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{{Short description|Search for witchcraft or subversive activity}}{{redirect-multi|2|Witch hunt|Witch trial|other uses}}{{More citations needed|date=March 2024}}{{pp-move}}{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2018}}File:Wickiana5.jpg|thumb|Burning of three “witches” in Baden, Switzerland (1585), by Johann Jakob WickJohann Jakob WickA witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. Practicing evil spells or incantations was proscribed and punishable in early human civilizations in the Middle East. In medieval Europe, witch-hunts often arose in connection to charges of heresy from Christianity. An intensive period of witch-hunts occurring in Early Modern Europe and to a smaller extent Colonial America, took place about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Counter Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 executions.BOOK, Golden, Richard M., Changing Identities in Early Modern France, Duke University Press, 1997, Wolfe, Michael, 234, Satan in Europe: The Geography of Witch Hunts, The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In other regions, like Africa and Asia, contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, and official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon today.In current language, “witch-hunt” metaphorically means an investigation that is usually conducted with much publicity, supposedly to uncover subversive activity, disloyalty, and so on, but with the real purpose of harming opponents.ENCYCLOPEDIA, New Dictionary of the American Language, Simon & Schuster, witch hunt, 1633, It can also involve elements of moral panic,BOOK, Erich, Goode, Nachman, Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance,books.google.com/books?id=SbY2Mksi1kcC&pg=PA195, 2010, Wiley, 195, 9781444307931, as well as mass hysteria.BOOK, Lois, Martin, A Brief History of Witchcraft,books.google.com/books?id=mfPUIwtKG4cC&pg=PA5,books.google.com/books?id=mfPUIwtKG4cC&pg=PA5," title="web.archive.org/web/20130621224733books.google.com/books?id=mfPUIwtKG4cC&pg=PA5,">web.archive.org/web/20130621224733books.google.com/books?id=mfPUIwtKG4cC&pg=PA5, dead, 21 June 2013, 2010, Running Press, 5, 9780762439898,

Anthropological causes

{{further|Anthropology of religion|Human sacrifice|Witch trials in the early modern period#Causes and interpretations}}The wide distribution of the practice of witch-hunts in geographically and culturally separated societies (Europe, Africa, New Guinea) since the 1960s has triggered interest in the anthropological background of this behaviour. The belief in magic and divination, and attempts to use magic to influence personal well-being (to increase life, win love, etc.) are universal across human cultures.Belief in witchcraft has been shown to have similarities in societies throughout the world. It presents a framework to explain the occurrence of otherwise random misfortunes such as sickness or death, and the witch sorcerer provides an image of evil.BOOK, Jean Sybil, La Fontaine, Speak of the Devil: Tales of satanic abuse in contemporary England, Cambridge University Press, 1998, 978-0-521-62934-8, 34–37, Reports on indigenous practices in the Americas, Asia and Africa collected during the early modern Age of Exploration have been taken to suggest that not just the belief in witchcraft but also the periodic outbreak of witch-hunts are a human cultural universal.BOOK, Witches and Witch-Hunts: A global history, Wolfgang, Behringer, 2004, 50, Wiley, 9780745627175, One study finds that witchcraft beliefs are associated with antisocial attitudes: lower levels of trust, charitable giving and group participation.JOURNAL, Witchcraft Beliefs and the Erosion of Social Capital: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa and Beyond, Journal of Development Economics, 120, 182–208, 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2015.11.005, Boris, Gershman, 2016,dra.american.edu/islandora/object/auislandora%3A70615/datastream/PDF/view, 18 July 2021, 18 July 2021,web.archive.org/web/20210718231909/https://dra.american.edu/islandora/object/auislandora:70615/datastream/PDF/view, dead, Another study finds that income shocks (caused by extreme rainfall) lead to a large increase in the murder of “witches” in Tanzania.JOURNAL, Poverty and witch killing, The Review of Economic Studies, 1 October 2005, 0034-6527, 1153–1172, 72, 4, 10.1111/0034-6527.00365, Edward, Miguel, 10.1.1.370.6294,

History

{{further|Magic in the ancient world}}

Ancient Near East

Punishment for malevolent magic is addressed in the earliest law codes which were preserved, in both ancient Egypt and Babylonia, where it played a conspicuous part. The Code of Hammurabi (18th century BC short chronology) prescribes that{{blockquote|If a man has put a spell upon another man and it is not yet 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 overcomes 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.ENCYCLOPEDIA,www.newadvent.org/cathen/15674a.htm, Catholic Encyclopedia, Witchcraft, WEB,www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/hamframe.htm, The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, dead,www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/hamframe.htm," title="web.archive.org/web/20070916163034www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/hamframe.htm,">web.archive.org/web/20070916163034www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/hamframe.htm, 16 September 2007, }}The Hebrew Bible condemns sorcery. Deuteronomy 18:10–12 states: “No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one that casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord”; and Exodus 22:18 prescribes: “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”.“witch” here translates the Hebrew , and is rendered in the Septuagint. Tales like that of 1 Samuel 28, reporting how Saul “hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land”,“those that have familiar spirits”: Hebrew , or “ventriloquist, soothsayer” in the Septuagint; “wizards”: Hebrew or “diviner” in the Septuagint. suggest that in practice sorcery could at least lead to exile.In the Judaean Second Temple period, Rabbi Simeon ben Shetach in the 1st century BC is reported to have sentenced to death eighty women who had been charged with witchcraft on a single day in Ascalon. Later the women’s relatives took revenge by bringing false witnesses against Simeon’s son and causing him to be executed in turn.Yerushalmi Sanhedrin, 6:6.

