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History of Early Modern Europe > WITCHCRAFT > Flashcards

WITCHCRAFT Flashcards

1
Q

What is important to note with witchcraft?

A

Victims (the accused)

The accuser (also victims of sickness, death, and crops dying) (Stress drove them to believe there were witches among)

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2
Q

What was Magic in Early Modernity?

A

Magic traditions in Christianity and Europe
: resurrection, transubstantiation, miracles, etc.
*There are also magical folk practice

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3
Q

Magic and Religion solved different problems, what were they?

A

Magic: Short term
- solves immediate problems like illness, bad luck, unfulfilling personal relationships
- interconnected disciplines: astrology, palmistry, etc.

Religion: Long term
- solves big, long-term problems about the afterlife, morality, and cosmic justice
*Religion also gives life meaning

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4
Q

What does the Clergy think about Magic?

A

Magic challenges religion’s explanatory power = Clergy treat magic as a rival

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5
Q

What was the renaissance natural magic?

A

Masculine intellectual tradition of renaissance
- Use natural materials (not spirits) to cause changes in the world
related to alchemy, astronomy, and astrology

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6
Q

Two big natural magic followers:
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Marsilio Ficino

A

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463 – 1494): young upstart magician who became an acolyte of Savonarola and burned his books, assassinated by a fellow practitioner

*Marsilio Ficino (1433 – 1499): Catholic priest and scholar of natural magic (especially astronomy/astrology)
*Accused and acquitted of heresy

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7
Q

Were the witch hunts solely catholic or protestant?

A

Was everywhere

Both Protestant and Catholic clergy saw themselves as direct competitors to magic
*And accused each other of being magic-adjacent

*Protestants: the Catholic Church’s emphasis on ritual, hierarchy, and mystery is basically magic
*Catholics: the Protestant emphasis on autonomous interpretation opens the door to demonic forces

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8
Q

What is Idolatry?

A

Worshipping something that is Not God (ex. devil, a cool rock u found, eric)

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9
Q

What is Heresy?

A

Worshiping God according to wrong belief (ex. Protestants and Catholics accuse each other of this)

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10
Q

What is Superstition?

A

Worshiping God the wrong way (ex. Folk practice, kind of hedging bets with God)

Smaller crime then other two

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11
Q

What is a witch?

A

You are one with alliance with the Devil (gain power!)
-

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12
Q

How is power conveyed to Witch?

A

*Sex with the devil

*A deal with the devil in which the witch hands over their soul

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13
Q

What did Witches do?

A

*Flying ointment
*Killing infants and new mothers
*Killing cattle

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14
Q

What were witches “accessories”?

A

*Familiars
*Brooms

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15
Q

Who qualified as witches?

A
  • Both men and women
  • People outside expected gender roles were targeted:
    Masterless women: women who have no man (husband, father, brother, etc.) to govern them

*Women who have never married or had children

*Men who are disagreeable (didn;t get along with other men), have no children, either married to accused witches or unmarried

Witchcraft accusations are highly regional

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16
Q

How did people Identify witches?

A
  • Need strange things happening in community first
  • Look for devils mark on a woman:
    *A mark on the witch’s body that is dead to sensation and does not bleed
    *A third nipple from which a familiar can drink blood
    *A mole or birthmark in a meaningful shape
17
Q

When was peak of witch craze?

A

peak of the witch craze was roughly 1580-1630

18
Q

What were the “swimming” and “pricking” methods of investigation? (also other)

A

*Swimming: Based on the theory that witches renounced their baptism, it hypothesized that a witch thrown into water would be similarly renounced by that water and float (tied to chair, toss in water. Ifsink, they’re human & fish them out)

*Pricking: Poking the Devil’s Mark with something sharp to demonstrate that it was numb and did not bleed

*Other methods included sleep deprivation, cutting witches, and judicial torture

19
Q

How is the witch craze often framed?

A

The witch craze is often framed as men fearing women, but women’s fears are also central to witch persecution

20
Q

What made neighbors turn on neighbors?

A

Genuine terror
- Triggered by local tragedies
- Reproduction and farming issues
- Worried about social reproduction
- So “masterless women” who haven’t had a child or work for a business are excluded from reproduction of society (thus targeted)

21
Q

What were witches blamed for?

A

Witches were often blamed for mass tragedies = East Anglian witch persecutions during the English Civil Wars
*“Something is wrong with society, and we must get to the bottom of it before it destroys us”

22
Q

Why did witches confess? (Two reasons)

A
  1. Ppl who were accused of being witches were also scared of witches
    - W/ interrogation might believe they are accidently guilty
    Transference: a psychological process by which strong feelings about one person or concept are transferred onto another
  2. Torture
    Witches don’t just reluctantly confess but come up with these incredibly lurid scenarios (see the readings) and confess to more than they were accused of
23
Q

Did the Spanish Inquisition have witch hunts?

