The rise of witch-hunting and legal foundations Flashcards
What were the two types of magic?
Black magic- causing harmful deeds.
White magic- doing good deeds.
What were white witches known as?
Cunning folk
What was the Christian attitude to witchcraft prior to the thirteenth century?
Denied the belief in witchcraft until witchcraft was identified as heresy and the notion of the ‘devil’s pact’.
What three groups were seen as a threat to Catholicism?
Waldenians, Cathards, Lollards.
What was the Inquisition?
A tribunal that aimed to preserve the supremacy of Catholicism.
Who described the Christian society to shift from ‘open and tolerant’ to a ‘persecuting society’?
Robert Thurston.
What happened in the year 1326?
Pope John XXII authorised the Catholic Inquisition to treat witchcraft as heresy.
What was maleficarum?
Evil magic that caused harm.
What years were the witchcraft accusations in Switzerland, Italy and France and what were they accused of?
1420s and 1430s.
Holding meetings worshipping the Devil.
Where were the main witchcraft accusations in 1420s and 1430s?
Italy, Switzerland and France.
When did the educated believe that witches paid for material gain?
By 1500s.
What was the Sabbat?
A witches midnight meeting where they would worship the devil and provide sacrifices whilst having sex with the Devil.
Who were Inquisitors appointed by and what did they investigate?
Appointed by the Pope and would investigate witchcraft.
What was a common punishment for heretics?
Burned at the stake.
What happened in Dec 1485?
Pope Innocent VIII issued Papal Bull
Witchcraft is crimen exceptum (exceptional crime, so no limits to torture).
When was Malleus Maleficarum published?
1486
Who wrote Malleus Maleficarum?
Kramer and Sprenger
What were the main messages in Malleus Maleficarum?
It was mostly women that were witches
Witchcraft was the worst of all crimes
How to prosecute witches
What was the impact of Malleus Maleficarum?
Limited, Italy actually saw a reduction in prosecutions.
What was the Judicial process of Witchcraft?
Confessions extracted through torture.
Inquisitors suspicions confirmed.
Judges were informed.
More treatises introduced and so more people believed in witchcraft.
What was Diabolism?
Devil worship
What were the ruling class most concerned with regarding Witchcraft?
Diabolism- needed to believe that Witchcraft was a diabolical and wide scale crime with groups meeting to support the devil.
What were the peasantry most concerned with regarding witchcraft?
Maleficarum due to the destruction of crops.
What group of people mainly opposed witchcraft accusations?
Humanists.
Give examples of humanists and what they stated.
Agrippa attacked ‘fantasies’.
Erasmus ridiculed Inquisitors.
Andrea Alciati said witch-hunts are inhumane.
Johann Weyer said ‘massacre of the innocents’ and the Devil is too powerful to need witches.
What countries tried witches in 1480s-1520s?
Spain, Switzerland, France, Italy and Germany.
Name a prevalent Inquisition and how many people were tried and executed.
Inquisition of Como
1000 tried a year and 100 executed.
When was there a significant drop in prosecutions?
1520-1560.
When was the ‘Great Witch-hunt’?
1560-1660
How many people were executed in Wiesensteig?
1562- 5000 people and 63 executions.
How many people were executed in one day in Quendlinburg?
133
Where in particular had many witchcraft accusations?
The Holy Roman Empire
How many executions were in Bamberg and when?
600 between 1622-1633.
When did witch-hunts take off in Sweden?
1660.
When did witch trials begin to decline?
1660
When can it be mark that the Witch craze officially ended?
Late 18th century
How many died overall?
Once believed to be 9 million but present research shows 90,000-100,000.
What three countries had 3000 executions?
Poland, France, Britain.
How many executions did France, Poland and Britain have?
3000
What percentage of witches were women?
75%
What was the female stereotype?
Women more likely to ‘succumb to diabolical temptation’ due to the story of Adam and Eve.
What did Kramer say about women?
‘When a woman thinks alone she thinks evil thoughts’.
What age group was mainly accused of witchcraft?
Women over 50, antisocial behaviour we now associate with dementia.
What was the marital status of those who were usually accused of Witchcraft?
Widowed or not married, which was 1/3 of population.
Poor often resorted to begging causing resentment from community.
What happened to nunneries?
By 1600, dissolved due to Reformation.
What was the personality of a witch?
‘Sharp tongued’- would get into arguments with neighbours.
Had previously been prosecuted for anti-social behaviour, like cursing, fornification and non-attendance of church.
What were the healers known as and what was their disadvantage?
‘Cunning folk’
Known for curing disease so if disease struck out they would be accused of witchcraft.
Give statistics regarding male witches.
Iceland- 90% men
Estonia- 60% men.
Who was in power in the Continental courts?
The Judge
Who was in power in courts of England and Scotland?
Ordinary jurymen (not trained by law)
When and what courts adopted the Inquisitorial process?
Secular and ecclesiastical in 13th and 14th century.
What did the Inquisitorial process need to prosecute?
Two eyewitnesses or a confession.
What were judges usually dependent on?
Confessions
Where was torture used?
In Continental Europe (not in England).
What rules were there regarding torture?
Cannot die from the torture.
Children and Pregnant women exempt.
Testimony in torture chamber known to be unreliable, had to be admitted ‘freely’
When and why were legal restrictions of torture slackened?
