We see evidence of this in the following examples: In his paper Diabolical Duos: Witch Archaeologist Dr David Neal discussing his illustration of the mosaic being excavated at Rutland Roman Villa with members of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services team, IMAGE OF THE MONTH: Jacob Epstein's sculpture of the Devil being delivered to Coventry Cathedral on the back of a lorry. The dead yearn for the lives they enjoyed, which means they may want to take back from the living. Trials for witchcraft took place across Europe, with some areas persecuting alleged witches much more actively than others. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraftthe devils magic and 20 were executed. In her book Handmaidens of the Devil, Carol Karlsen discusses the stereotypical witch middle-aged or old women who stood to receive large inheritances and the ways in which witchcraft accusations became a way to use them as a scapegoat for the misfortunes of their neighbors. Familiars may also be related to the Norse fylgia, or fetch a persons double, which can also shapeshift to animal form. Children were often accusers (as they were at Salem), but they were sometimes also among the accused. Because of the continuity of witch trials with those for heresy, it is impossible to say when the first witch trial occurred. One of the midwives listed, Aurelia Molins, was married to one of the surgeons listed, James Molins. But to prove that this was the fault of a witch rather than just misfortune was very hard. If witchcraft existed, as people believed it did, then it was an absolute necessity to extirpate it before it destroyed the world. The answers to these questions shine a light on a witchcraft scare that rocked 17th-century England, and tell us much about beliefs in witchcraft and how they affected ordinary people at that time. The outbreak at Salem, where 19 people were executed, was the result of a combination of church politics, family feuds, and hysterical children, all in a vacuum of political authority. The second is like the nipple or teat of a womans breast but of the same colour with the rest of skin without any hollowness or issue for any blood or juice to come from thence. 2. They cant pass the cross, and they stop there. Not in English-speaking countries. The witch executions occurred in the early modern period, the time in Western history when capital punishment and torture were most widespread. 91 persons were condemned to 6 Pages. In the 11th century attitudes toward witchcraft and sorcery began to change, a process that would radically transform the Western perception of witchcraft and associate it with heresy and the Devil. It was this combination of sorcery and its association with the Devil that made Western witchcraft unique. There was some residual paganism in a very few trials. The large-scale persecution, prosecution and execution of witches in these centuries was an extraordinary phenomenon. The hunts were not pursuits of individuals already identified as witches but efforts to identify those who were witches. And why was the Privy Council, the elite group of advisors around the king, interested in four women from rural Lancashire? The process began with suspicions and, occasionally, continued through rumours and accusations to convictions. Yet as with the Privy Council, we should not simply assume that this group was sceptical about witchcraft. While most cases at the assizes concerned one or two people (usually, although not invariably, women), in this case around 19 people were put on trial. The problem is that most of what we think we know is wrong. Across Europe, in the years of witch persecution around 6,000 men 10 to 15 per cent of the total were executed for witchcraft. Even though the clergy and judges in the Middle Ages were skeptical of accusations of witchcraft, the period 130030 can be seen as the beginning of witch trials. Both Protestants and Catholics were involved in the prosecutions, as the theology of the Protestant Reformers on the Devil and witchcraft was virtually indistinguishable from that of the Catholics. Anyone willing to feed them on blood can hope to put them to work in a series of worrying deals. Youll also hear how archives themselvesare evidence of the past. Parrys book is The History of Torture in England Out of these murky beginnings, we discover how the witch became the subject of the chilling persecutions of the 16th and 17th centuries. The story begins in late 1633, when a small boy, Edmund Robinson, started making accusations of witchcraft against women living in his neighbourhood in Lancashire. The fylgia is associated with a persons luck or fortune. These accusations would also be made by the Romans against the Christians, by early Christians against heretics (dissenters from the core Christianity of the period) and Jews, by later Christians against witches, and, as late as the 20th century, by Protestants against Catholics. When you look at the intellectual, social and cultural world of the 17th century, witchcraft made perfect sense, says Professor Owen Davies, author of America Bewitched: The Story of Witchcraft After Salem. But where this happened it was usually carried out by local communities and was not part of the normal functioning of the justice system. This number is extremely high for such a small nation; with less than a quarter of Englands population at this time, Scotland had three times the number of trials. See our extensive range of expert advice to help you care for and protect historic places. The accusations were usually made by the alleged victims themselves, rather than by priests, lords, judges, or other elites. Successful prosecution of one witch sometimes led to a local hunt for others, but larger hunts and regional panics were confined (with some exceptions) to the years from the 1590s to 1640s. How Medieval Churches Used Witch Hunts to Gain More Followers.. Across Europe, 7080 per cent of people accused of witchcraft were female though the proportions of female witches were higher in certain areas: the