10 facts about witchcraft in the 17th century

witchcraft, traditionally, the exercise or invocation of alleged supernatural powers to control people or events, practices typically involving sorcery or magic. Midwives were rarely accused. But, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, men and women of both high and low status believed in witches ubiquity in a far more disturbing way. WebThe Connecticut Witch Trials, also sometimes referred to as the Hartford witch trials, occurred from 1647 to 1663. Sorry! You, as the accused, will also take the stand and your confession will be read aloud. 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. But for many educated people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, these characterisations of white and black witchcraft would unquestionably seem to have So the places where pagans buried their dead are especially fraught. Where did witches come from? Colchester Castle served as the place where he jailed and interrogated the women and men believed to be witches. Even in England, the idea of a male witch was perfectly feasible. The history of witchcraft is complex, and often raises more questions than it answers. Illicit magic features heavily in Roman law statutes, some of which are passed down to the Christian world. She certainly doesnt have to have a hat and a broomstick. [Less important; was in the first line should be were] You have seen some members of your village community coming here often, and you have wondered why: are they searching for herbs to augment their porridge, or are they here for other, more sinister reasons? The total number of people tried for witchcraft in England throughout the period of persecution was no more than 2,000. Black masses are almost entirely a fantasy of modern writers. Separation of self and body, or soul and body, may take months or years, and may never happen at all to those who are destined to damnation. Alice Nutter was the wealthy widow of a farmer. You are using an old version of Internet Explorer. Between 1560 and 1630, there was a surge Despite the beliefs of lawyers, historians and politicians (such as Karl Ernst Jarcke, Franz-Josef Mone, Jules Michelet, Margaret Murray and Heinrich Himmler among others), there was no real pagan witchcraft. And did they always arrive on broomsticks? Heritage Apprentices in a training session on the Researching The Historic Environment module and training in Architectural Photography. However, the elves are still dangerous, especially if crossed. Between 1560 and 1630, there was a surge in the number of accusations of witchcraft and witch trials called the Great Hunt . From the Salem Witch Trials to the witches of. Please be aware that this blog includes some graphic content and may not be suitable for all readers. WebDuring the start of the 17th century, witch hunts began to gain momentum across the UK. But one in five witches were male across Europe, and in some places, males predominated in Moscow, male witches outnumbered women 7:3; in Normandy 3:1. The witch hunts did not prosecute, let alone execute, millions; they were not a conspiracy by males, priests, judges, doctors, or inquisitors against members of an old religion or any other real group. 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. (London. For ease of reading I have modernised spellings when quoting from original documents. Witchcraft was always viewed with a bit of an apprehension mixed with 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. But why were these women being subjected to this examination in the first place? 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 Ecclesiastical and civil authorities usually tried to restrain witch trials and rarely manipulated witch hunts to obtain money or power. Were the Salem witch trials caused by moldy bread? The cave of Mother Shipton who was believed to have been a Yorkshire witch and oracle. Children were often accusers (as they were at Salem), but they were sometimes also among the accused. The process, however, was similar at every level. But the idea of the witch who flies in the night and draws power from dark cosmic forces to work her ill will on others pre-dates Christianity, probably by many centuries. Dont ever let her across your threshold. In any group of people with large numbers, there are always going to be outcast, whether its just a birthmark or a personality tweak. In 1374 Pope Gregory XI declared that all magic was done with the aid of demons and thus was open to prosecution for heresy. The idea that you can separate out part of yourself, a part that may look exactly like you, and send it to work your will on the bodies of others, is central to the idea of witchcraft. She remained silent throughout her trial except in her plea of not guilty of murder by 'witchcraft'. Indeed, a letter from the Bishop of Chester to the Privy Council recording his conversation with Margaret Johnson, one of the accused women, states that Johnson herself claimed to have familiars. 