. These witches lived in remote regions and (like other beliefs in witches) were female; but not necessary human as fairies or some other fantastical creature were often involved. They shared some common features with other witches but also committed more imaginative maleficent deeds such as the kidnapping and eating of children, shape-shifting and magical travel. Bentley goes on to suggest that among the intellectual elite witchcraft became an ‘absurdity’ due to the achievements of the royal society and the new philosophy

It was believed that the Devil would choose women to wreak evil, as a witch was synonymous with an enchantress.