bishopric of Basel; the county of Namur (modern Belgium); Hungary; Poland; and Essex, England. The witch hunts varied enormously in place and in time, but they were united by a common and coherent theological and legal worldview. Witch Hunting and Witch Trials. The first is shaped like to the teat of a bitch but in our judgement nothing but the skin of the fundament drawn out as it will be after the piles of application of leeches. During this time 80,000 people were accused of witchcraft and, of them, 40,000 were killed as punishment. Neither were witches (with the exception of some targeted by the Spanish Inquisition) generally persecuted by the church. witchcraft, traditionally, the exercise or invocation of alleged supernatural powers to control people or events, practices typically involving sorcery or magic. As a result of these growing trends of witchcraft, 1 Lestrange C. Ewen. Dont ever let her across your threshold. Only 25 per cent of those tried across the period in England were found guilty and executed. About 30,00060,000 people were executed in the whole of the main era of witchcraft persecutions, from the 142736 witch-hunts in Savoy (in the western Alps) to the execution of Anna Goldi in the Swiss canton of Glarus in 1782. Prosecutions of witches in Austria, Poland, and Hungary took place as late as the 18th century. The Devil, whose central role in witchcraft beliefs made the Western tradition unique, was an absolute reality in both elite and popular culture, and failure to understand the prevailing terror of Satan has misled some modern researchers to regard witchcraft as a cover for political or gender conspiracies. Mother Shipton is believed to have been a witch and an oracle, morbidly predicting days of reckoning and tragedies that were to befall the Tudor reign. was piracyrobbery on the high seas. The certificate stated that they had made diligent searches and inspections on those women and find as follows: On the bodies of Jenett Hargreaves, Frances Dicconsen and Mary Spencer, nothing unnatural neither in their secrets or any other parts of their bodies On the body of Margaret Johnson we find two things may be called Teats the one between her cervix and the fundament the other on the middle of her left buttock. Witch trials continued through the 14th and early 15th centuries, but with great inconsistency according to time and place. (The terms West and Western in this article refer to European societies themselves and to post-Columbian societies influenced by European concepts.) Were ducking stools ever used as punishment for crimes other than witchcraft during the Middle Ages. In many ways, like their counterparts worldwide, early Western sorcerers and witches worked secretly for private ends, as contrasted with the public practice of religion. Were the Salem witch trials caused by moldy bread? The intensity of these beliefs is best represented by the European witch hunts of the 14th to 18th century, but witchcraft and its associated ideas are never far from the surface of popular consciousness andsustained by folk talesfind explicit focus from time to time in popular television and films and in fiction. We have also a history of Witchhunting in Belgium. The difficulty is even greater with the relevant words in African, Asian, and other languages. The gradual demise during the late 17th and early 18th century of the previous religious, philosophical, and legal worldview encouraged the ascendancy of an existent but often suppressed skepticism; increasing literacy, mobility, and means of communication set the stage for social acceptance of this changing outlook. A panel nearby says that they are prehistoric burial mounds. Witch fever reached new heights when witchcraft was again classed as a felony in 1562 under a statute of Elizabeth I. We consider the circumstances in which alleged witches were accused, and the power of both neighbourhood accusation and elite sanction (James VI and Is book on the subject of witchcraft, Daemonologie, published in 1597, is a case in point). Under the lumps of rock is a beautiful if sunless land where the elves banquet and dance and entertain their favourite mortals. Further leaps of logic concluded that demons wanted to produce offspring. Resentment and fear of the power of the hag, a woman released from the constraints of virginity and then of maternal duties, has been frequently described in Mediterranean cultures. The burning of a witch in Vienna, Austria in 1538 by Ullstein Bild (from Little, 2018). In England the majority of those accused were women. What was the difference between the "afflicted" and the "accused"? Sometimes this magic was believed to work through simple causation as a form of technology. In France in 1022 a group of heretics in Orlans was accused of orgy, infanticide, invocations of demons, and use of the dead childrens ashes in a blasphemous parody of the Eucharist. Part of the Alfred Newton and Sons collection. Terracotta tiles on the roof of Saintoft Lodge, Newton-on-Rawcliffe, Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Moreover, just as the growth of literacy and of reading the Bible helped spread dissent, so did they provoke resistance and fear. The actual numbers are far lower, but still striking: between 1482 and 1782, around 100,000 people across Europe were accused of witchcraft, and some 4050,000 were executed. They provided a certificate, place dated at the Surgeons Hall in Mugwell Street and signed by themselves, some surgical colleagues, and a number of midwives, which outlined the results of their examination. How did culture shift towards this persecution? Sign up to our newsletter to discover Historic England's work and findout about news and projects near you. Visit this page for family history and other research enquiries, Young filmmakers at The National Archives, Getting to know our users: Reflecting on our first year of publishing judgments, part two, Find Case Law: Reflecting on our first year of publishing judgments, part one, Greasy poles, jam tarts and music hall songs: Celebrating the Coronation