Witch Persecutions

Witch Persecution

 The beginning

Around the 15^th  and 16^th century, all that was good in the world was attributed to God. The bad things could not be easily explained. Everyone just assumed all the bad things, like for instance diseases, were caused by the devil. The devil would have made pacts with people on earth. In every village there were people with supernatural powers. For example, people with the knowledge to heal someone with the use of herbs. Ordinary people couldn’t understand these gifts and thought these people made a pact with the devil. Witches were one of these devilish people. Because of these thoughts, the persecuting of the ‘witches’ began.

Image of witches

In the eyes of people around the 16^th century, a witch was someone searching for supernatural powers and uses those powers for good and evil purposes. This is a very wide definition, which meant almost everyone fitted in this category and hereby could be accused of being a witch.

People like heretics, worshippers of different gods, abnormal intelligent people, herbalists, non-Christians, and midwives were seen as witches. Even doctors, because they could heal someone in ways others could not understand. The persecutions were often used as revenge. As soon as you accused someone of being a witch, you would most definitely see that person burn on the pyre a day after.
Witches were almost always women. According to the bible, women were evil. Because of this, it wasn’t hard to prove a women’s guilt, since the bible still had great influence in society.

Witches are known for a few things:

They can cause thunderstorms, they cause infertility in humans and animals, they move from place to place through the air physically or in their imagination, they can control the minds of the judges and governments, they predict the future by informing the devil, sometimes they kill people and animals only by the evil eye without touch and they sacrifice children to the devil.

Witch or not?

By means of witch tests, people tried to figure out if someone was a witch or not. There were several tests, like:

1. The water test. The suspect was tied up and lowered into the water. When you floated, you were a witch. If you sunk, you were not. People believed witches could fly, so they would hold themselves up. Lots of people held their breath and stayed afloat. If they didn’t, they would sink but never picked up in time so they would always drown. Either way, they would die.
2. The weigh. The suspect was weighed on a large scale. If you were below the average weight, you were a witch.
3. The devils mark. The judges searched for places on the body that are not sensitive to pain and don’t contain blood, like moles and scars. When you prick it, no blood will come out. This was a sign of the devil, and so the woman was guilty of serving the devil and being a witch.

Witchtrials

There are two types of trials:

The first one is the normal process and this one is called accusation process. This form of investigation meant that the prosecutor must be able to prove the guilt of the accused.

The second one is the inquisitor process witch the Roman emperors had begun. Characteristic of this is the lack of objective evidence. There were almost never defenders, because whoever went to defend the witch was accused of complicity.

The process itself had several aspects:

During the arrest, the suspect's clothing and home were searched as soon as possible to make sure they did not have mysterious powders, jars of unknown ointments, pieces of bodies or bones in their possession. The suspect, obviously, got rid of all suspicious things so they wouldn’t already be seen as witch.

After that, the suspect had to plead guilty. The interrogation could only take 24 hours, but judges usually ignored those rules. The questions first started with general questions about identity, name, age, and place of residence. If the court found the accusations insufficient, the ‘witch’s hammer’ was applied. This is the manual on conducting witch persecutions. The 13 questions asked, were used to trick her. The answers of the accused were precisely noted, and the reactions were also closely observed. According to the monologues, the stuttering, doubting, trembling, change of answers, bleaching and lowering of the eyes could be indications of guilt.

If the suspect still hadn’t spoken, she was bribed with the promise of a softer punishment. This promise was fake, the witch would end up on the pyre anyway. If the suspect still did not give in, she was tortured until she confessed.

After this, the verdict was pronounced.

There were rules for torture, but these rules were soon no longer used because they did not want to run the risk of letting a witch go free.

Victims

At the end of the witch persecution, many people had died. The data is not as accurate, but probably between 90,000 and 100,000 people have died from accusation of witchcraft in Europe. There were only a few prosecutions in the Netherlands.

This is a list of the number of deaths in different countries in Europe:

Germany: 50,000
Poland: 15,000
France: 10,000
Spain and Italy: 10,000


In Germany, by far, most witch persecutions have taken place. There are a few reasons for this: The common people had a say in the legal system. Because of this, witches could be accused and convicted more easily. Also, the fear of witches was greatest here. In Trier, Würzburg and Bamberg, the number of convictions was with the bishops. They were so obsessed with witch persecutions that they even tortured and executed judges when they criticized or questioned the witch persecutions of those bishops.

End of persecution

The Netherlands was the first country to stop the persecutions. Later, in the seventeenth century, people began to believe less and less in things like magic. Critical thinkers protested the witch persecutions. These critical thinkers were called the elite. Due to the elite, there is a sharp decrease in the number of processes after the year 1675.

The most people died during the persecution of Salem.