Ancient Greco-Roman world

No laws concerning magic survive from Classical Athens.BOOK, Collins, Derek, Magic in the Ancient Greek World, Malden, Blackwell, 2008, {{rp|133}} However, cases concerning the harmful effects of pharmaka – an ambiguous term that might mean “poison”, “medicine”, or “magical drug” – do survive, especially those where the drug caused injury or death.{{rp|133–134}} Antiphon’s speech “Against the Stepmother for Poisoning” tells of the case of a woman accused of plotting to murder her husband with a pharmakon; a slave had previously been executed for the crime, but the son of the victim claimed that the death had been arranged by his stepmother.{{rp|135}} The most detailed account of a trial for witchcraft in Classical Greece is the story of Theoris of Lemnos, who was executed along with her children some time before 338 BC, supposedly for casting incantations and using harmful drugs.JOURNAL, Collins, Derek, Theoris of Lemnos and the Criminalization of Magic in Fourth-Century Athens, The Classical Quarterly, 5, 1, 2001, 477, 10.1093/cq/51.2.477, File:Caius Furius Cressinus Accused of Sorcery LACMA M.82.119.jpg|thumb|Caius Furius Cressinus Accused of Sorcery, Jean-Pierre Saint-OursJean-Pierre Saint-OursDuring the pagan era of ancient Rome, there were laws against harmful magic.BOOK, Dickie, Matthew, Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World, 2003, Routledge, 138–142, According to Pliny, the 5th century BC laws of the Twelve Tables laid down penalties for uttering harmful incantations and for stealing the fruitfulness of someone else’s crops by magic. The only recorded trial involving this law was that of Gaius Furius Cresimus.The Classical Latin word meant both poisoning and causing harm by magic (such as magic potions), although ancient people would not have distinguished between the two.BOOK, Hutton, Ronald, The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present, 2017, Yale University Press, 59–66, Ronald Hutton, In 331 BC, a deadly epidemic hit Rome and at least 170 women were executed for causing it by veneficium.BOOK, Livy, History of Rome, Book VIII, Chapter xviii,www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0155%3Abook%3D8%3Achapter%3D18, 15 January 2021, In 184–180 BC, another epidemic hit Italy, and about 5,000 people were brought to trial and executed for veneficium. If the reports are accurate, writes Hutton, “then the Republican Romans hunted witches on a scale unknown anywhere else in the ancient world”.Under the Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis of 81 BC, killing by veneficium carried the death penalty. This law banned the trading and possession of harmful drugs and poisons, possession of magical books and other occult paraphernalia. Emperor Augustus strengthened laws to curb these practices, for instance in 31 BC, by burning over 2,000 magical books in Rome, except for certain portions of the hallowed Sibylline Books.BOOK, Suetonius, The Life of Augustus, BOOK, Garnsey, Peter, Saller, Richard P., The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture,archive.org/details/romanempireecono00garn, registration, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987, 168–174, 978-0-520-06067-8, While Tiberius Claudius was emperor, 85 women and 45 men accused of sorcery were executed.BOOK, Ogden, Daniel, Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002, 283, 978-0-19-513575-6, By the 3rd century AD, the Lex Cornelia had begun to be used more broadly against other kinds of magic deemed harmful. The magicians were to be burnt at the stake.Persecution of witches continued in the Roman Empire until the late 4th century AD and abated only after the introduction of Christianity as the Roman state religion in the 390s.BOOK, Behringer, Wolfgang, Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2004, 48–50, 978-0745627175,