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. Witchcraft was first made a capital offence in 1542 under a statute of Henry VIII but was repealed five years later. The Birth and Evolution of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century New England with Mirrsha Ganthan, The Top Five Movies that Featured Voodoo or Hoodoo, Diabolical Duos: Witch Spouses in New England by Paul Moyer. Along with this older tradition, attitudes toward witches and the witch hunts of the 14th18th centuries stemmed from a long history of the churchs theological and legal attacks on heretics. Mother Shipton's Cave, Knaresborough. Witch fever reached new heights when witchcraft was again classed as a felony in 1562 under a statute of Elizabeth I. Professor Diane Purkiss tackles the common misconceptions about witchcraft and the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries. WebWitchcraft in Europe during the 17th century was common. A panel nearby says that they are prehistoric burial mounds. The vicar in the village tells you that the dead that remain in the earth are those condemned to hell. This The latter was the greatest evil of the system, for a victim might be forced to name acquaintances, who were in turn coerced into naming others, creating a long chain of accusations. The dead yearn for the lives they enjoyed, which means they may want to take back from the living. Those people say that if you do get any power from the riders, its the power of hell and devils. Somebody would complain to the local justice of the peace (JP) that you had bewitched an animal, or a foodstuff, or a child. Later in the century, when populations were larger and there was no need to have as many children, the couples that were targeted were suspected of witchcraft on the basis of raising their children in ways that were perceived by others in the community as ungodly and would lead them towards the Devil. Often the magic was instead an effort to construct symbolic reality. She was always portrayed as an old hag, because she represented cold and winter. Half of all European witch executions were in Germany. Many others knew that old women could be persecuted by their neighbours for no reason other than that they werent very attractive. Although many witchcraft theorists were not deeply misogynist, many others were, notably the authors of the infamous Malleus maleficarum. Although witchcraft trials happened in every county in the country, the best evidence survives from three major witch crazes in the British Isles in 1590s Edinburgh; 1612 Lancashire; and 1640s Essex and East Anglia, and we focus on those. Out of these murky beginnings, we discover how the witch became the subject of the chilling persecutions of the 16th and 17th centuries. WebOne was the presence of witch marks, a mark supposed to have been put on a womans body by the Devil. 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. A group of volunteers from The Friends of Balaam's Wood Local Nature Reserve clearing brambles at Gannow Green Moated Site, New Frankley in Birmingham, Two horsemen reading The Sportsman, 30 Oct 1902, Farnborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. 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. During this time 80,000 people were accused of witchcraft and, of them, 40,000 were killed as punishment. Some commentators and scholars, even in the 20th century, have claimed millions were executed, but the current best guess is that, between the famous papal bull of 1484, which implored authorities across Europe to eliminate witchcraft, and 1782, some 50,000-60,000 people were accused of The hunts were most severe from 1580 to 1630, and the last known execution for witchcraft was in Switzerland in 1782. At the trial, those who submitted written complaints will take the stand and give their evidence aloud and under oath. Imagine youre standing on a hillside. It was this combination of sorcery and its association with the Devil that made Western witchcraft unique. The process began with suspicions and, occasionally, continued through rumours and accusations to convictions. We examine the way that torture though illegal in England was employed in late 16th-century Scotland and during the upheaval of the Civil War. Nevertheless, because women were believed to be morally and spiritually weaker than men, they were thought to be particularly vulnerable to diabolic persuasion. several witches were burnt, in total 97 between 1468 and 1651. Part of the Alfred Newton and Sons collection. They were experts in the arts of healing and divining and were often the first people their neighbors would turn to in times of hardship. The Privy Council undertook its own investigation, asking the Bishop of Chester to interview some of the accused women and going so far as bringing them, as well as young Edmund Robinson himself, to London for further examination. Puritans in solemn worship, lithograph from The Church of England: A History for the People, 1910. Sermons and didactic treatises, including devil books warning of Satans power, spread both the terror of Satan and the corresponding frantic need to purge society of him. Witches were considered Satans followers, members of an antichurch and an antistate, the sworn enemies of Christian society in the Middle Ages, and a counter-state in the early modern period. Before the 14th century, witchcraft was much alike in villages from Ireland to Russia and from Sweden to Sicily; however, the similarities derived neither from cultural diffusion nor from any secret cult but from the age-old human desire to achieve ones purposes whether by open or occult means. 