History

[Denise Morgan (Helping Hand)]

History

 

Beginning of the witch hunts during the Fifteenth century

 

While the idea of witchcraft began to mingle with the persecution of heretics even in the 14th century, the beginning of the witch-hunts as a phenomenon in its own right become apparent during the first half of the 15th century in south-eastern France and western Switzerland, in communities of the Western Alps, in what was at the time Burgundy and Savoy.

 

Here, the cause of eliminating the supposed Satanic witches from society was taken up by a number of individuals; Claude Tholosan for instance had tried over two hundred people accusing them of witchcraft in Briançon, Dauphiné by 1420.^[48]

Soon, the idea of identifying and prosecuting witches spread throughout the neighbouring areas of northern Italy, Switzerland and southern Germany, and it was at Basel that the Council of Basel assembled from 1431 to 1437. This Church Council, which had been attended by such anti-witchcraft figures as Johann Nider and Martin Le Franc, helped to standardise the stereotype of the Satanic witch that would be propagated throughout the rest of the trials.^[49]

 

Following the meeting of the Council and the increase in the trials around this area of central Europe, the idea that malevolant Satanic witches were operating against Christendom began spreading throughout much of the Holy Roman Empire and several adjacent areas. According to historian Robert Thurston, "From this heart of persecution the witch stereotype spread, both through a flood of new writings on the subject and through men who had been at the Council of Basel and now went elsewhere to take up new assignments in the church."^[50] The most notable of these works was published in 1487, written by the German Dominican monk, Heinrich Kramer – allegedly aided by Jacob Sprenger – known as the Malleus Malificarum (The Hammer of the Witches) in which they set down the stereotypical image of the Satanic witch and prescribed torture as a means of interrogating suspects. The Malleus Malificarum was reprinted in twenty-nine editions up till 1669.

 

On December 5, 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued the Summis desiderantes affectibus, a papal bull in which he recognized the existence of witches and gave full papal approval for the inquisition to move against witches, including the permission to do whatever necessary to get rid of them. In the bull, which is somtimes referred to as the "Witch-Bull of 1484", the witches were explicitly accused of having "slain infants yet in the mother's womb" (abortion) and of "hindering men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving" (contraception)^[51].

 

Peak of the trials: 1580–1630

 

The height of the European trials were between 1580 and 1630, with the large hunts first beginning in 1609.^[52] During this period, the biggest witch trials where held in Europe, notably the Trier witch trials (1581–1593), the Fulda witch trials (1603–1606), the Würzburg witch trial (1626–1631) and the Bamberg witch trials (1626–1631).

In 1590, the North Berwick witch trials occurred in Scotland, and were of particular note as the Scottish king, James VI, himself got involved. James had developed a fear that witches planned to kill him after he suffered from storms whilst travelling to Denmark in order to claim his bride, Anne, earlier that year. Returning to Scotland, the king heard of trials that were occurring in North Berwick and ordered the suspects to be brought to him – he subsequently believed that a nobleman, Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell, was a witch, and after the latter fled in fear of his life, he was outlawed as a traitor. The king subsequently set up royal commissions to hunt down witches in his realm, recommending torture in dealing with suspects, and in 1597 he wrote a book about the menace that witches posed to society entitled Daemonologie.^[53]

 

Decline of the trials: 1650-1800

 

Whilst the witch trials had begun to fade out across much of Europe by the mid seveneenth century, they continued to a greater extent on the fringes of Europe and in the American colonies. In Scandinavia, the late seventeenth century saw the peak of the trials in a number of areas; for instance, in 1675, the Torsåker witch trials took place in Sweden, where seventy-one people were executed for witchcraft in a single day. In the nearby Finland, which was then under the control of the Swedish monarchy, the hunt peaked in that same decade.^[54] During the same period, the Salzburg witch trials in Austria led to the death of 139 people (1675–1690).

The clergy and the intellectuals began to speak out against the trials from the late sixteenth century. Johannes Kepler in 1615 could only by the weight of his prestige keep his mother from being burnt as a witch. The 1692 Salem witch trials were a brief outburst of witch hysteria in the New World at a time when the practice was already waning in Europe. Winifred King was the last person tried for witchcraft in New England.^{[citation needed]}

 

During the early 18th century, the practice subsided. Jane Wenham was among the last subjects of a typical witch trial in England in 1712, but was pardoned after her conviction and set free. The last execution for witchcraft in England took place in 1716, when Mary Hicks and her daughter Elizabeth were hanged. Janet Horne was executed for witch craft in Scotland in 1727. The Witchcraft Act of 1735 saw the end of the traditional form of witchcraft as a legal offence in Britain, those accused under the new act were restricted to people who falsely pretended to be able to procure spirits, generally being the most dubious professional fortune tellers and mediums, and punishment was light.