Middle Ages

{{further|European witchcraft#History}}

Christianisation in the Early Middle Ages

The German author Wilhelm Gottlieb Soldan argued in History of the Witchcraft Trials that the philosopher and mathematician Hypatia, murdered by a mob in 415 CE for threatening the influence of Cyril of Alexandria, may have been, in effect, the first famous “witch” to be punished by Christian authorities.{{citation|last=Soldan|first=Wilhelm Gottlieb|title=Geschichte der Hexenprozesse: aus dem Qvellen Dargestellt|url=https://archive.org/details/geschichtederhe00soldgoog|year=1843|publisher=Cotta|page=82}}. Cyril’s alleged role in her murder, however, was already controversial among contemporary sources,{{citation|last=Watts|first=Edward J.|author-link=Edward J. Watts|date=2008|orig-year=2006|title=City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MKolDQAAQBAJ|location=Berkeley and Los Angeles|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0520258167|page=200}} and the surviving primary account by Socrates Scholasticus makes no mention of religious motivations.{{citation|last1=Cameron|first1=Alan|last2=Long|first2=Jacqueline|last3=Sherry|first3=Lee|author1-link=Alan Cameron (classical scholar)|date=1993|title=Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T6t44B0-a98C&pg=PA59|location=Berkeley and Los Angeles|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-06550-5|page=59}}The 6th century AD Getica of Jordanes records a persecution and expulsion of witches among the Goths in a mythical account of the origin of the Huns. The ancient fabled King Filimer is said to have{{blockquote|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.BOOK, Jordanes, Jordanes, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths, Charles C. Mierow, § 24, }}The Councils of Elvira (306 AD), Ancyra (314 AD), and Trullo (692 AD) imposed certain ecclesiastical penances for devil-worship. This mild approach represented the view of the Church for many centuries. The general desire of the Catholic Church’s clergy to check fanaticism about witchcraft and necromancy is shown in the decrees of the Council of Paderborn, which, in 785 AD, explicitly outlawed condemning people as witches and condemned to death anyone who burnt a witch. The Lombard code of 643 AD states:{{blockquote|Let nobody presume to kill a foreign serving maid or female servant as a witch, for it is not possible, nor ought to be believed by Christian minds.BOOK, Hutton, Ronald, Ronald Hutton, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles, 257, The Clash of Faiths (AD c. 300–{{circa, 1000, ) |publisher=Blackwell |location=Oxford, UK |isbn=0-631-18946-7 |date=1993 |edition=pbk. |orig-year=1991}}}}This conforms to the teachings of the Canon Episcopi of circa 900 AD (alleged to date from 314 AD), which, stated that witchcraft did not exist and that to teach that it was a reality was, itself, false and heterodox teaching. Other examples include an Irish synod in 800 AD,BOOK, Likewise, an Irish synod at around 800 AD condemned the belief in witches, and in particular those who slandered people for being lamias (que interpretatur striga)., Behringer, Witches and Witch-hunts: a Global History, 2004, Wiley-Blackwell, 30–31, and a sermon by Agobard of Lyons (810 AD).{{efn|A crown witness of ‘Carolingian skepticism’, Archbishop Agobard of Lyon (769–840 AD), reports witch panics during the reign of Charlemagne. In his sermon on hailstorms he reports frequent lynchings of supposed weather magicians (tempestarii), as well as of sorcerers, who were made responsible for a terrible livestock mortality in 810 AD. According to Agobard, the common people in their fury over crop failure had developed the extravagant idea that foreigners were secretly coming with airships to strip their fields of crops, and transmit it to Magonia. These anxieties resulted in severe aggression, and on one occasion around 816 AD, Agobard could hardly prevent a crowd from killing three foreign men and women, perceived as Magonian people. As their supposed homeland’s name suggests, the crop failure was associated with magic. The bishop emphasized that thunderstorms were caused exclusively by natural or divine agencies.BOOK, Behringer, 2004, Witches and Witch-hunts: a Global History, Wiley-Blackwell, 54–55, }}(File:Torturing and execution of witches in medieval miniature.jpg|thumb|Burning witches, with others held in stocks, 14th century)King Kálmán (Coloman) of Hungary, in Decree 57 of his First Legislative Book (published in 1100), banned witch-hunting because he said, “witches do not exist”.WEB,bibleapologetics.wordpress.com/tag/witch-hunts-2/#_ftnref17, witch hunts, Bible Apologetics, “A decree of King Coloman of Hungary (c. 1074–1116, r. 1095–1116) against the belief in the existence of strigae (De strigis vero que non sunt, ne ulla questio fiat) suggests that they were thought to be human beings with demonic affiliation: witches.”, Behringer, “Witches and Witch-hunts: a Global History”, p. 32 (2004). Wiley-Blackwell. The “Decretum” of Burchard, Bishop of Worms (about 1020), and especially its 19th book, often known separately as the “Corrector”, is another work of great importance. Burchard was writing against the superstitious belief in magical potions, for instance, that may produce impotence or abortion. These were also condemned by several Church Fathers.WEB,www.ncregister.com/daily-news/abortion-contraception-and-the-church-fathers, Abortion, Contraception and the Church Fathers, National Catholic Register, 16 February 2012, But he altogether rejected the possibility of many of the alleged powers with which witches were popularly credited. Such, for example, were nocturnal riding through the air, the changing of a person’s disposition from love to hate, the control of thunder, rain, and sunshine, the transformation of a man into an animal, the intercourse of incubi and succubi with human beings, and other such superstitions. Not only the attempt to practice such things, but the very belief in their possibility, is treated by Burchard as false and superstitious.Pope Gregory VII, in 1080, wrote to King Harald III of Denmark forbidding witches to be put to death upon being suspected of having caused storms or failure of crops or pestilence. There were many such efforts to prevent unjust treatment of innocent people.{{efn|See, for example, the Weihenstephan case discussed by Weiland in the Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, IX, 592.“In 1080 Harold of Denmark (r. 1076–80) was admonished not to hold old women and Christian priests responsible for storms and diseases, or to slaughter them in the cruelest manner. Like Agobard before him, Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85) declared in his letter to the Danish king that these catastrophes were caused by God alone, that they were God’s punishment for human sins, and that the killing of the innocent would only increase His fury.“Behringer, “Witches and Witch-hunts: a Global History”, p. 55 (2004). Wiley-Blackwell.}} On many occasions, ecclesiastics who spoke with authority did their best to disabuse the people of their superstitious belief in witchcraft.This, for instance, is the general purport of the book BOOK, Contra insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis, Against the foolish belief of the common sort concerning hail and thunder, Agobard, Agobard, c. 800s, Archbishop of Lyons, Lyons, FR, Migne, Patrologia Latina, CIV, 147 A comparable situation in Russia is suggested in a sermon by Serapion of Vladimir (written in 1274~1275), where the popular superstition of witches causing crop failures is denounced.{{efn|“Witches were executed at Novgorod in 1227, and after a severe famine in the years 1271–1274 Bishop Serapion of Vladimir asked in a sermon: ‘you believe in witchcraft and burn innocent people and bring down murder upon earth and the city ... Out of what books or writings do you learn that famine in earth is brought about by witchcraft?’” BOOK, Behringer, Witches and Witch-hunts: a Global History, 2004, Wiley-Blackwell, 56, }}Early secular laws against witchcraft include those promulgated by King Athelstan (924–939):{{blockquote|And we have ordained respecting witch-crafts, and lybacs [read lyblac “sorcery”], and morthdaeds [“murder, mortal sin”]: 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.WEB,www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/560-975dooms.html, Internet History Sourcebooks Project, www.fordham.edu, }}In some prosecutions for witchcraft, torture (permitted by the Roman civil law) apparently took place. However, Pope Nicholas I (866 AD), prohibited the use of torture altogether, and a similar decree may be found in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals.Condemnations of witchcraft are nevertheless found in the writings of Augustine of Hippo and early theologians, who made little distinction between witchcraft and the practices of pagan religions. Many believed witchcraft did not exist in a philosophical sense: Witchcraft was based on illusions and powers of evil, which Augustine likened to darkness, a non-entity representing the absence of light. Augustine and his adherents like Saint Thomas Aquinas nevertheless promulgated elaborate demonologies, including the belief that humans could enter pacts with demons, which became the basis of future witch hunts.BOOK, The Oxford illustrated history of witchcraft and magic, Davies, Owen, 9780199608447, 1st, Oxford, 972537073, 2017, Ironically, many clerics of the Middle Ages openly or covertly practiced goetia, believing that as Christ granted his disciples power to command demons, to summon and control demons was not, therefore, a sin.BOOK, Magic in the Middle Ages, Kieckhefer, Richard, 2014, 9781139923484, 2nd, Cambridge, 889521066, Whatever the position of individual clerics, witch-hunting seems to have persisted as a cultural phenomenon. Throughout the early medieval period, notable rulers prohibited both witchcraft and pagan religions, often on pain of death. Under Charlemagne, for example, Christians who practiced witchcraft were enslaved by the Church, while those who worshiped the Devil (Germanic gods) were killed outright. Witch-hunting also appears in period literature. According to Snorri Sturluson, King Olaf Trygvasson furthered the Christian conversion of Norway by luring pagan magicians to his hall under false pretenses, barring the doors and burning them alive. Some who escaped were later captured and drowned.WEB,www.sacred-texts.com/neu/heim/07olaftr.htm, Heimskringla: King Olaf Trygvason’s Saga, Sacred Texts,