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. Once accused, a witch had no chance of proving her innocence. In 17th Century Germany on the brink of the Thirty Years War, 24-year-old Katarina is traded to the patrician Sebald Tucher by her fianc Willi Prutt in order to pay his debts. The legal use of torture declined in the 17th and 18th centuries, and there was a general retreat from religious intensity following the wars of religion (from the 1560s to 1640s). Nor were all witches women men could be witches too. In Western society until the 14th century, witchcraft had more in common with sorcery in other culturessuch as those of India or Africathan it did with the witchcraft of the witch hunts. Author of. In practice this was usually done in cases of treason, the most famous example being the Gunpowder Plot. Parrys book is The History of Torture in England Most accused children had parents who had been accused of witchcraft. Professor Diane Purkiss debunks eight of the most common myths about witchcraft. It was also believed that they rode through the air at night to sabbats (secret meetings), where they engaged in sexual orgies and even had sex with Satan; that they changed shapes (from human to animal or from one human form to another); that they often had familiar spirits in the form of animals; and that they kidnapped and murdered children for the purpose of eating them or rendering their fat for magical ointments. Find out more about Heritage Apprenticeships. To quote L A Parry (1933): Under Henry VIII it [torture] was frequently employed; it was only used in a small number of cases in the reigns of Edward VI and Mary. There is no mention of Margaret Johnson; its possible that she had been released, but its also possible that she had died in jail. References in contemporary literature regularly make reference to women giving evidence in court that they have found suspicious marks upon the bodies of accused witches. SP 16/251 For example, it was believed that a fields fertility could be increased by ritually slaughtering an animal. In my own region of Bruges and West Flanders What were the surgeons and midwives looking for? Large monasteries over the 12th to 14th centuries became preoccupied with the moral problem of wet dreams. This pattern took shape in 10501300, which was also an era of enormous reform, reorganization, and centralization in both the ecclesiastical and secular aspects of society, an important aspect of which was suppressing dissent. However, witches bodies were burned in Scotland, though they were strangled to death first. You can unsubscribe at any time. Such figures were typically created without reference to witchcraft at all, but led to the creation of the figure of the heretic witch. The Pendle witches were kept in Lancaster Castle's damp cells in 1612. The visible role played by women in some heresies during this period may have contributed to the stereotype of the witch as female. From the Salem Witch Trials to the witches ofMacbeth, the figure of the witch is embedded in our culture. Explanations of the witch hunts continue to vary, but recent research has shown some of these theories to be improbable or of negligible value. Moreover, the evidence does not indicate a close correlation between socioeconomic tension and witchcraft, though agrarian crises seem to have had some effect. Terracotta tiles on the roof of Saintoft Lodge, Newton-on-Rawcliffe, Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Anything she says must be thrown back at her, before it infects you. The assizes were by no means swamped with witchcraft cases, but there was a steady stream of trials of accused witches which passed off with no intervention from central government. It may not display all the features of this and other websites. It is stark, disturbing evidence of what was done to ordinary people, by other ordinary people. But who could such women be? Little Ice Age, Big Consequences., https://www.history.com/news/little-ice-age-big-consequences, www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/early-modern-witch-trials/, Lambert, T. A History of the Witch Trials in Europe., Lanchester, J. In fairytales, fantasy and satire, they appear time and again as a versatile synonym for evil and transgression. The witch fed the familiar and in return, it might grudgingly act out her commands. Historic England Ref EAW008091. Diane Purkiss is Professor of English Literature at Keble College, University of Oxford. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Youll also hear how archives themselvesare evidence of the past. This surge in witch trials coincided with some of the most bitter phases of the, Cohen, J. The fylgia is associated with a persons luck or fortune. En route to her forced relocation to the Tucher country estate, Katarina is met by a crazed archer, Hans-Wolfgang, carrying a baby under his cloak. 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. 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. Like the Inquisition, the Parlement of Paris (the supreme court of northern France) severely restrained the witch hunts. By the 1590s, the last decade of Elizabeth Is reign, the idea of the witch in England had crystallised as an old, very poor woman, lame or blind in one eye, and inclined to lose her temper over personal slights. As more young women began to exhibit symptoms, mass hysteria ensued, and three women were accused of witchcraft: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborn and Tituba, an King James I was terrified of witches and was responsible for their hunting and execution. In Greco-Roman civilization, Dionysiac worship included meeting underground at night, sacrificing animals, practicing orgies, feasting, and drinking. Witchcraft is a subject in which there is enormous interest, but these documents remind us that stories of historical witch scares are not fantasies invented to thrill us, but the histories of real people, accused of terrible crimes and subject to terrible suffering as a result. Diane Purkiss is Professor of English Literature at Keble College, University of Oxford, Top image: Detail from Witches, a 1508 painting depicting the Witches Sabbath (Science History Images/Alamy Stock Photo). : 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 (, https://www.youtube.com/user/EnglishHeritageFilm. The Spanish Inquisition and the Catholic Church instigated the witch trials. People genuinely feared witchcraft at the start of the seventeenth century, influenced by the religious beliefs of the Puritans, but opinions changed. 