Crime, Morality and The Witch Craze

Question 1

How many witch-trials took place in the period 1450-1750 and how many were executed?

Answer 1

• around 100,000 trials took place

- around half were executed

Question 2

What were the 3 types of witch-hunts that existed?

Answer 2

• Small panics/isolated trials
• large panics
• Mass panics/hysteria= ‘witch-craze’

Question 3

What were the two factors which affected the types of witch-hunts that took place?

Answer 3

• chronology

- geography

Question 4

What is the chronology of the witch-hunts?

Answer 4

• c.15: gradual increase
• early c.16 numbers reduced slightly(Relatively few prosecutions during the early years of the Reformation (1520-1550)
• late c.16/17 : dramatic increase in prosecutions = height of witch craze 1580-1630
• late c. 17-early c.18: a gradual decline Increased scepticism)

Question 5

What years was there a witch-craze?

Answer 5

1580-1630

Question 6

What are the reasons for the general decline in the persecution of witches?

Answer 6

• increased scepticism among elite classes and judicial authorities
• Increased restriction and prohibition of torture
• local officials became increasingly under centralized control
• increasing concerns about miscarriage of justice, how can you prove that someone is a witch?

Question 7

How can it be argued that there wasn’t a ‘witch craze’?

Answer 7

• not all beliefs in witchcraft and magic, nor all suspicions necessarily led to a trial
• Differences existed in the attitudes of individuals
• Both the local authorities and local population had to be complicit for witch-hunts to take place (neither a top-down or bottom-up movement)
• Not all suspected witches were found guilty and executed
• Witch ‘panics’ were the exception not the norm

Question 8

Where did most of the witch persecutions take place?

Answer 8

Holy Roman Empire (nearly half the executions took place there)

Question 9

How many witch executions took place in Germany during from 1450-1800?

Answer 9

25,000

Question 10

Why did Italy and Spain not experience much of a witch-craze?

Answer 10

-Italian and Spanish judicial authorities were more interested in persecuting heresy compared to witches

Question 11

What areas experienced more witch trials compared to others in Spain?

Answer 11

• worst areas affected were areas which were not under the control of the inquisitors
• centralization led to less witch hunts, decentalization led to more

Question 12

What does the Spanish and Italian witch-hunts highlight?

Answer 12

importance of the opinion of judicial authority

Question 13

What are the reasons as to why the witch-hunts occurred according to Briggs in his work ‘Many reasons why’?

Answer 13

• all of the witch hunts were caused by different factors, there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ witchcraft case
• judicial autonomy
• importance of local witch-hunters
• pressure from below

Question 14

Why did demonology lead to witch-hunts occurring?

Answer 14

-changed the understanding of witchcraft
-Witchcraft in the medieval period meant harmful magic,
however in the EMP the term changes to mean having a pact with the devil. Pact with the devil to overthrow Christendom, witches were no longer simply people who used magical power to get what they wanted, but people used by the devil to do what he wanted
Conspiracy to overthrow Christendom (early version of terrorism)

Question 15

What is the sabbat?

Answer 15

• Sabbath witches were summoned to attend a ceremony where Satan himself and other demons would be present in human or animal form.
• Each witch had to profess their undying loyalty and service to the Devil and make a full renunciation and rejection of the Christian faith in return for being taught the ‘black arts’.

Question 16

How did legal changes increase the amount of witch-hunts?

Answer 16

• change from accusatorial to inquisitorial
• Previously accuser liable to present evidence against the accused, however following judicial changes the accuser doesn’t have to provide evidence
• Inquisitorial process was based on Roman Law where the proof was the person had confessed to the crime

Question 17

What does crimen exceptum mean?

Answer 17

• a crime so exceptional that the established rules of justice need not to applied to it
• accusation was enough to allow torture, humiliation, and ultimately death

Question 18

Why does legal changes from accusatorial to inquisitorial not necessarily explain the increase in witch-trials?

Answer 18

Spain and Italy both used Roman Law however didn’t experience high levels of witch-trials

Question 19

How did the belied of the ruling classes affect the level of witch-trials?

Answer 19

For the judicial machinery necessary for the witch-hunt to exist than it was necessarily for the elites/ruling classes to believe that there was a large number of witches

Question 20

What does Behringer argue?

Answer 20

• people accused people who they knew, arose at times of agricultural crises.
• Majority of accusations happened between neighbours.
• Witch-hunts usually arose at times of agricultural crises, peaks of persecution can be linked to agricultural crises

Question 21

Who were the accusers of witchcraft normally?

Answer 21

• neighbours

- history of tension between accused and accuser

Question 22

What does Maleficium mean?

Answer 22

act of witchcraft that performed with the intention of causing damage or injury

Question 23

Why were women seen as being witches more so than men?

Answer 23

• more susceptible to the Devil-carnal lust
• women and household activities: women threatened the running of the household, ‘anti-mother’
• associated with nature, disorder, and the body, all of which were linked to the demonic

Question 24

In what countries were a large number of men charged of witchcraft?

Answer 24

• Finland
• Estonia
• Iceland
• Muscovite Russia

Question 25

In what countries did the demonic concept not take hold and how did this effect the number of witch-trials?

Answer 25

• Finland
• Iceland
• Estonia
• Russia
• There was no large-scale hunts

Question 26

Which areas experienced the highest number of witch accusations?

Answer 26

• Holy Roman Empire
• Switzerland
• parts of France

Question 27

In the Holy Roman Empire what areas experienced the largest number of witch-hunts?

Answer 27

• prince-bishoprics
• Trier, Mainz, Würzberg, Ellwangen, Bamberg, Cologne
• bishops saw prosecuting witches as a way to demonstrate their piety and concern for order

Question 28

Whats wrong with the sources used to study witchcraft?

Answer 28

• survival rates of sources
• leading questions in interrogations?
• use of torture? (might not be told that torture had been used)
• written language of scribe, not the accused
• fictitious?
• how to account for free confessions? (were not tortured but still thought that they were a witch)

Question 29

Describe the typical figure of the witch

Answer 29

• witch-hunts not sex-specific but were ‘sex-related’ (majority of witches were women but not all the time (in Iceland 100% of the accused were men)
• women were seen as being more susceptible to the Devil- carnal lust
• Women and household activities- witch threatened the running of the household
• ‘anti-mother’

Question 30

What does Lyndal Roper argue?

Answer 30

• Witches were seen as affecting the bodily fluids of it’s victims
• deeply conflicted feelings about motherhood brought about accusations of witchcraft
• mothers of babies could inflict harm on their newborn- once the baby is born the connection is broken
• maids were also targeted as witches as they were seen to have envy (Maid was envious because she was poor and single, tendered a mother who was surrounded by love, attention and presents by other women)