Witch hunt

"Witch trial" redirects here. For the Charmed episode, see Witch Trial (Charmed episode). For the Rush song, see Fear series. For the novel by Ian Rankin, see Witch Hunt (novel).

1533 account of the execution of a witch charged with burning the town of Schiltach in 1531.

A witch-hunt is a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and mob lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials.

The classical period of witch-hunts in Europe falls into the Early Modern period or about 1450 to 1700, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in tens of thousands of executions.

Many cultures throughout the world, both ancient and modern, have reacted to allegations of witchcraft either with superstitious fear and awe, and killed any alleged practitioners of witchcraft outright; or, shunned it as quackery, extortion or fraud. Witch-hunts still occur in the modern era in many communities where religious values condemn the practice of witchcraft and the occult.C> Mill

Antiquity

Punishment for sorcery is addressed in the earliest law codes preserved; both in ancient Egypt and in Babylonia it played a conspicuous part. The Code of Hammurabi (18th century BC short chronology) prescribes that

If a man has put a spell upon another man and it is not justified, he upon whom the spell is laid shall go to the holy river; into the holy river shall he plunge. If the holy river overcome him and he is drowned, the man who put the spell upon him shall take possession of his house. If the holy river declares him innocent and he remains unharmed the man who laid the spell shall be put to death. He that plunged into the river shall take possession of the house of him who laid the spell upon him.

The Hebrew Bible condemns sorcery. The Pentateuch is unambiguous, Deuteronomy 18:11-12 calling it an "abomination" and Exodus 22:18 prescribing "thou shalt not suffer a witch (מכשפה, LXX φαρμακός) to live", and tales like that of 1 Samuel 28, reporting how Saul "hath cut off those that have familiar spirits (אוב, LXX ἐγγαστρίμυθος "ventriloquist, soothsayer"), and the wizards (ידעני, LXX γνώστης "diviner"), out of the land" suggesting that in practice, sorcery could at least lead to exile.

In later Jewish history, Rabbi Simeon ben Shetach - Pharisee scholar and Nasi of the Sanhedrin in the First Century B.C. - is reported to have on a single day sentenced to death eighty women in Ashkelon, who had been charged with witchcraft. Later, the women's relatives took revenge by bringing false witnesses against Simeon's son and causing him to be executed in turn.

The 6th Century Getica of Jordanes records a mythical persecution and expulsion of witches among the Goths in an account of the origin of the Huns. The ancient fabled King Filimer is said to have

"found among his people certain witches, whom he called in his native tongue Haliurunnae. Suspecting these women, he expelled them from the midst of his race and compelled them to wander in solitary exile afar from his army. There the unclean spirits, who beheld them as they wandered through the wilderness, bestowed their embraces upon them and begat this savage race, which dwelt at first in the swamps, a stunted, foul and puny tribe, scarcely human, and having no language save one which bore but slight resemblance to human speech."

Middle Ages

During the Early Middle Ages, the Church did not conduct witch trials. Canon law, in Canon Episcopi, followed the views of the church father Augustine of Hippo (AD 400) that belief in the existence of witchcraft was heresy, since according to Augustine "a heretic is one who either devises or follows false and new opinions, for the sake of some temporal profit". The Council of Paderborn in 785 explicitly outlawed the very belief in witches, and Charlemagne later confirmed the law. The first medieval trials against witches date to the 13th century with the institution of the Inquisition, but they were a side issue, as the Church was concentrating on the persecution of heresy, and witchcraft, alleged or real, was treated as any other sort of heresy.

There were still secular laws against witchcraft, such as that promulgated by King Athelstan (924-999)

And we have ordained respecting witch-crafts, and lybacs, and morthdaeds: if any one should be thereby killed, and he could not deny it, that he be liable in his life. But if he will deny it, and at threefold ordeal shall be guilty; that he be 120 days in prison: and after that let kindred take him out, and give to the king 120 shillings, and pay the wer to his kindred, and enter into borh for him, that he evermore desist from the like.