 

Helena Curtens and Agnes Olmanns were the last women to be executed as witches in Germany, in 1738. In Austria, Maria Theresa outlawed witch-burning and torture in the late 18th century; the last capital trial took place in Salzburg in 1750. In Poland, the Doruchów witch trial occurred in 1783 and the execution of additionally two women for sorcery in 1793, trialed by a legal court but with dubious legitimacy.^{[citation needed]}

 

The Historians L. M. Baynes and B. Flower built on the theory of G. liljebakk suggesting that improved diet amongst the common people resulted in a decline of people being accused of witch-craft. Following colonisation of the new world in the 15th and 16th century the import of fruits high in vitamin C such as lemons, limes and pineapples meant there was fewer cases of nutrient deficient diseases such as scurvy. This meant that people where less willing to search for scapegoats regarding their physically deforming conditions, leading to less accusations of witchcraft.

 

Aftermath: sporadic witch-hunts after 1780

 

In the later eighteenth century, witchcraft had ceased to be considered a criminal offense throughout Europe, but there are a number of cases which were not technically witch trials which are suspected to have involved belief in witches at least behind the scenes. Thus, in 1782, Anna Göldi was executed in Glarus, Switzerland, officially for the killing of her infant, a ruling at the time widely denounced throughout Switzerland and Germany as judicial murder. Like Anna Göldi, Barbara Zdunk was executed in 1811 in Prussia not technically for witchcraft but for arson.

Despite the official ending of the trials for Satanic witchcraft, there would still be occasional unofficial killings of those accused in parts of Europe, such as was seen in the cases of Anna Klemens in Denmark (1800), Krystyna Ceynowa in Poland (1836), and Dummy, the Witch of Sible Hedingham in England (1863). In France, there was sporadic violence and even murder in the 1830s, with one woman reportedly burnt in a village square in Nord.^[55]

 

The persecution of those believed to perform malevolent sorcery against their neighbours continued right into the twentieth century,^{[dubious – discuss]} for instance, in 1997 two Russian farmers killed a woman and injured five other members of her family after believing that they had used folk magic against them.^[56]

 

Trials

 

There were extensive efforts to root out the supposed influence of Satan by various measures aimed at the people who were accused of being servants of Satan. To a lesser degree, animals were also targeted for prosecution: see animal trial. People suspected of being "possessed by Satan" were put on trial. These trials were biased against the alleged witch. On the other hand, the church also attempted to extirpate the superstitious belief in witchcraft and sorcery, considering it as fraud in most cases.

 

Regional differences

 

The evidence required to convict an alleged witch varied from country to country – but prosecutions everywhere were most frequently sparked off by denunciations, while convictions invariably required a confession. The latter was often obtained by extremely violent methods. Although Europe's witch-frenzy did not begin until the late 15th century – long after the formal abolition of "trial by ordeal" in 1215 – brutal techniques were routinely used to extract the required admission of guilt. They included hot pincers, the thumbscrew, and the 'swimming' of suspects (an old superstition whereby innocence was established by immersing the accused in water for a sufficiently long period of time). Investigators were consequently able to establish many fantastic crimes that could never have occurred, even in theory. That said, many judicial procedures of the time required proof of a causative link between the alleged act of witchcraft and an identifiable injury, such as a death or property damage.

 

The flexibility of the crime and the methods of proving it resulted in easy convictions. Any reckoning of the death toll should take account of the facts that rules of evidence varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and that a significant number of witch trials always ended in acquittal. :"In York, England, at the height of the Great Hunt (1567–1640) one half of all witchcraft cases brought before church courts were dismissed for lack of evidence. No torture was used, and the accused could clear himself by providing four to eight "compurgators", people who were willing to swear that he wasn't a witch. Only 21% of the cases ended with convictions, and the Church did not impose any kind of corporal or capital punishment."^[57]

 

In the Pays de Vaud, nine of every ten people tried were put to death, but in Finland, the corresponding figure was about one in six (16%). A breakdown of conviction rates (along with statistics on death tolls, gender bias, and much else) can be found in Brian Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (2nd ed, 1995).