of Edward VII, Friends of The National Was it sinful to have a wet dream? The hunts were most severe from 1580 to 1630, and the last known execution for witchcraft was in Switzerland in 1782. Author of, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London. The inquisitorial eye began to fix itself on aspects of folklore that had been smiled away or incorporated into Christian worship in earlier periods. Crude practices such as pricking witches to see whether the Devil had desensitized them to pain; searching for the devils mark, an oddly-shaped mole or wart; or swimming (throwing the accused into a pond; if she sank, she was innocent because the water accepted her) occurred on the local level. By 143550, the number of prosecutions had begun to rise sharply, and toward the end of the 15th century, two events stimulated the hunts: Pope Innocent VIIIs publication in 1484 of the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus (Desiring with the Greatest Ardour) condemning witchcraft as Satanism, the worst of all possible heresies, and the publication in 1486 of Heinrich Krmer and Jacob Sprengers Malleus maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), a learned but cruelly misogynist book blaming witchcraft chiefly on women. The next stage is that all this evidence is put to a jury, who decide whether to take it to trial or not. Why not try 6 issues of BBC History Magazine or BBC History Revealed for 9.99 delivered straight to your door, 10 of Britains most infamous witch trials. Nobody was goddess-worshipping during the period of the witch-hunts, or if they were, they have left no trace in the historical records. Accusations similar to those expressed by the ancient Syrians and early Christians appeared again in the Middle Ages. So the places where pagans buried their dead are especially fraught. In our latest three-partpodcastseries we are exploring stories from our collection which tell the history oftrials;from witch trials and trial by combat to todays legal system. This article was first published on HistoryExtra in 2015, Suzannah Lipscomb is Emeritus Professor at the University of Roehampton, and the author of several books about the 16th century, Enjoying HistoryExtra.com? The vicar in the village tells you that the dead that remain in the earth are those condemned to hell. [Less important; was in the first line should be were] Please be aware that this blog includes some graphic content and may not be suitable for all readers. The most common suspicions concerned livestock, crops, storms, disease, property and inheritance, sexual dysfunction or rivalry, family feuds, marital discord, stepparents, sibling rivalries, and local politics. In England, most of the accusers and those making written complaints against witches were women. Since 1970 careful research has elucidated law codes and theological treatises from the era of the witch hunts and uncovered much information about how fear, accusations, and prosecutions actually occurred in villages, local law courts, and courts of appeal in Roman Catholic and Protestant cultures in western Europe. The overwhelming majority of processes, however, went no farther than the rumour stage, for actually accusing someone of witchcraft was a dangerous and expensive business. The responsibility for the witch hunts can be distributed among theologians, legal theorists, and the practices of secular and ecclesiastical courts. In other words, they had found nothing odd at all on the bodies of three of the women, and on the fourth there were a couple of growths but nothing that the examiners thought sinister. So they haunted monastic dormitories to steal human seed in order to impregnate women with demon children. Our ancestors could feel it too. By entering your details, you are agreeing to our terms and conditions and privacy policy. Belief in witchcraft was prevalent at all levels of society, even among the most highly-educated (indeed in 1597 James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, had published his own compendium of witchcraft lore). How did the medieval church view witchcraft? It is stark, disturbing evidence of what was done to ordinary people, by other ordinary people. Some people say that the dead riders are wreathed in flames, and their saddles are red-hot iron. Such figures were typically created without reference to witchcraft at all, but led to the creation of the figure of the heretic witch. It was while Elizabeth sat on the throne that it was made use of more than in any other period of history and The rack seldom stood idle in the latter part of Elizabeths reign. There was also the infamous Peine forte et dure which was still being used in Salem, Mass in 1692. The bronze figure forms part of 'St Michaels Victory over the Devil', which was unveiled at the cathedral by Epsteins widow, Kathleen, in 1960. If you suspect one of your neighbours is a witch, do not ever let her have the last word in a conversation. How Rye Bread May Have Caused the Salem Witch Trials. Delve into our history pages to discover more about our sites, how they have changed over time, and who made them what they are today. The Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation heightened the fear of witchcraft by promoting the idea of personal piety (the individual alone with his or her Bible and God), which enhanced individualism while downplaying community. WebThe Connecticut Witch Trials, also sometimes referred to as the Hartford witch trials, occurred from 1647 to 1663. Millions of innocent people were rounded up on suspicion of witchcraft. In fairytales, fantasy and satire, they appear time and again as a versatile synonym for evil and transgression. The dead hate the living and the witch hates as they do. To improve security and online experience, please use a different browser or. You, as the accused, will also take the stand and your confession will be read aloud. Hello thanks for your comment, thats really interesting. More accused witches were executed in the last decade of Elizabeth Is reign (15581603) than under her