It had been proposed that the witch-hunt developed in Europe after the Cathars and the Templar Knights were exterminated and the Inquisition had to turn to persecution of witches to remain active. In the middle of 1970s, this hypothesis was independently disproved by two historians (Cohn 1975; Kieckhefer 1976). It was shown that the pursuit originated amongst common people in Switzerland and in Croatia that pressed on the civil courts to support them. Inquisitorial courts became systematically involved in the witch-hunt only in the 15th century: in the case of the Madonna Oriente, the Inquisition of Milan was not sure what to do with two women who in 1384 and in 1390 confessed to have participated in a type of white magic.

Early Modern Europe

At the time, Basel was a center of theologians who preached the dangers of witchcraft, and with the Council of Basel (1431-1449), their ideas came to the attention of a wider audience. The European witch-hunts only began on a large scale in the wake of the Council, from the 1450s, and was sustained throughout the Early Modern period.

Rather than a theologically sanctioned campaign of the church, the phenomenon had all traits of mass hysteria. The classical attributes of a witch—flying on brooms, intercourse with the Devil, and meeting of demons and other witches at sabbaths—became canonical from around 1400, although similar accusations had been issued against heretics since the 11th century. The idea of witch sabbaths fostered a classical conspiracy theory, with fantasies of an underground witch sect plotting to overthrow Christianity. The areas mainly affected by this were the Holy Roman Empire and adjacent parts, as well as Scotland. Reprints of the Malleus Maleficarum in 29 editions between 1487 and 1669 mark the peak of the European craze. This book had been condemned by the Catholic Church in 1490 but continued to be widely used by secular witch-hunting courts. The clergy and the intellectuals began to speak out against the trials from the late 16th 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. Winifred's daughter Winifred Jr and mother Mary Hale were also tried for witchcraft.

Although the reasons for the witch scares are debated, there is a correlation between centralized government and acquittals in witch trials. Most witch trials that resulted in convictions took place in rural areas. In these areas there was about a 90% conviction (and execution) rate. Although most citizens of the time did believe that witchcraft was real, equally they were not ignorant of how personal interests could be involved in accusations. Another interesting aspect of witchcraft in the early modern period is how the highest concentration of trials took place in border areas lacking strong central authority and in social turmoil, especially in northern Italy, Switzerland, Germany, eastern France and the French-Spanish border. Witch trials were significantly less common in both Catholic and Protestant countries that were less affected by Reformation upheavals than were the torn regions of central and north-western Europe. The Spanish Inquisition was generally skeptical on the reality of witchcraft, while in Italy (except Lombardy under French laws) the trials were rare and with relatively mild consequences. In England this was largely due to the 1563 Witchcraft Act and the Anglican doctrine of lack of miracles.

The period of witch trials came in waves and then subsided. There were early trials in the 15th and early 16th centuries, but then the witch scare went into decline, before becoming a big issue again and peaking in the 17th century. Some scholars argue that a fear of witchcraft started among intellectuals who believed in maleficium; that is, bad deeds. What had previously been a belief that some people possessed supernatural abilities (which sometimes resulted in protecting the people), now became a sign of a pact between these people with supernatural abilities and the devil. Witchcraft became associated with wild Satanic ritual parties in which there was much naked dancing, orgy sex, and cannibalistic infanticide.

Witch-hunts were seen across early modern Europe, but the most significant area of witch-hunting in modern Europe is often considered to be southwestern Germany. In Germany the number of trials compared to other regions of Europe shows it to have been a late starter. Witch-hunts first appeared in large numbers in southern France and Switzerland during the 14th and 15th centuries. The peak years of witch-hunts in southwest Germany were from 1561 to 1670. The first major persecution in Europe, that caught, tried, convicted, and burned witches in the imperial lordship of Wiesensteig in southwestern Germany, is recorded in 1563 in a pamphlet called “True and Horrifying Deeds of 63 Witches”

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, as described in the article animal trial. People suspected of being "possessed" by Satan were put on trial. These trials were biased against the 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.

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 1400s - long after the formal abolition of "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." 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. 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. 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". 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. Research into the laws and records of the time show that the witchfinders often used peine forte et dure and other torture to extract confessions and condemnations of friends, relatives and neighbors.

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

In England, witch-pricking was common. It was believed that the diabolical mark would neither bleed, hurt nor show a wound when stabbed by a needle.