Later Middle Ages

File:Willisau 1447.JPG|thumb|200px|The burning of a woman in Willisau, SwitzerlandSwitzerlandThe manuals of the Roman Catholic Inquisition remained highly skeptical of witch accusations,{{citation needed|date=October 2019}} although there was sometimes an overlap between accusations of heresy and of witchcraft, particularly when, in the 13th century, the newly formed Inquisition was commissioned to deal with the Cathars of Southern France, whose teachings were charged with including witchcraft and magic. Although it has been proposed that the witch-hunt developed in Europe from the early 14th century, after the Cathars and the Knights Templar were suppressed, this hypothesis has been rejected independently by virtually all academic historians (Cohn 1975; Kieckhefer 1976).In 1258, Pope Alexander IV declared that Inquisition would not deal with cases of witchcraft unless they were related to heresy.{{efn|“There would be no witch persecutions of the sort he envisaged. The Gregorian Inquisition had been established to deal with the religious matter of heresy, not the secular issue of witchcraft. Pope Alexander IV spelled this out clearly in a 1258 canon which forbade inquisitions into sorcery unless there was also manifest heresy. And this view was even confirmed and acknowledged by the infamous inquisitor Bernard Gui (immortalised by Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose), who wrote in his influential inquisitors’ manual that, by itself, sorcery did not come within the Inquisition’s jurisdiction. In sum, the Church did not want the Inquisition sucked into witch trials, which were for the secular courts.“NEWS,blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/dominicselwood/100269271/how-protestantism-fuelled-europes-deadly-witch-craze/,blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/dominicselwood/100269271/how-protestantism-fuelled-europes-deadly-witch-craze/," title="web.archive.org/web/20140528233841blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/dominicselwood/100269271/how-protestantism-fuelled-europes-deadly-witch-craze/,">web.archive.org/web/20140528233841blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/dominicselwood/100269271/how-protestantism-fuelled-europes-deadly-witch-craze/, dead, 2014-05-28, How Protestantism fuelled Europe’s deadly witch craze, Dominic, Selwood, Dominic Selwood, The Telegraph (website), The Telegraph, 2016-03-16, dmy-all, }}BOOK,books.google.com/books?id=fUqcAQAAQBAJ, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Cross, Livingstone, 2005, Oxford University Press, 9780192802903, 1769, Although Pope John XXII had later authorized the Inquisition to prosecute sorcerers in 1320,Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity (173). inquisitorial courts rarely dealt with witchcraft save incidentally when investigating heterodoxy.In the case of the Madonna Oriente, the Inquisition of Milan was not sure what to do with two women who, in 1384, confessed to have participated in the society around Signora Oriente or Diana. Through their confessions, both of them conveyed the traditional folk beliefs of white magic. The women were accused again in 1390, and condemned by the inquisitor. They were eventually executed by the secular arm.BOOK, Cohn, Norman, 2000, 1993, Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom, Revised, University of Chicago Press, 173–174, Europe’s Inner Demons, In a notorious case in 1425, Hermann II, Count of Celje accused his daughter-in-law Veronika of Desenice of witchcraft – and, though she was acquitted by the court, he had her drowned. The accusations of witchcraft are, in this case, considered to have been a pretext for Hermann to get rid of an “unsuitable match,” Veronika being born into the lower nobility and thus “unworthy” of his son.A Catholic figure who preached against witchcraft was popular Franciscan preacher Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444). Bernardino’s sermons reveal both a phenomenon of superstitious practices and an over-reaction against them by the common people.See Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, Chapter 2. However, it is clear that Bernardino had in mind not merely the use of spells and enchantments and such like fooleries but much more serious crimes, chiefly murder and infanticide. This is clear from his much-quoted sermon of 1427, in which he says:One of them told and confessed, without any pressure, that she had killed thirty children by bleeding them ... [and] she confessed more, saying she had killed her own son ... Answer me: does it really seem to you that someone who has killed twenty or thirty little children in such a way has done so well that when finally they are accused before the Signoria you should go to their aid and beg mercy for them?Perhaps the most notorious witch trial in history was the trial of Joan of Arc. Although the trial was politically motivated, and the verdict later overturned, the position of Joan as a woman and an accused witch became significant factors in her execution.BOOK, Joan of Arc : a life transfigured, Harrison, Kathryn, 2014, 9780385531207, 1st, New York, 876833154, Joan’s punishment of being burned alive (victims were usually strangled before burning) was reserved solely for witches and heretics, the implication being that a burned body could not be resurrected on Judgment Day.

Transition to the early modern witch-hunts

File:12.Garden-Brutal Myths.jpg|thumb|The Malleus MaleficarumMalleus MaleficarumThe resurgence of witch-hunts at the end of the medieval period, taking place with at least partial support or at least tolerance on the part of the Church, was accompanied with a number of developments in Christian doctrine, for example, the recognition of the existence of witchcraft as a form of Satanic influence and its classification as a heresy. As Renaissance occultism gained traction among the educated classes, the belief in witchcraft, which in the medieval period had been part of the folk religion of the uneducated rural population at best, was incorporated into an increasingly comprehensive theology of Satan as the ultimate source of all maleficium.{{efn|Early Christian theologians attributed to the Devil responsibility for persecution, heresy, witchcraft, sin, natural disasters, human calamities, and whatever else went wrong. One tragic consequence of this was a tendency to demonize people accused of wrongs. At the instance of ecclesiastical leaders, the state burned heretics and witches, burning symbolizing the fate deserved by the demonic. Popular fears, stirred to fever pitch in the 14th and 15th centuries, sustained frenzied efforts to wipe out heretics, witches, and unbelievers, especially Jews.MAGAZINE, Hinson, Historical and Theological Perspectives on Satan, Review & Expositor, 89, 4, 475, Fall 1992, }}{{efn|Trevor-Roper has said that it was necessary for belief in the Kingdom of Satan to die before the witch theory could be discredited.BOOK, Larner, Crime of witchcraft in early modern Europe, Oldridge, The Witchcraft Reader, 211, 2002, Routledge, }} These doctrinal shifts were completed in the mid-15th century, specifically in the wake of the Council of Basel and centered on the Duchy of Savoy in the western Alps,{{efn|We are reasonably confident today that the ‘classical’ doctrine of witchcraft crystallized during the middle third of the 15th century, shortly after the Council of Basel, primarily within a western Alpine zone centred around the duchy of Savoy (Ostorero et al. 1999).BOOK, Behringer, Witches and Witch-hunts: A global history, 2004, Wiley-Blackwell, 18–19, }} leading to an early series of witch trials by both secular and ecclesiastical courts in the second half of the 15th century.{{efn|By the end of the 15th century, scattered trials for witchcraft by both secular and ecclesiastical courts occurred in many places from the Pyrenees, where the Spanish Inquisition had become involved, to the North Sea.}}In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued Summis desiderantes affectibus, a Papal bull authorizing the “correcting, imprisoning, punishing and chastising” of devil-worshippers who have “slain infants”, among other crimes. He did so at the request of inquisitor Heinrich Kramer, who had been refused permission by the local bishops in Germany to investigate.Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, (49) However, historians such as Ludwig von Pastor insist that the bull neither allowed anything new, nor was necessarily binding on Catholic consciences.{{efn|“The Bull contains no dogmatic decision of any sort on witchcraft. It assumes the possibility of demoniacal influences on human beings which the Church has always maintained, but claims no dogmatic authority for its pronouncement on the particular cases with which it was dealing at the moment. The form of the document, which refers only to certain occurrences which had been brought to the knowledge of the Pope, sh[o]ws that it was not intended to bind any one to believe in the things mentioned in it. The question whether the Pope himself believed in them has nothing to do with the subject. His judgment on this point has no greater importance than attaches to a Papal decree in any other undogmatic question, e.g., on a dispute about a benefice. The Bull introduced no new element into the current beliefs about witchcraft. It is absurd to accuse it of being the cause of the cruel treatment of witches, when we see in the Sachsenspiegel that burning alive was already the legal punishment for a witch. All that Innocent VIII. did was to confirm the jurisdiction of the inquisitors over these cases. The Bull simply empowered them to try all matters concerning witchcraft, without exception, before their own tribunals, by Canon-law; a process which was totally different from that of the later trials. Possibly the Bull, in so far as it admonished the inquisitors to be on the alert in regard to witchcraft may have given an impetus to the prosecution of such cases; but it affords no justification for the accusation that it introduced a new crime, or was in any way responsible for the iniquitous horrors of the witch-harrying of later times.“BOOK, Ludwig, von Pastor, Ludwig von Pastor, The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages, 5, 349–350, }} Three years later in 1487, Kramer published the notorious Malleus Maleficarum (lit., ‘Hammer against the Evildoers’) which, because of the newly invented printing presses, enjoyed a wide readership. It was reprinted in 14 editions by 1520 and became unduly influential in the secular courts.BOOK, Jolly, Raudvere, Peters, Witchcraft and magic in Europe: the Middle Ages, 241, 2002, In Europe, the witch-hunt craze was negligible in Spain, Poland, and Eastern Europe; conversely, it was intense in Germany, Switzerland, and France.JOURNAL, Nachman Ben-Yehuda, The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist’s Perspective’, American Journal of Sociology, July 1980, 86, 1, 6–7,www.jstor.com/stable/2778849, 8 April 2023, University of Chicago Press, en, 0002-9602, he witch-hunts were conducted in their most intense form in those regions where the Catholic church was weakest (Lea 1957; Rose 1962) (Germany, Switzerland, France). In areas with a strong church (Spain, Poland, and eastern Europe) the witch craze was negligible.,