 

There are particularly important differences between the English and continental witch-hunting traditions. The checks and balances inherent in the jury system, which required a 23-strong body (the grand jury) to indict and a 12-strong one (the petit jury) to convict, always had a restraining effect on prosecutions. Another restraining influence was its relatively rare use of torture: the country formally permitted it only when authorised by the monarch, and no more than 81 torture warrants were issued (for all offences) throughout English history.^[58] Continental European courts, while varying from region to region, tended to concentrate power in individual judges and place far more reliance on torture. The significance of the institutional difference is most clearly established by a comparison of the witch-hunts of England and Scotland, for the death toll inflicted by the courts north of the border always dwarfed that of England.^[59] It is also apparent from an episode of English history during the early 1640s, when the Civil War resulted in the suspension of jury courts for three years. Several freelance witch-hunters emerged during this period, the most notorious of whom was Matthew Hopkins, who emerged out of East Anglia and proclaimed himself "Witchfinder General".^[60] Such men were inquisitors in all but name, proceeding pursuant to denunciations and torture and claiming a mastery of the supposed science of demonology that allowed for identification of the guilty by, for example, the discovery of witches' marks.

 

Interrogation and "proofs"

 

Various acts of torture were used against accused witches to coerce confessions and perhaps cause them to name their co-conspirators. The torture of witches began to grow after 1468 when the Pope declared witchcraft to be "crimen exeptum" and thereby removed all legal limits on the application of torture in cases where evidence was difficult to find.^[61] With the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum in 1487 the accusations and torture of witches again began to increase, leading to the deaths of thousands.

 

In Italy, an accused witch was deprived of sleep for periods of up to forty hours. This technique was also used in England, but without a limitation on time.^[62] Sexual humiliation torture was used, such as forced sitting on red-hot stools with the claim that the accused woman would not perform sexual acts with the devil.^[63]

Besides torture, at trial certain "proofs" were taken as valid to establish that a person practiced witchcraft. Peter Binsfeld contributed to the establishment of many of these proofs, described in his book Commentarius de Maleficius (Comments on Witchcraft).

 

The diabolical mark. Usually, this was a mole or a birthmark. If no such mark was visible, the examiner would claim to have found an invisible mark.

Diabolical pact. This was an alleged pact with Satan to perform evil acts in return for rewards.

Denouncement by another witch. This was common, since the accused could often avoid execution by naming accomplices.

Relationship with other convicted witch/witches

Blasphemy

Participation in Sabbaths

To cause harm that could only be done by means of sorcery

Possession of elements necessary for the practice of black magic

To have one or more witches in the family

To be afraid during the interrogatories

Not to cry under torment (supposedly by means of the Devil's aid)

To have had sexual relationships with a demon

 

Legal treatises on witchcraft that were widely referred to in continental European trials include the popular Malleus Maleficarum (1487) by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, the Tractatus de sortilegiis (1536) by Paolo Grillandi and the Praxis rerum criminalium (1554) by Joos de Damhouder.

 

Executions

 

The sentence generally was death (as Exodus 22:18 states, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"). There were other sentences, the most common to be chained for years to the oars of a ship, or excommunicated then imprisoned.

 

The most common death sentence was to be burnt at the stake. In only a few cases were the alleged witches still alive while the stake was set on fire^{[citation needed]}. The garrote was sometimes used in England to execute religious heretics before they were burned at the stake. In England it was common to hang the person first and then burn the corpse, a practice adopted sometimes in other countries (in many cases the hanging was replaced by strangling). Drowning was sometimes used as a means of execution. England was also the only country in which the accused had the right to appeal the sentence.

 

The most common methods used to execute alleged witches were burning and hanging. The frequent use of 'swimming' to test innocence/guilt means that an unknown number also drowned more or less accidentally prior to conviction. Burning at the stake was common on the Continent as a penalty for heresy, but the common-law jurisdictions of England and colonial America invariably sent people convicted of witchcraft to the gallows. (In a handful of exceptional cases, such as that of Giles Corey at Salem, alleged witches who refused to plead were pressed to death without trial.) The measures employed against alleged witches were some of the worst ever to be legally sanctioned in the Western world.