An overview of the history of Europe's witch-hunts - which traces the continuities between the witch-hunts' continental origins, its later manifestions in England and colonial America, and the late twentieth-century pursuit of supposed Satanist child abusers - can be found in Sadakat Kadri's The Trial, A History, from Socrates to O.J. Simpson (Random House, 2005).

Executions

Punishments for witchcraft in 16th century Germany. Woodcut from Tengler's Laienspiegel, Mainz, 1508

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 while still alive. 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.) More generally, the majority of trials have always occurred within "Christian/European/American cultures; they were most often justified there with reference to the Bible's prescriptions: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." (Exodus 22:18) and "A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones" (Leviticus 20:27).

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.

Number of executions

Estimates of the numbers of women, men and children executed for participating in witchcraft vary wildly depending on the method used to generate the estimate. The total number of witch trials in Europe which are known for certain to have ended in executions is around 12,000.

Brian Levack, author of The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 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.

Anne Lewellyn Barstow, author of Witchcraze, 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.

Ronald Hutton, author of Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles and Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, 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, which appears to be emerging as the most widely accepted figure among academics. Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, p. 253 denounces as "fantastic exaggerations" numbers of several hundred thousands.

Table of recorded and estimated executions according to Hutton's estimates

Country	Recorded	Estimated
America	36	35 - 37
Austria	??	1,500 - 3,000
Belgium	??	250
Bohemia	??	1,000 - 2,000
Channel Islands	66	66 - 80
Denmark	??	1,000
England	228	300 - 1,000
Estonia	65	100
Finland	115	115
France	775	5,000 - 6,000
Germany	8,188	17,324 - 26,000
Hungary	449	800
Iceland	22	22
Ireland	4	4 - 10
Italy	95	800
Latvia	??	100
Luxembourg	358	355 - 358
Netherlands	203	203 - 238
Norway	280	350
Poland	???	1,000 - 5,000
Portugal	7	7
Russia	10	10
Scotland	599	1,100 - 2,000
Spain	6	40 - 50
Sweden	??	200 - 250
Switzerland	1,039	4,000 - 5,000
Grand Total:	12,545	35,184 - 63,850

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 ca. 40 years, we get 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, or roughly 5 times lower than death by capital punishment in the People's Republic of China.

Protests

There have been contemporary protesters against witch trials and against use of torture.

• 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
• 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, Bishop 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’)
• 1498: Although not denying the existence of witches, Ulrich Molitoris 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, 'D 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.
• 1617: Adam Tanner, 'Disputationes'
• 1622: Johann Grevius, 'Tribunal Reformatum'
• 1631: Friedrich von Spee, 'Cautio Criminalis'
• 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 opposing 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: 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
• 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
• 1718: Anglican clergyman Francis Hutchinson
• Christian Thomasius, De crimine magiae
• Hermann Adolph Meinders
• Hermann Löher, Hochnötige Unterthanige Wemütige Klage Der Frommen Unschültigen

End of the witch-trials in the 18th century

During early 18th century, the practice subsided. The last execution for witchcraft in England took place in 1716, when Mary Hicks and her daughter Elizabeth were hanged. 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 Witchcraft Act of 1734 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. The last execution in Switzerland was that of Anna Göldi in 1782, whose execution was at the time widely denounced throughout Switzerland and Germany as state-sponsored murder. (Göldi's trial was not technically a "witch trial" since explicit allegations of witchcraft were avoided in the official trial.)

Modern witch-hunts

In some parts of the world, including South Africa and India, witch-hunts still occur to this day.

Witch-hunts against children were reported by the BBC in 1999 in the Congo and in Tanzania older women are killed as witches if they have red eyes. A lawsuit was launched in 2001 in Ghana, where witch-hunts are also common, by a woman accused of being a witch. Witch-hunts in Africa are often led by relatives seeking the property of the accused victim.

In December 1999 a student in Oklahoma, USA was suspended from school for 15 days for allegedly casting spells.

Britain

There continued to be occasional prosecutions under the Witchcraft Act in the 19th and 20th century. The most well remembered is that of the medium Helen Duncan in 1944 the last person to be imprisoned under the Act. Supposedly the authorities feared that by her alleged clairvoyant powers she could betray details of the D-Day preparations, but the accusations in court centred round defrauding the public. She spent nine months in prison. The last conviction under the act was that of Jane Rebecca Yorke. The Act was repealed in 1951.