Early Modern Europe and Colonial America

(File:Wickiana4.jpg|thumb|The torture used against accused witches, 1577)The witch trials in Early Modern Europe came in waves and then subsided. There were trials in the 15th and early 16th centuries, but then the witch scare went into decline, before becoming a major issue again and peaking in the 17th century; particularly during the Thirty Years War. What had previously been a belief that some people possessed supernatural abilities (which were sometimes used to protect the people), now became a sign of a pact between the people with supernatural abilities and the devil. To justify the killings, some Christians of the time and their proxy secular institutions deemed witchcraft as being associated to wild Satanic ritual parties in which there was naked dancing and cannibalistic infanticide.BOOK, Ellerbe, Helen, The Dark Side of Christian History, Morningstar & Lark, 1995, It was also seen as heresy for going against the first of the ten commandments (“You shall have no other gods before me“) or as violating majesty, in this case referring to the divine majesty, not the worldly.BOOK, Meewis, Wim, 1992, De Vierschaar, Uitgevering Pelckmans, 115, Further scripture was also frequently cited, especially the Exodus decree that “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18), which many supported.File:Examination of a Witch - Tompkins Matteson.jpg|thumb|Examination of a Witch in the 17th century (1853), by T. H. MattesonT. H. MattesonWitch-hunts were seen across early modern Europe, but the most significant area of witch-hunting in modern Europe is often considered to be central and southern Germany.WEB,www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=12341&amid=12341, The History Today Archive, dead,www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=12341&amid=12341," title="web.archive.org/web/20071112102609www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=12341&amid=12341,">web.archive.org/web/20071112102609www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=12341&amid=12341, 12 November 2007, Germany was a late starter in terms of the numbers of trials, compared to other regions of Europe. 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.BOOK, H.C. Erik, Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany 1562–1684,archive.org/details/witchhuntinginso0000unse, registration, 1972, 71, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 9780804708050, The first major persecution in Europe, when witches were caught, tried, convicted, and burned in the imperial lordship of Wiesensteig in southwestern Germany, is recorded in 1563 in a pamphlet called “True and Horrifying Deeds of 63 Witches”.Behringer (2004), p. 83. Witchcraft persecution spread to all areas of Europe. Learned European ideas about witchcraft and demonological ideas, strongly influenced the hunt for witches in the North.BOOK, Witches of the North, Willumsen, Liv Helene, Brill, 2013, 9789004252912, Leiden, 1–13, These witch-hunts were at least partly driven by economic factors since a significant relationship between economic pressure and witch hunting activity can be found for regions such as Bavaria and Scotland.JOURNAL, Baten, Joerg, Woitek, Ulrich, Economic determinants of witch-hunting, University of Tübingen Research Paper, In Denmark, the burning of witches increased following the reformation of 1536. Christian IV of Denmark, in particular, encouraged this practice, and hundreds of people were convicted of witchcraft and burnt. In the district of Finnmark, northern Norway, severe witchcraft trials took place during the period 1600–1692.BOOK, The Witchcraft Trials in Finnmark, northern Norway, Willumsen, Liv Helene, Skald, 2010, 978-82-7959-152-8, Bergen, 13, A memorial of international format, Steilneset Memorial, has been built to commemorate the victims of the Finnmark witchcraft trials.BOOK, ‘Introduction’, Steilneset Memorial. Art Architecture History, Andreassen, Willumsen, Orkana, 2014, 978-82-8104-245-2, Stamsund, 1–10, In England, the Witchcraft Act 1541 regulated the penalties for witchcraft. In the North Berwick witch trials in Scotland, over 70 people were accused of witchcraft on account of bad weather when James VI of Scotland, who shared the Danish king’s interest in witch trials, sailed to Denmark in 1590 to meet his betrothed Anne of Denmark. According to a widely circulated pamphlet, “Newes from Scotland,” James VI personally presided over the torture and execution of Doctor Fian.WEB,www.sacred-texts.com/pag/kjd/index.htm, Daemonlologie by King James the First and Newes from Scotland, Sacred Texts, Indeed, James published a witch-hunting manual, Daemonologie, which contains the famous dictum: “Experience daily proves how loath they are to confess without torture.” Later, the Pendle witch trials of 1612 joined the ranks of the most famous witch trials in English history.NEWS,news.bbc.co.uk/local/lancashire/hi/things_to_do/newsid_8316000/8316766.stm, Follow the Pendle Witches trail, 21 October 2009, news.bbc.co.uk, File:Bamberger Malefizhaus 1627 Staatsbiblithek Bamberg.jpg|thumb|left|The Malefizhaus of Bamberg, GermanyBamberg, GermanyIn England, witch-hunting would reach its apex in 1644 to 1647 due to the efforts of Puritan Matthew Hopkins. Although operating without an official Parliament commission, Hopkins (calling himself Witchfinder General) and his accomplices charged hefty fees to towns during the English Civil War. Hopkins’ witch-hunting spree was brief but significant: 300 convictions and deaths are attributed to his work.BOOK, Sharpe, James, 2002, The Lancaster witches in historical context, Poole, Robert, The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories, Manchester