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. The first Witchcraft Act was passed under Henry VIII, in 1542, and made all pact witchcraft (in which a deal is made with the Devil) or summoning of spirits a capital crime. In John Langbeins Torture and the Law of Proof, University of Chicago Press, 1977, it says that more than 25% of torture warrants were issued for ordinary crimes likemurder, burglary, robbery, and horse stealing. No wonder the term witch hunt has entered common political parlance to describe such campaigns as that of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy in his attempt to root out communists in the United States in the 1950s. 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. 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. Hornbeam Arts via Flickr. Literature about Magic was used to heal the sick, protect people and their families from harm intended towards them by others with whom they had disagreements; protect their livestock and economic stability from natural and deliberate causes; and to ease daily difficulties such as aiding in finding lost belongings. SP 16/270 f.134. Witch Hunting and Witch Trials. Statue to Alice Nutter, one of the Pendle witches who was executed in 1612. The 11th century saw the arrival of Scholasticism. Yet one general explanation is valid: the unique character of the witch hunts was consistent with the prevailing worldview of intelligent, educated, experienced people for more than three centuries. How Medieval Churches Used Witch Hunts to Gain More Followers.. Charges of maleficium were prompted by a wide array of suspicions. It may have been the scale of the witch scare in Lancashire that concerned the authorities. Very few accusations went beyond the village level. Now Im going to put you in a time machine and take you back 400 years. 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. Thats correct; it could be authorised by the monarch or the Privy Council. For many years during the 16th century, the market place in King's Lynn was the scene of public executions of alleged witches. Mother Shipton's Cave in Knaresborough and a nearby 'petrifying well' are among the country's oldest visitor attractions. Read about the remarkable lives of some of the women who have left their mark on society and shaped our way of life from Anglo-Saxon times to the 20th century. Men and women imprisoned as witches are believed to have died in the cells of Colchester Castle. John M. Taylor lists a total of 37 cases, 11 of which resulted in executions. Sorcery was sometimes believed to rely on the power of gods or other spirits, leading to the belief that witches used demons in their work. These were demons who helped the witch with her sorcery. Moreover, just as the growth of literacy and of reading the Bible helped spread dissent, so did they provoke resistance and fear. 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. Web1. This information will help us make improvements to the website. The people, who saw no difference in the origin of the power they drew upon and focused more on theresults, paid no mind and continued using thepractices with which they were accustomed. Witches sought to gain or preserve health, to acquire or retain property, to protect against natural disasters or evil spirits, to help friends, and to seek revenge. Accusations originated with the ill-will of the accuser, or, more often, the accusers fear of someone having ill-will toward him. 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). Historic England holds an extensive range of publications and historic collections in its public archive covering the historic environment. Although some people undoubtedly practiced sorcery with the intent to harm, and some may actually have worshiped the Devil, in reality no one ever fit the concept of the witch. Nonetheless, the witchs crimes were defined in law. However, many of those early laws were really laws against sorcery, which unlike witchcraft can be beneficial, and which requires special skills, tools and words. Familiars are a really persistent image even today, especially black cats. Most judges and many jurymen were highly sceptical about the existence of magical powers, seeing the whole thing as a huge con trick by fraudsters. Witchcraft was a felony in both England and its American colonies, and therefore witches were hanged, not We have the Langbein volume in our reference library at Kew so I will have a look at it. Pendle Hill in Lancashire is well known for its associations with witches. meatcher-imaging via Flickr. Lord chief justice Anderson noted in 1602: The land is full of witches they abound in all places not as a symbol or figure of fun, but as a deadly threat to life, livelihood and divine order. Is there any record of what happened in later life to the poor women who were examined ? WebThe hunts were most severe from 1580 to 1630, and the last known execution for witchcraft was in Switzerland in 1782. The 1604 Witchcraft Act under James could be described as a reversion to that status quo rather than an innovation. In Homers Odyssey (c.800 BC), Circe who turns men into animals is described as a witch, and Plutarch refers to witchcraft in his treatise On Superstition (c.AD 100).

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