Africa

In many African societies the fear of witches drives periodic witchhunts during which specialist witch finders identify suspects, even today, with death by mobs often the result. Audrey I. Richards, in the journal Africa relates in 1935 an instance when a new wave of witchfinders, the Bamucapi, appeared in the villages of the Bemba people. They dressed in European clothing, and would summon the headman to prepare a ritual meal for the village. When the villagers arrived they would view them all in a mirror, and claimed they could identify witches with this method. These witches would then have to "yield up his horns"; i.e. give over the horn containers for curses and evil potions to the witch-finders. The bamucapi then made all drink a potion called kucapa which would cause a witch to die and swell up if he ever tried such things again. The villagers related that the witchfinders were always right because the witches they found were always the people whom the village had feared all along. The bamucapi utilised a mixture of Christian and native religious traditions to account for their powers and said that God (not specifying which God) helped them prepare their medicine. In addition, all witches who did not attend the meal to be identified would be called to account later on by their master, who had risen from the dead, and who would force the witches by means of drums to go to the graveyard, where they would die. Richards noted that the bamucapi created the sense of danger in the villages by rounding up all the horns in the village, whether they were used for anti-witchcraft charms, potions, snuff or were indeed receptacles of black magic.

The Bemba people believed misfortunes such as hauntings and famines to be just actions sanctioned by the High-God Lesa. The only agency which caused unjust harm was a witch, who had enormous powers and was hard to detect. After white rule of Africa beliefs in sorcery and witchcraft grew, possibly because of the social strain caused by new ideas, customs and laws, and also because the courts no longer allowed witches to be tried.

Amongst the Bantu tribes of Southern Africa the witch smellers were responsible for detecting witches. In parts of Southern Africa several hundred people have been killed in witch hunts since 1990

United States

Christian pastors occasionally call for a renewal of the so-called "burning times", to exterminate Wiccans and other Neopagans.

In 1999-AUG, Rev. Jack Harvey, pastor of Tabernacle Independent Baptist Church in Killeen, TX allegedly arranged for at least one member of his church to carry a handgun during religious services, "in case a warlock tries to grab one of our kids...I've heard they drink blood, eat babies. They have fires, they probably cook them..." During speeches which preceded his church's demonstration against Wiccans, Rev. Harvey allegedly stated that the U.S. Army should napalm Witches. One of the Christian's signs read "Witchcraft is an abomination" on one side and "Burn the witches off Ft. Hood" on the other. Ft. Hood is a large army base near Killeen TX. A Wiccan faith group is active there.

Causes and Sociology of witchhunts

One theory for the number of Early Modern witchcraft trials connects the counter-reformation to witchcraft. In south-western Germany between 1561 and 1670 there were 480 witch trials. Of the 480 trials that took place in southwestern Germany, 317 occurred in Catholic areas, while Protestant territories accounted for 163 of them. During the period from 1561 to 1670, at least 3,229 persons were executed for witchcraft in the German Southwest. Of this number 702 were tried and executed in Protestant territories, while 2,527 were tried and executed in Catholic territories. Nineteenth-century historians today dispute the comparative severity of witch hunting in Protestant and Catholic territories. “Protestants blamed the witch trials on the methods of the Catholic Inquisition and the theology of Catholic scholasticism, while Catholic scholars indignantly retorted that Lutheran preachers drew more witchcraft theory from Luther and the Bible than from medieval Catholic thinkers.”

Other theories have pointed that the massive changes in law allowed for the outbreak in witch trials. Such laws pointed out heretical nature, and punished all aspects. Another theory is that rising number of devil literature popularized witchcraft trials, in which the German market saw nearly 100,000 devil-books during the 1560’s. Another assumption is that climate-induced crop failure and harsh weather was a direct link to witch-hunts. This theory follows the idea that witchcraft in Europe was traditionally associated with weather-making. Scholars also imply that a connection between witchcraft trials and the Thirty Years’ War may also have a direct correlation.