University Press, 978-0-7190-6204-9, 1–18, {{failed verification|date=July 2017}} Hopkins wrote a book on his methods, describing his fortuitous beginnings as a witch-hunter, the methods used to extract confessions, and the tests he employed to test the accused: stripping them naked to find the Witches’ mark, the “swimming” test, and pricking the skin. The swimming test, which included throwing a witch, who was strapped to a chair, into a bucket of water to see if she floated, was discontinued in 1645 due to a legal challenge. The 1647 book, The Discovery of Witches, soon became an influential legal text. The book was used in the American colonies as early as May 1647, when Margaret Jones was executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts,BOOK, Jewett, Clarence F., The Memorial History of Boston: Including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630–1880,archive.org/details/memorialhistory04wins, Ticknor and Company, 1881, 133–137, the first of 17 people executed for witchcraft in the Colonies from 1647 to 1663.Witch-hunts began to occur in North America while Hopkins was hunting witches in England. In 1645, forty-six years before the notorious Salem witch trials, Springfield, Massachusetts experienced America’s first accusations of witchcraft when husband and wife Hugh and Mary Parsons accused each other of witchcraft. In America’s first witch trial, Hugh was found innocent, while Mary was acquitted of witchcraft but she was still sentenced to be hanged as punishment for the death of her child. She died in prison.WEB,www.masslive.com/history/index.ssf/2011/05/springfields_375th_from_puritans_to_presidents.html, Springfield’s 375th: From Puritans to presidents, masslive.com, 10 May 2011, About eighty people throughout England’s Massachusetts Bay Colony were accused of practicing witchcraft; thirteen women and two men were executed in a witch-hunt that occurred throughout New England and lasted from 1645 to 1663.BOOK, Fraden, Judith Bloom, Dennis Brindell, Fraden, The Salem Witch Trials, Marshall Cavendish, 2008, 15, The Salem witch trials followed in 1692–1693.Once a case was brought to trial, the prosecutors hunted for accomplices. The use of magic was considered wrong, not because it failed, but because it worked effectively for the wrong reasons. Witchcraft was a normal part of everyday life. Witches were often called for, along with religious ministers, to help the ill or deliver a baby. They held positions of spiritual power in their communities. When something went wrong, no one questioned either the ministers or the power of the witchcraft. Instead, they questioned whether the witch intended to inflict harm or not.BOOK, Wallace, Peter G., The Long European Reformation,archive.org/details/longeuropeanrefo00pete, limited, 2004, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 978-0-333-64451-5, 210–215, Current scholarly estimates of the number of people who were executed for witchcraft vary from about 35,000 to 50,000.{{efn|name=victim_stats}} The total number of witch trials in Europe which are known to have ended in executions is around 12,000.WEB, Estimates of executions,www.summerlands.com/crossroads/remembrance/current.htm, Based on Ronald Hutton’s essay Counting the Witch Hunt. Prominent contemporaneous critics of witch-hunts included Gianfrancesco Ponzinibio (fl. 1520), Johannes Wier (1515–1588), Reginald Scot (1538–1599), Cornelius Loos (1546–1595), Anton Praetorius (1560–1613), Alonso Salazar y Frías (1564–1636), Friedrich Spee (1591–1635), and Balthasar Bekker (1634–1698).Charles Alva Hoyt, Witchcraft, Southern Illinois University Press, 2nd ed.,, 1989, pp. 66–70, {{ISBN|0-8093-1544-0}}. Among the largest and most notable of these trials were the Trier witch trials (1581–1593), the Fulda witch trials (1603–1606), the Würzburg witch trial (1626–1631) and the Bamberg witch trials (1626–1631).{{citation needed|date=September 2018}}In addition to known witch trials, witch hunts were often conducted by vigilantes, who may or may not have executed their victims. In Scotland, for example, cattle murrains were blamed on witches, usually peasant women, who were duly punished. A popular method called “scoring above the breath” meant slashing across a woman’s forehead in order to remove the power of her magic. This was seen as a kind of emergency procedure which could be performed in absence of judicial authorities.BOOK, The lore of Scotland: A guide to Scottish legends, Westwood, Jennifer, 2011, Arrow, Kingshill, Sophia, 9780099547167, London, 712624576, (File:Hexenprozess gegen Katharina Kepler, 14. Juli 1621.jpg|thumb|Witness testimony from the witch trial against Katharina Kepler, 14 July 1621)Another important element of the persecution of witches were denunciations. Informers did not have to be revealed to the accused, which was important for the success of the witch trials. In practice, appeals were made to other witnesses to the crimes, so that the first informer was followed by others. In the event of a conviction, the informer sometimes received a third of the accused’s assets, but at least 2 guilders. A well-known and good documented example is the case of Katharina Kepler, the mother of the astronomer Johannes Kepler, for being in a pact with the devil and using witchcraft. In 1615, she was called a witch by a female neighbor in the duchy of Württemberg following a dispute with her of having given her a bitter drink that had made her ill. She was held captive for over a year and threatened with torture, but was finally acquitted thanks to her son’s efforts.Akademie Schloss Solitude: Kepler’s Witch Trial, retrieved: 21 April 2024