 

In A History of Torture, George Ryley Scott says:

The peculiar beliefs and superstitions attached to or associated with witchcraft caused those who were suspected of practising the craft to be extremely likely to be subjected to tortures of greater degree than any ordinary heretic or criminal. More, certain specific torments were invented for use against them.

 

It has been suggested that the execution of persons associated with witchcraft resulted in the loss of much traditional knowledge and folklore, which was often regarded with suspicion and tainted by association.^[64]

 

Number of executions

 

Ever since the ending of the Witch Hunt, various scholars have estimated how many men, women and children were executed for witchcraft across Europe and North America, with numbers varying wildly depending on the method used to generate the estimate. In the nineteenth century, historians were still unsure as to the exact number, for instance the German folklorist Jacob Grimm claimed that the number was simply "countless"^[65] whilst the Scottish journalist Charles Mackay believed that it was "thousands upon thousands."^[66] Within several decades, the American suffragette Matilda Joslyn Gage had claimed that nine million women had been killed in the European trials, a figure which would be repeated by a number of later writers such as Gerald Gardner, although it has since been described as having "no rational basis whatsoever" by the professional historian Ronald Hutton.^[67]

 

In the latter part of the 20th century, as historians began to study the witch trials in greater depth, the estimated number of executions began to be reduced, with the historian Norman Cohn, in Europe's Inner Demons (1975) criticising claims that they were in the hundreds of thousands, calling these "fantastic exaggerations".^[68]

Attempting to come to an accurate figure, the historian Brian Levack, author of The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe (1987), took the number of known European witch trials and multiplied it by the average rate of conviction and execution. This provided him with a figure of around 60,000 deaths, however, for the third edition of the work (2006) he later reassessed that number to 45,000.^[69] This number was criticised as being too low by Anne Llewellyn Barstow, author of Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts (1994) – a work which was derided as un-scholarly and "largely ignored by academics"^[70] – who herself arrived at a number of approximately 100,000 deaths by attempting to adjust Levack's estimate to account for what she believed were unaccounted lost records, although historians have pointed out that Levack's estimate had already been adjusted for these.^{[citation needed]}

 

Ronald Hutton, in his unpublished essay "Counting the Witch Hunt", counted local estimates, and in areas where estimates were unavailable attempted to extrapolate from nearby regions with similar demographics and attitudes towards witch hunting. He reached an estimate of 40,000 total executions. Table of recorded and estimated executions according to Hutton's estimates^[71]

 

Assuming 40,000 executions over 250 years in Europe, which had a population of approximately 150 million at the time with a life expectancy of about 40 years, suggests roughly one execution for witchcraft per 25,000 deaths, ranking about 3.5 times higher as cause of death than death by capital punishment (for any offense) in the U.S. in the late 20th century,^[72]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Early_Modern_Europe

[Denise Morgan (Helping Hand)]

Protests

There have been contemporary protesters against witch trials and against use of torture in the examination of those suspected or accused of witchcraft.^{[73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82]}

Middle Ages

• 643: The Edictum Rothari, the law code for Lombardy in Italy (‘Let nobody presume to kill a foreign serving maid or female slave as a witch, for it is not possible, nor ought to be believed by Christian minds')
• 672-754: Boniface of Mainz consistently denied the existence of witches, saying that to believe in them was unchristian
• 775-790: The First Synod of Saint Patrick declared that those who believed in witches are to be anathematized
• 785: Canon 6 of the Christian Council of Paderborn in Germany outlawed the belief in witches and ordered the death penalty for those who had organized unofficial witch trials resulting in death
• 9th century: French abbot Agobard of Lyons denied that any person could obtain or wield the power to fly, change shape, or cause bad weather, and argued that such claims were imagination and myth
• 906: In his work ‘A Warning To Bishops’, Abbot Regino of Prüm dismisses the popular beliefs in witches and witchcraft as complete fiction
• 936: Pope Leo VII wrote to Archbishop Gerhard of Lorch requiring him to instruct local authorities not to execute those accused of witchcraft
• The Canon Episcopi (10th century), denied the existence of witches, and considered the belief in witches to be heresy (it did not require any punishment of witches)
• 1020: Burchard of Worms argued that witches had no power to fly, change people’s dispositions, control the weather, or transform themselves or anyone else, and denied the existence of incubi and succubi. He ruled that a belief in such things was a sin, and required priests to impose a strict penance on those who confessed to believing them
• 1080: Gregory VII wrote to King Harold of Denmark advising that those accused of supernaturally causing bad weather or epidemics should not be sentenced to death.
• Coloman, the Christian king of Hungary (11th century), passed a law declaring ‘Concerning witches, no such things exist, therefore no more investigations are to be held’ (’De strigis vero quae non sunt, nulla amplius quaestio fiat’)