While the previously mentioned theories mainly rely on micro level psychological interpretations, another theory has been put forward that provides an alternative macroeconomic explanation. According to this theory, the witches, who often had highly developed midwifery skills, were prosecuted in order to extinguish knowledge about birth control in an effort to repopulate Europe after the population catastrophe triggered by the plague pandemic of the 14th century (also known as the Black Death). Citing from Jean Bodin´s "On Witchcraft", this view holds that the witch hunts were not only promoted by the church but also by prominent secular thinkers to repopulate the European continent. By these authors, the witch hunts are seen as an attempt to eliminate female midwifery skills and as a historical explanation why modern gynecology - surprisingly enough - came to be practiced almost exclusively by males in state run hospitals. In this view, the witch hunts began a process of criminalization of birth control that eventually lead to an enormous increase in birth rates that are described as the "population explosion" of early modern Europe. This population explosion produced an enormous youth bulge which supplied the extra manpower that would enable Europe's nations, during the period of colonialism and imperialism, to conquer and colonize 90% of the world. While historians specializing in the history of the witch hunts have generally remained critical of this macroeconomic approach and continue to favor micro level perspectives and explanations, prominent historian of birth control John M. Riddle has expressed agreement.

As this theory has an alternative macroeconomic explanation some scholars including Diane Purkiss discredit midwives and healers. Purkiss argues "that there is no evidence that the majority of those accused were healers and midwives; in England and also some parts of the Continent, midwives were more than likely to be found helping witch-hunters. Also the fact remains that most women used herbal medicines as part of their household skills, and a large part of witches were accused by women.

Some sociologists have attributed the occurrence of witchhunts to the prevalent human tendency to blame unexplainable occurrences on someone or something familiar. For example, Europe relied heavily upon agriculture during the period of the witch hunts; if there were large scale crop failures, the consequences would very likely be disastrous. Crop failures often correlated with the occurrence of witchhunts, leading some sociologists to suggest that communities often took out their anger about a lack of food on community members who were unpopular (witches.) This can be paralleled in more recent examples such as the Nazi use of anti-semitism to apportion blame for economic problems. A perception of moral righteousness, by the community, is a necessary element that enables rationalization. This, however, is only one element in a complex tapestry of factors leading to the events in question.

The modern notion of a "witchhunt" has little to do with gender, the historical notion often did. In general, supposed "witches" were female. Noted Judge Nicholas Rémy (c.1595), "[It is] not unreasonable that this scum of humanity, [witches], should be drawn chiefly from the feminine sex." Concurred another judge, "The Devil uses them so, because he knows that women love carnal pleasures, and he means to bind them to his allegiance by such agreeable provocations."

In Neopaganism and feminism

The term "the burning times" was a term used by Gerald Gardner in 1954 as a reference to the European and North American witch trials. Gardner claimed his Wicca was based on an ancient tradition of witchcraft; the "burning times" were its period of greatest persecution, and a major reason for the secrecy maintained within the religion ever since. His account relied heavily on the theories of Margaret Murray, now regarded as highly flawed; he also repeated the figure of nine million casualties first derived by an antiquarian at Quedlinburg, Germany, through the false extrapolation of local records, and repeated by various German and English historians, notably the 19th century women's rights campaigner Matilda Joslyn Gage. This figure is now known to be a massive overestimate, about a hundred times the estimates of most modern researchers. While Gardner referred to the witch hunts in general as "the burning times", he noted that burning was only practiced on the Continent and in Scotland; in England accused witches were hanged.

Modern historians agree the witchhunts had little to do with persecuting a pagan cult, but were largely the result of an interplay of a series of complex historical and societal factors.

It is probable that the majority of the accused identified as Christian. Generally accepted casualty figures amongst historians are also dramatically lower, ranging from Levack at around 60,000 to Hutton at around 40,000; the entire adult female population in Europe at the time was no more than 20-22 million. Victims of the witchhunt were not always female, though women were the majority. In some countries, especially in Scandinavia, the majority of the accused were male; in Finland some 70% and in Iceland almost 80% of the accused were men. However taking Europe as a whole between 1450 and 1700, only 20-25% of those accused were males. Misogyny is usually considered an important factor in the witch-hunts, along with social unrest and religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics.

Most contemporary practitioners of Wicca and related Neo-Pagan religions no longer subscribe to Gardner's or Margaret Murray's theories, and see Wicca as a modern development based on a variety of sources, rather than an unbroken tradition dating from ancient times. They believe that their religion is no less valid because of its recent inception.