Execution statistics

(File:Witches Being Hanged.jpg|thumb|An image of suspected witches being hanged in England, published in 1655)File:William Powell Frith The Witch Trial.jpg|thumb|The Witch Trial by William Powell FrithWilliam Powell FrithModern scholarly estimates place the total number of executions for witchcraft in the 300-year period of European witch-hunts in the five digits, mostly at roughly between 35,000 and 50,000 (see table below for details),{{efn|name=victim_stats|The Encyclopedia Britannica sets a limit of “no more than 40,000 to 60,000.“ENCYCLOPEDIA, Russell, Jeffrey Burton, Lewis, Ioan M., Encyclopedia Britannica, Witchcraft, 2000, 2021-08-27,www.britannica.com/topic/witchcraft, The high end of that range originates with Brian P. Levack’s first edition of The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, which he revised down to 45,000 in the third edition.BOOK, Brian P., Levack, Brian P. Levack, The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 1987,archive.org/details/witchhuntinearly0000leva, registration, 21, BOOK, Brian P., Levack, Brian P. Levack, The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 2006, 3rd,archive.org/details/witchhuntinearly0000leva_l1l1, registration, 23, Pearson Longman, 9780582419018, William Monter estimates 35,000 deaths; Malcolm Gaskill and Richard Golden both estimate 40,000–50,000.BOOK, William, Monter, Witch Trials in Continental Europe, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Ankarloo, Bengst, Clark, Stuart, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2002, 12 ff, 0-8122-1787-X, BOOK, Gaskill, Malcolm, Malcolm Gaskill, Witchcraft, a very short introduction,archive.org/details/witchcraftverysh00gask_191, limited, Oxford University Press, 2010, 76, 978-0-19-923695-4, Anne Lewellyn Barstow adjusted Levack’s first estimate to account for lost records, estimating 100,000 deaths.BOOK, Anne Lewellyn, Barstow, Anne Lewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze, 1994,archive.org/details/witchcrazenewhis0000bars, registration, Ronald Hutton argues that Levack’s estimate had already been adjusted for these, and revises the figure to approximately 40,000.BOOK, Ronald, Hutton, Triumph of the Moon, 1999, Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-820744-3,archive.org/details/triumphofmoonhis00hutt, registration, James Sharpe concurs: “The current consensus is that 40,000 people were executed as witches in the period of the witch persecutions, between about 1450 and 1750.“BOOK, Sharpe, James, 2001, Witchcraft in Early Modern England, Harlow, UK, Pearson, 6, }} The majority of those accused were from the lower economic classes in European society, although in rarer cases high-ranking individuals were accused as well. On the basis of this evidence, Scarre and Callow asserted that the “typical witch was the wife or widow of an agricultural labourer or small tenant farmer, and she was well known for a quarrelsome and aggressive nature.“According to Julian Goodare, in Europe, the overall proportion of women who were persecuted as witches was 80%, although there were countries and regions like Estonia, Normandy and Iceland, that targeted men more.BOOK, Goodare, Julian, The European Witch-Hunt, 2016, Routledge, 978-1-317-19831-4, 267, 268,books.google.com/books?id=eM4mDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA268, 21 December 2021, en, In Iceland 92% of the accused were men, in Estonia 60%, and in Moscow two-thirds of those accused were male. {{citation needed|date=August 2021}} In Finland, a total of more than 100 death row inmates were roughly equal in both men and women, but all Ã…landers sentenced to witchcraft were only women.Noituus – Kuolemantuomiot {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210301000229www15.uta.fi/yky/arkisto/historia/noitanetti/kuolemantuomiot.html |date=1 March 2021 }} (in Finnish)At one point during the Würzburg trials of 1629, children made up 60% of those accused, although this had declined to 17% by the end of the year.Scarre, Geoffrey; Callow, John (2001). Witchcraft and Magic in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Europe (second ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 29–33. Rapley (1998) claims that “75 to 80 percent” of a total of “40,000 to 50,000” victims were women.BOOK, Rapley, Robert, A Case of Witchcraft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier,books.google.com/books?id=FMpRAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA99, 1998, Manchester University Press, 978-0-7190-5528-7, 99, {{unreliable source? |date=April 2015}} The claim that “millions of witches” (often: “nine million witches“) were killed in Europe is spurious, even though it is occasionally found in popular literature, and it is ultimately due to a 1791 pamphlet by Gottfried Christian Voigt.Gaskill, Malcolm Witchcraft, a very short introduction, Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 65{| class=“wikitable” style="width:70%; text-align:right;”Witch trials in Continental Europe, (in:) Witchcraft and magic in Europe, ed. Bengst Ankarloo & Stuart Clark, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2002, pp 12 ff. {{ISBN>0-8122-1787-X}}; and Levack, Brian P. The witch hunt in early modern Europe, 3rd ed., London and New York: Longman, 2006.! Region|| Number of trials|| Number of executions

British Isles	≈5,000	≈1,500–2,000

Holy Roman Empire (Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Lorraine, Austria, Czechia)	≈50,000	≈25,000–30,000

