“beggars who were denied
charity were likely to accuse their ungenerous
neighbours of witchcraft”
Witch denunciations “arose out of antipathies
and grievances within the local community.
Petty suspicions, jealousies & gossip led to the
victimisation of individuals & eventually to their
prosecution”
"The trials normally emerged out of
complex disputes within local
communities”
-“Trials often began with a dispute
among neighbours that escalated
into an accusation of witchcraft”
Historians
The Age of Religious
Wars 1559-1715 by RS
Dunn
France in the 16th
Century by Baumgartner
Early Modern European
Society by Henry Kamen
Witch craze by L Roper
The Long European Reformation by
P.G. Wallace
Years of Renewal – European
History 1470-1600 John
Lotherington
17th Century Europe
1598-1700 Thomas Munck
17th Century Europe
DH Pennington
Witches &
Neighbours R Briggs
The Witch Hunt in Early
Modern Europe BP
Levack
Safe, a way to provide scapegoats
"Politically and
socially safe"
“Authorities were confronted with the overwhelming, urgent
needs of a rural world suffering hunger disease and death”
Caused by peasants suspicions about “sick
cows, outbreaks of hail, mysterious insects
and various diseases”
“the Spanish were well supplied with scapegoats
in the form of Jews & so they had less use for
the stereotype of the witch” whereas in Germany
there was a lack of
Peaks in witch hunts “coincided with periods of famine, pestilence,
extreme religious tension, wartime carnage or revolutionary
upheaval
Malleus Maleficarum
Judges more willing to prosecute: "“Because they were
much more certain of the presence of evil”
Caused people to acknowledge witchcraft
“The Inquisition & the judge could now
run a trial according to the textbooks &
the realities of the crimes being
investigated mattered less and less”
Fear and belief in witchcraft
“combined with widespread popular view on the efficacy of
magic & learned assumptions associating witchcraft with
heresy”
-“If belief in diabolical pact allowed prosecutors to try
individual women without any evidence of maleficia, the
concurrent belief in the witches’ Sabbath made possible
extensive & deadly hunts”
“fed on popular & elite anxieties”
Trevor Roper: “it was the social
consequence of renewed ideological war
and the accompanying climate of fear”
"There were usually sudden outbursts of fear,
resulting in mass accusations, confessions and
prosecutions”
Women as weak and evil
"The gendered assumption that
associated women with evil endured”
women as: “prey to the Devil’s wiles”
“female lust could undermine social and religious
order… could destroy Christendom itself”
“Women were most likely targets for suspicion …
they were spiritually weaker”
“A witch-believing peasantry ready to make accusations; a learned
demonology which absorbed the popular idea of maleficium into
Devil worship; the dissemination of that demonology through printing;
a judicial revolution and the use of torture; with local, secular courts
ready to be caught up in hysteria-these were the preconditions for the
witch craze”
Enthusiastic witch hunters
"Extreme distress & disorder seem to have
been less effective in producting panics than
the presence of a few enthusiastic and
powerful witch hunters”
Social and political phenomenon”
"an out-growth of social,
religious, economic and
political tensions"
Witchcraft as heresy
The act of fealty to Satan immediately
transformed witchcraft into heres
"In destroying witches, the zealots were also
destroying superstition & heresy”
"When officials were anxious about heresy,
particularly in regions such as South-Western
Germany where confessional districts often
overlapped, persecution could be harsh
Political tool
"Sorcery became politicised"
Larner:Politicians sought to exercise an
increasing moral authority”
Bishop Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn: "accused Protestants of
witch-craft in order to consolidate the return to Catholicism that he had
engineered
Confused boundaries
“ecclesiastical boundaries, areas of legal
jurisdiction, lordship and political boundaries
rarely coincided, a confusion that left its
mark on the witch hunt”
“The very fragmentation of political and
legal authority in Germany made it possible
for panics to get put of hand”
North and west Germany was “much larger, less fragmented
political units than in the south and the west”
"When officials were anxious about heresy, particularly
in regions such as South-Western Germany where
confessional districts often overlapped, persecution could
be harsh
Little opposition
"There was nothing amongst dominant ideas of the time
which could erode the concept of the witch
Judicially and socially disorganised
“The very fragmentation of political
and legal authority in Germany made it
possible for panics to get put of hand”
There was nothing amongst dominant ideas of the time which
could erode the concept of the witch”
Witchcraft was the crimen exceptum, the exceptional
crime, warranting the suspension of normal
procedures. Rules on evidence, disinterested juries and
the reliability of witnesses were ignored”
Levack: "the most uncontrolled fashion were
the courts concerned were both secular and
local"
"Instead of leading to greater restraint and caution
in witchcraft prosecutions, such as often resulted
from the intervention of central authorities, this
practice usually had the opposite effect”
"Local determination to eliminate witchcraft was strengthened rather
than weakened by the intervention of ‘higher’ judicial authorities