The term The Burning Times was further popularised by Mary Daly in her 1978 book, Gyn/Ecology: The Meta-Ethics of Radical Feminism, who maintained that the trials were fundamentally a persecution of women by patriarchy; she expanded the term's meaning to include not only the witch-hunts but the "entire patriarchal rule". Neo-Pagan author Starhawk subsequently introduced the term into her book The Spiral Dance in 1979. The term was adopted by various American feminist historians and popularised in the 1970s for all historical persecution of witches and pagans, again often quoting nine million casualties. They also referred to it as the Women's Holocaust.

Political Usage

File:Parma Witch Hunt.jpg

In modern terminology 'witch-hunt' has acquired usage referring to the act of seeking and persecuting any perceived enemy, particularly when the search is conducted using extreme measures and with little regard to actual guilt or innocence.

Homage to Catalonia

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the first recorded use of the term in its metaphorical sense in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (1938). The term is used by Orwell to describe how, in the Spanish Civil War, political persecutions became a regular occurrence.

The Crucible

The term 'witch-hunt' was popularized in this context through Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, ostensibly about the Salem witch trials, but actually a criticism of the McCarthy hearings as well as the general atmosphere of paranoia and persecution that accompanied them.

Labeled as Witchhunts

McCarthyism The most famous 'witch hunt' of the 20th century is perhaps the McCarthy Era of 1950-1954, in which Senator Joseph McCarthy accused many American citizens of being Communists or Communist sympathizers, and hearings were held by anti-Communist committees, panels and "loyalty review boards" across the United States. These hearings, later deemed unconstitutional, resulted in ostracism, ruined careers or even imprisonment for tens of thousands, and represent a major breakdown in civil liberties and civil discourse.

Political Confirmation Process The term has also been used to describe allegedly harsh treatment or investigations of those undergoing the political confirmation process of U.S. presidential appointees.

Involuntary Commitment The practice of involuntary commitment has been described as a witch-hunt, with systematic bias in the standards for involuntary commitment, the search for people to involuntarily commit, and the judicial procedures that may result in their commitment.

See also

• Christian views on witchcraft
• European witchcraft
• Trial by ordeal
• Pierre de Lancre (conductor of a bloody witch-hunt in Labourd)
• Salem witch trials
• Torsåker witch trials
• Basque witch trials
• Würzburg witch trial
• Ramsele witch trial
• North Berwick witch trials
• Bideford witch trial
• Parma witch hunt
• Blood libel

Further reading

• Behringer, Wolfgang. Witches and Witch Hunts: A Global History. Malden Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2004.
• Briggs, Robin. 'Many reasons why': witchcraft and the problem of multiple explanation, in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Studies in Culture and Belief, ed. Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Midlefort, Erick H.C. Witch Hunting in Southeastern Germany 1562-1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundation. California: Stanford University Press, 1972. ISBN 0804708053
• Oberman, H. A., J. D. Tracy, Thomas A. Brady (eds.), Handbook of European History, 1400-1600: Visions, Programs, Outcomes (1995) ISBN 9004097619
• Oldridge, Darren (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader (2002) ISBN 0415214920
• Poole, Robert. The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories (2002) ISBN 0719062047
• Purkiss, Diane. "A Holocaust of One's Own: The Myth of the Burning Times." Chapter in The Witch and History: Early Modern and Twentieth Century Representatives New York, NY: Routledge, 1996, pp. 7-29.
• Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World, Random House, 1996. ISBN 039453512X
• Thurston, Robert. The Witch Hunts: A History of the Witch Persecutions in Europe and North America. Pearson/Longman, 2007.

External links

• The Stages of a Witch Trial — a series of articles by Jenny Gibbons.
• 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia entry on "Witchcraft"
• The Burning Times A Wiccan discusses what she considers the three myths of "The Burning Times"
• Jenny Gibbons (1998). Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt. Retrieved 21 November 2006.
• Crises: Witch hunt
• The Decline and End of Witch Trials in Europe by James Hannam
• Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project
• Witch Trials
• Dame Alice le Kyteler, convicted of witchcraft in Kilkenny, Ireland, 1324