successor, James I (160325). The theory best supported by the evidence is that the increasing power of the centralized courts such as the Inquisition and the Parlement acted to begin a process of decriminalization of witchcraft. The heart of alleged witch Margaret Read jumped from her body and hit the wall opposite in Tuesday's Market Place, King's Lynn. It investigated whether the charges resulted from personal animosity toward the accused; it obtained physicians statements; it did not allow the naming of accomplices either with or without torture; it required the review of every sentence; and it provided for whipping, banishment, or even house arrest instead of death for first offenders. Whats in the earth below the humps of stone? Maleficium was a threat not only to individuals but also to public order, for a community wracked by suspicions about witches could split asunder. Witchcraft was a felony in both England and its American colonies, and therefore witches were hanged, not But why were so many innocent people suspected of such a crime? Most people think that witches are a Christian invention. These figures include estimates for cases where no records exist. A bizarre set of accusations, including the sacrifice of children, was made by the Syrians against the Jews in Hellenistic Syria in the 2nd century bce. Witch doctors, whose job it was to release people from evil spells, seldom existed in the West, largely because even helpful magic was attributed to demons. He wrote the treatise Daemonologie, published in 1597. The emphasis on personal piety exacerbated the rigid characterization of people as either good or bad. It also aggravated feelings of guilt and the psychological tendency to project negative intentions onto others. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Subscribe now for regular news, updates and priority booking for events.Sign up, All content is available under the Open Witches were really goddess-worshipping herbalist midwives. One thing is certain: the emphasis on the witch in art, literature, theatre, and film has little relation to external reality. Lancaster Castle's monumental gatehouse would have welcomed the 10 accused who would have trekked 50 miles or so from Pendle to be thrown into the castle's damp cells and left for months. He writes while the wives and husbands denounced for witchcraft during these two periods have much in common, they are distinguished by issue of child bearing.Such couples in the middle-seventeenth century were suspected by their neighbors due to the fact that they were producing fewer offspring than others in the community. In his book The Devils Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England, Richard Godbeer tells us that the Church taught that any person could wield supernatural power through sanctioned rituals: the performance of ecclesiastical ritual, if accompanied by sincere religious feeling, could heal sickness and protect against harm. However, due to the similarity of Christian and folk rituals, people would often confuse the two and use both. She writes They are almost always described as deviants disorderly women who failed to, or refused to, abide by the behavioral norms of their society. Whether or not the complaint is taken any further depends on how energetic the JP is and how much he believes in witchcraft. On 29 June 1634 the Privy Council wrote to Alexander Baker and William Clowes, both surgeons in royal service, ordering them to gather a group of midwives and inspect and search the bodies of those women that were lately brought up by the sheriff of the County of Lancaster indicted for witchcraft 1. Not in English-speaking countries. In Mexico the Franciscan friars linked indigenous religion and magic with the Devil; prosecutions for witchcraft in Mexico began in the 1530s, and by the 1600s indigenous peasants were reporting stereotypical pacts with the Devil. WebWitchcraft in Europe during the 17th century was common. Find out more about Heritage Apprenticeships. What did witchcraft mean to early Christians in Britain? Very broadly speaking, a witch is a person who employs magical entities, which may include powers she carries within her body, to harm other people. Because accusations and trials of witches took place in both ecclesiastical and secular courts, the law played at least as important a role as religion in the witch hunts. The Spanish Inquisition executed only two witches in total. Top image: An illustration from a 1619 pamphlet showing Anne Baker of Bottesford, Joan Willimot of Goodby and Ellen Greene of Stathern, who were all tried for witchcraft (Hulton Archive/Getty Images). In Scotland, where he had ruled as James VI since 1587, James had personally intervened in the 1590 trial of the North Berwick witches, who were accused of attempting to kill him. Hornbeam Arts via Flickr. This fabric of ideas was a fantasy. srietzke via Flickr. Again, witches are typically seen as particularly active after dusk, when law-abiding mortals are asleep. In 17th-century Europe witchcraft was very much a fact of life; no one would have questioned the existence of witches, or the belief that they could use sorcery to cause harm. They were believed to take the form of common animals and feed on the blood of the witch leaving tell-tale marks which were thus considered physical evidence of witchcraft. Local courts were more credulous and therefore more likely to be strict and even violent in their treatment of supposed witches than were regional or superior courts. Half of all European witch executions were in Germany. Torture was not allowed in witch cases in Italy or Spain, but where used it often led to convictions and the identification of supposed accomplices. The process, however, was similar at every level. The Protestant vein of Christianity saw the emergence of a more conservative line of thought which rejected the Catholic notion that humans could wield any type of supernatural power, and that all things were subject to the will of God and God only.
10 facts about witchcraft in the 17th century