A

Incidentally, the Inquisition pursued very few witchcraft allegations because it was more interested in the crime of heresy

24
Q

What were the witch hunts like in Germany?

A

Southern Germany = Notorious

Accused: e generally older, “masterless” women but young women, men, and even children were also accused (NOTE: children are typically just victims elsewhere in Europe)
Widespread hunts and violent executions

25
Q

Why are the German Eichstätt Trials infamous?

A

(1532-1723) = executed at least 224 people

  • Series of witch trials
  • Court records don’t say who accused ppl
    -Élite control of the judicial proceedings (judicial torture)
  • Most victims = rural (moved into city over time)
  • Frequently multiple victims in one family
  • Fairly diverse in rank of accused: 6 city councilors and 10 former mayors (common professions: brewer / midwife)
26
Q

How were witch trials self-reinforcing?

A

: every confession is further validation

27
Q

What were the witch hunts like in France?

A
  • Limited documented evidence (cuz it was in local courts - not national law)
  • Witches Sabbath
    - Women= Sexual immorality (men set it up / participate)
  • Even split by gender
28
Q

What is the Labourd Case (in France)?

A

70 people ultimately executed
*Labourd: region in the southwest of France that had been badly impacted by the wars of religion

29
Q

Who was Pierre de Lancre?

A

(1553–1631): judge from Bordeaux

*Estimated 10% of the population of Labourd practiced witchcraft (3,000 people)
*Is he a serious demonologist or a lurid fantasist?
*Emphasized the Witches’ Sabbath and immoral, illicit sex

30
Q

What were the witch hunts like in England?

A
  • : poor, old women with bad reputations

-Familiars more common in England

*Witch persecutions: no judicial torture, high evidentiary burden
*Witches mostly hanged

31
Q

Who was (self proclaimed) Witchfinder General: Matthew Hopkins (c. 1620-1647)

A

In England

*Rode around East Anglia purging towns of their witches (kidnapped women, accused them of being witches, and then executed them)
*Most prolific witch executor in English history
*Not actually part of the army; gave himself that title
*Remembered as a monster, but people were grateful for his services and willingly turned over suspected witch

32
Q

What were witch hunts like in Scotland?

A

*Executes more witches than England
*Judicial torture is permitted here

*Lower evidentiary burden
*Judges do not circulate (judge stays attached to small community) = A community can turn against an accused witch more easily

*Witch beliefs in Scotland look more like continental Europe than England = historic connection with France
*Witches’ Sabbath, sex with the devil, coven-based activiy

33
Q

Explain the events of the Berwick trials? (Scotland)

A

first major Scottish witch trials

*Involvement of King James VI– an anti-witch zealot

*Danish witch trials due to the rough sailing James and his new bride, Anne, experienced in 1590

*James convenes a tribunal to find Scottish co-conspirators

*More than 100 confessed, under torture, of being part of a coven trying to kill the king = treason and witchcraft!
*Includes the Earl of Bothwell and numerous others of high status

34
Q

What were witch trials like in America?

A

Scared of Indigenous rituals
Witch trials are documented in Virginia as early as 1626

35
Q

What happened in - Salem witch trials (America)

A

300 accused: 19 people executed, 1 person killed during torture, at least 5 died in prison
*Executed by hanging (English), not burning (Scottish) = blend of English and Scottish models of witch hunt

Accused of: Afflicting young ppl, especially girls with seizures and other outbursts

*Evidence: the afflicted claimed to see a spectral shape of their tormentor

*Puritan culture came out of Calvinism (Double predestination) = you could be wicked and not even know it = mass hysteria

*By 1696, members of the community began to ask forgiveness and perform acts of penance

36
Q

Who were the first three accused?

A

Sarah Good (unwed pregnant woman),

Sarah Osborne (became wealthy by seizing her late husband’s inheritance for his sons),

Tituba (enslaved West Indian woman)

37
Q

How were women victims?

A

Sometimes it was cause of patriarchy

Sometimes victims of mass hysteria

38
Q

How were witch accusations racialized?

A

*The witch as infiltrator

*Cultural panic about witchcraft happens at the same time as cultural panic around secret Jews and secret Catholics/Protestants

Targeted groups: *Saami, *Roma, *Enslaved African and Indigenous spiritual practitioners

Considered deviations from appropriate forms of humanity (Blackness as an “affliction” due to immorality)

*Antisemitism in depictions of witches
*Pointy hat = Judenhut?
*Hooked nose an antisemitic caricature?

39
Q

What does the teach believe caused the decline of witchcraft allegations?

A

Disciplinary problems?

*Demonology = interdisciplinary field of study that underpins witchcraft & witch hunting
*Demonology debunked = decline of witch accusation

History of Early Modern Europe (30 decks)

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