Early Modern period

• 1498: Although not denying the existence of witches, Ulrich Molitor an attorney in Constance wrote ‘Dialogus de lamiis et pythonibus mulieribus’, in which he deplored the methods of persecution and punishment inflicted on those accused of witchcraft
• Late 15th century: Antonino, Archbishop of Florence condemned the popular belief in witches, insisting that the powers attributed to them were impossible, and such beliefs were foolish.
• 1514: Alciatus, a civil legal official, was asked by a local prelate to assess the case of a number of women brought to trial for witchcraft. Expressing his belief that they were more in need of medicine than punishment, Alciatus advised against punishment and suggested they be treated kindly
• 1518-1520: As legal counsel to the city of Metz (Germany), French born Cornelius Agrippa successfully defended a local peasant woman from accusations of witchcraft
• 1540: Antonio Venegas de Figueroa, Bishop of Pamplona, sent a circular to the priests in his diocese, explaining that witchcraft was a false belief. He recommended medical treatment for those accused of witchcraft, and blamed the ignorance of the people for their confusion of witchcraft with medical conditions
• 1563: Johann Weyer, De praestigiis daemonum et incantationibus ac veneficiis
• 1580: Frenchman Michel Eyquem de Montaigne objected to the persecution of witches, and expressed his scepticism that reports of witchcraft were ever true
• 1583: Protestant Johann Matthaus Meyfart condemns the inhuman treatment of those accused or convicted of witchcraft
• 1584: Reginald Scot, 'Discoverie of Witchcraft'
• 1592: Cornelius Loos, 'De vera et falsa magia'
• 1599: English Archbishop Samuel Harsnett condemned not only those who practiced fraudulent exorcisms, but also the very belief in witches and demons
• 1602: Anton Praetorius, Gründtlicher Bericht von Zauberey und Zauberern, 'Thorough Report on Witchcraft and Witches'
• 1610-1614: Alonso de Salazar y Frías, inquisitor reviewing the Logroño trials. His reports (1610–1614) led to the practical suppression of witch burnings in the Spanish empire one century before the rest of Europe^[83].
• 1617: Adam Tanner, 'Disputationes'
• 1622: Johann Grevius, 'Tribunal Reformatum'
• 1631: Friedrich von Spee, 'Cautio Criminalis'
• 1646: Englishman Reverend John Gaule published Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcrafts;
• 1651: The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes published ‘Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil’, in which he rejected the belief in witches and opposed witch hunts
• 1656: Englishman Thomas Ady published the first of three devastating works attacking beliefs in witches and witchcraft. He opposed the witch hunts vigorously
• 1669: John Wagstaffe published ‘The Question of Witchcraft Debated; or, a Discourse against their Opinions that affirm Witches’, opposing the witch hunts and declaring the belief in witchcraft to be superstition.
• 1676: Hermann Löher, Hochnötige Unterthanige Wemütige Klage Der Frommen Unschültigen, 'Highly Distressed, Humble, Wistful Lament of the Pious Innocent', one of the few eye-witness accounts of witch trials from this period, though published 45 years after the 1631 trials of Rheinbach in which the author took part
• 1676: John Webster published ‘The Displaying Of Supposed Witchcraft’, opposing the witch hunts and dismissing the belief in witches as superstition
• 1691: The Dutch theologian Balthasar Bekker published ‘Die Betooverde Wereld’, reprinted in English as ‘The World Bewitch’d’ (1695), an attack on the witch hunts and belief in witches
• 1693-1700: Robert Calef wrote repeatedly opposing the witch hunts
• 1701: Christian Thomasius, 'Dissertatio de crimine magiae', declared that personal pacts with the devil were unprovable and impossible
• 1712: An anonymous English physician published ‘A Full Confutation of Witchcraft, More particularly of the DEPOSITIONS Against JANE WENHAM, Lately Condemned for a WITCH; at Hertford’, opposing the witch hunts and the belief in witches
• 1716; Hermann Adolph Meinders, 'Unvorgreifliche Gedancken und Monita'^[84]

1718: Anglican clergyman Francis Hutchinson