1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued Papal Bull crimen exemptum.
What were common uses of torture?
Strappado
Germany ‘white chair’
Forced sleeplessness
How many people didn’t confess in forced sleeplessness?
2%
What were the results of the use of torture?
Convictions were at 95% when they had previously been at 40%.
People confessed to accomplices, leading to chain-reaction hunts.
Why did some people freely confess?
Some involved in the Devil’s pact so felt guilty.
Mentally unstable
Drug-induced hallucinations, mouldy rye bread.
Give examples of witch-testing?
Water in pail would shimmer.
Needed to recite Lord’s prayer without making mistakes.
Had to touch corpses and fresh blood sign of guilt.
Devil’s mark
Witch ‘swimmings’.
What different courts were used for witch craft?
Secular and Ecclesiastical
When did the Church courts begin to get weaker?
By the 1500s
Where did the Church courts remain strong?
Spain, Portugal and Italy
Where were the secular courts more important?
Protestant countries
Give examples of Witch-craft punishments?
Europe- burned at the stake
Sweden- witches beheaded then burned
England- hanged
Non- capital punishment:
England- Prison
Geneva- Banishment
Who tried to compare the Witch craze to present day witchhunts?
Alan Macfarlane (1970) and Keith Thomas (1971).
Who described witches as an anti-christian sect?
James Sharpe
How did James Sharpe describe witches?
’ an anti-christian sect eager to overturn the moral and physical universe of God’
What were common beliefs of early modern Europeans?
- witchcraft existed
- the existence of the devil
What were reasons for these beliefs?
People freely confessed to making pacts with the devil.
Who were the prevalent religious reformers?
Martin Luther and John Calvin
What did Martin Luther and John Calvin aim to do?
Restore the Church to early Christian purity
Proclaimed autonomy on individual conscience.
Favoured direct relations between God and person.
Removing Catholicism.
What did the Protestant reformation cause?
Millions of Europeans left Catholicism
Protestantism becomes more dominant in areas like Germany and Switzerland.
Encouraged Catholics to cause the counter-reformation..
What was the aim of the Counter reformation?
To prevent the corruption in Church.
To educate the clergy.
Reclaim allegiance of those lost to Catholicism.
What was the battle between the Catholics and Protestants called?
The Battle of the Souls
(30 Years War)
What was Luther’s religious documents named?
The Ninety-Five Thesis
Why may the Reformation have had no relevance to the Witch-hunts?
- Witch hunts began almost a century before Luther’s Ninety-Five thesis.
152-1560 (early Reformation) saw few cases.
How did religious change contribute to the Witch trials?
Witch-hunting occured in Catholic and Protestant controlled lands?
Catholics took lead in Prosecution in some areas and Protestants in others.
Protestants both wanted to extirpate witchcraft.
What was the main fear of the Europeans in?
The Devil
Catholics saw Protestantism as the work of the Devil.
What did the Reformation breed determination for?
The creation of the godly state.
What was attacked under the godly state?
Sodomy
Fornification
Prostitution
Adultery
Witchcraft
Why and where did Catholic prince- bishops pursue witch hunting?
German principalities to purify society and paint themselves as true Christian defenders.
Name a bible quote that may have contributed to the witch hunts.
‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’ Exodus 22:18
Where were witch hunts most severe in terms of religion?
Countries with most religious minorities. Mostly in Germany, Switzerland, France, Poland and Scotland.
Why can we not attribute witch hunts with religion?
Rough correlation doesn’t mean there was direct connection.
In many areas, the most intense times of witch-hunts were in eras of religious peace.
Witches often had the same faith as prosecutors.
When did state’s begin to grow in size and power?
Sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
What did rulers have a heightened interest in when the state began to grow?
Religious matters
In Scotland, government and church sought moral conformity. Promoted idea of ‘the ideal Christian’
Why may the state have been important to the witch-hunts ?
Unlikely there could be large scale witch hunts without states assistance and encouragement.
Did courts encourage witchcraft?
No, they did more to restrict it.
What is the functionalist interpretation of witchcraft?
They believe that witch persecution was more driven by pressures from ‘below’ rather than ‘above’ (church and state).
What was Alan Macfarlane’s and Kieth Thomas’ view on witchcraft?
Witchcraft accusations were a result of the impersonal tensions between villagers because accused witches were unpopular and antisocial people who begged.
Believed witch trials had functionalist purpose, to eliminate these people.
What was the social and economic context?
Population increase, England doubled between 1540 and 1560.
Rise in prices
Decline in wages
Growth of towns
Increasing agricultural capitalism
What did the ‘mini ice age’ result in?
Death of crops and so people sought scapegoats.
What can be said about class conflict?
A method used by elites to gain control and to consolidate their dominance over the poorer areas of society.
A product of anxiety due to rapid social change.
What are the counter arguments to class conflict and socio-economic factors?
Behringer found a correlation in socio-economic hardship but no other historians have.
Witch- hunts often took place in areas free from war.
What is the social and geographical context of witch hunting?
Magical beliefs durable amongst the uneducated who lived in close-knit spaces together (working class).
Give examples of children and witch hunts.
Throckmorton children in Huntingdonshire village made claims that led to execution of Alice and John Samuel in 1593. Had suffered illness attributed to evil spirits infiltrating their bodies.