France	≈3,000	≈1,000

Scandinavia	≈5,000	≈1,700–2,000

Central & Eastern Europe (Poland-Lithuania, Hungary and Russia)	≈7,000	≈2,000

Southern Europe (Spain, Portugal and Italy)	≈10,000	≈1,000

Total:	≈80,000	≈35,000

End of European witch-hunts in the 18th century

File:T. Colley, The remarkable confession... Wellcome M0013388.jpg|thumb|200px|The drowning of an alleged witch, with Thomas ColleyThomas ColleyIn England and Scotland between 1542 and 1735, a series of Witchcraft Acts enshrined into law the punishment (often with death, sometimes with incarceration) of individuals practising or claiming to practice witchcraft and magic.BOOK, M, Gibson, Witchcraft in the Courts,books.google.com/books?id=fyI9xo1GvGAC&pg=PA1, 1–18, Marion, Gibson, Witchcraft And Society in England And America, 1550–1750, 2006, Continuum International Publishing Group, 978-0-8264-8300-3, The last executions for witchcraft in England had taken place in 1682, when Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles, and Susanna Edwards were executed at Exeter. In 1711, Joseph Addison published an article in the highly respected The Spectator journal (No. 117) criticizing the irrationality and social injustice in treating elderly and feeble women (dubbed “Moll White“) as witches.JOURNAL, Addison, Joseph, Their own imaginations they deceive, The Spectator, 1711, 2, 117, 208–212,babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ucm.5326180518;view=1up;seq=220, BOOK, 978-0-7661-4536-8, Summers, Montague, Geography of Witchcraft, 10.4324/9781315822334, 153–160, 2003, Kessinger Publishing, 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. Janet Horne was executed for witchcraft in Scotland in 1727. The final Act of 1735 led to prosecution for fraud rather than witchcraft since it was no longer believed that the individuals had actual supernatural powers or traffic with Satan. The 1735 Act continued to be used until the 1940s to prosecute individuals such as spiritualists and gypsies. The act was finally repealed in 1951.The last execution of a witch in the Dutch Republic was probably in 1613.NEWS,archeonet.nl/index.php?itemid=5967, Laatste executie van heks in Borculo, 11 October 2003, 22 September 2010, Archeonnet.nl, nl,archeonet.nl/index.php?itemid=5967," title="web.archive.org/web/20070928100254archeonet.nl/index.php?itemid=5967,">web.archive.org/web/20070928100254archeonet.nl/index.php?itemid=5967, 28 September 2007, dead, In Denmark, this took place in 1693 with the execution of Anna PallesNEWS,www.executedtoday.com/2010/04/04/1693-anne-palles-last-witch-executed-in-denmark/, Last witch executed in Denmark, 4 April 2010, 22 September 2010, executedtoday.com, and in Norway the last witch execution was of Johanne Nilsdatter in 1695,WEB,snl.no/Johanne_Nielsdatter, Johanne Nielsdatter, Rune Blix, Hagen, 28 May 2018, 8 January 2019, Snl.no, and in Sweden Anna Eriksdotter in 1704. In other parts of Europe, the practice died down later. In France the last person to be executed for witchcraft was Louis Debaraz in 1745.WEB,www.orionbooks.co.uk/reading-room/reading-guides/the-last-witchfinder, Timeline The Last Witchfinder, 22 September 2010,www.orionbooks.co.uk/reading-room/reading-guides/the-last-witchfinder," title="web.archive.org/web/20111120093046www.orionbooks.co.uk/reading-room/reading-guides/the-last-witchfinder,">web.archive.org/web/20111120093046www.orionbooks.co.uk/reading-room/reading-guides/the-last-witchfinder, 20 November 2011, dead, In Germany the last death sentence was that of Anna Schwegelin in Kempten in 1775 (although not carried out).WEB,www.historicum.net/themen/hexenforschung/lexikon/personen/art/Schwaegelin_Ann/html/artikel/5602/ca/e96896a58d/,www.historicum.net/themen/hexenforschung/lexikon/personen/art/Schwaegelin_Ann/html/artikel/5602/ca/e96896a58d/," title="web.archive.org/web/20080531052930www.historicum.net/themen/hexenforschung/lexikon/personen/art/Schwaegelin_Ann/html/artikel/5602/ca/e96896a58d/,">web.archive.org/web/20080531052930www.historicum.net/themen/hexenforschung/lexikon/personen/art/Schwaegelin_Ann/html/artikel/5602/ca/e96896a58d/, Historicum.net, 31 May 2008, dead, Anna Maria Schwägelin (Schwägele), Wolfgang Petz language= de, The last known official witch-trial was the Doruchów witch trial in Poland in 1783. The result of the trial is questioned by prof. Janusz Tazbir in his book.TAZBIR>FIRST=JANUSZURL=HTTPS://BOOKS.GOOGLE.COM/BOOKS?ID=GVVPAAAAMAAJ PUBLISHER=TWóJ STYLPoznaÅ„, Poland.HTTPS://BOOKS.GOOGLE.COM/BOOKS?ID=TWQOKVTZID4C&PG=PA88 ISBN=9780485890051FIRST1=MARIJKEPUBLISHER=A&C BLACK, 88, In Croatia the last person condemned for witchcraft to the death penalty was Magda Logomer in 1758. She was acquitted by Maria Theresa in 1758, putting an end to the witch trials in Croatia.JOURNAL, Kern, Edmund M., January 1999, An End to Witch Trials in Austria: Reconsidering the Enlightened State,www.cambridge.org/core/journals/austrian-history-yearbook/article/abs/an-end-to-witch-trials-in-austria-reconsidering-the-enlightened-state/92DA384B3EE7A60D470EB2706A05529C, Austrian History Yearbook, en, 30, 159–185, 10.1017/S006723780001599X, 21180204, 1558-5255, JOURNAL, Balog, Zdenko, 2017-02-01, Magda Logomer Herucina,www.academia.edu/31623821, Cris XVIII, Anna Göldi was executed in Glarus, Switzerland in 1782NEWS,www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Last_witch_in_Europe_cleared.html?cid=662078, Last witch in Europe cleared, 27 August 2008, 22 September 2010, Swissinfo.ch, and Barbara ZdunkNEWS, Klimczak, Natalia, Barbara Zdunk – The Last Executed Slavic Witch By Authorities In Prussia,www.slavorum.org/barbara-zdunk-the-last-executed-slavic-witch-by-the-inquisition-in-poland/, 27 October 2017, 27 October 2017,web.archive.org/web/20171027183407/https://www.slavorum.org/barbara-zdunk-the-last-executed-slavic-witch-by-the-inquisition-in-poland/, dead, in Prussia in 1811. Both women have been identified as the last women executed for witchcraft in Europe, but in both cases, the official verdict did not mention witchcraft, as this had ceased to be recognized as a criminal offense.{{citation needed|date=July 2019}}

India

There is no documented evidence of witch-hunting in India before 1792.The earliest evidence of witch-hunts in India can be found in the Santhal witch trials in 1792.BOOK, Archer, W G, 1979, The Santals: Readings in Tribal Life, New Delhi, Concept Publishing Company, BOOK, Crooke, W, 1969, The Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, Delhi, Munshiram Manoharlal, In the Singhbhum district of the Chhotanagpur division in Company-ruled India, not only were those accused of being witches murdered, but also those related to the accused to ensure that they would not avenge the deaths (Roy Choudhary 1958: 88). The Chhotanagpur region was majorly populated by an adivasi population called the Santhals. The existence of witches was a belief central to the Santhals. Witches were feared and were supposed to be engaged in anti-social activities. They were also supposed to have the power to kill people by feeding on their entrails, and causing fevers in cattle among other evils. Therefore, according to the adivasi population the cure to their disease and sickness was the elimination of these witches who were seen as the cause.JOURNAL, Sinha, Shashank, Witch hunts, Adivasis, and the Uprising in Chhotanagpur, 4419566, Economic and Political Weekly, 42, 19, 1672–1676, 2007, The practice of witch-hunt among Santhals was more brutal than that in Europe. Unlike Europe, where witches were strangulated before being burnt, the santhals forced them ”..to eat human excreta and drink blood before throwing them into the flames.“JOURNAL, Varma, Daya, Witch-Hunt among Santhals, 4419670, Economic & Political Weekly, 42, 23, 2130, 2007, The East India Company (EIC) banned the persecution of witches in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Chhotanagpur in the 1840s–1850s. Despite the ban, very few cases were reported as witch-hunting was not seen as a crime. The Santhals believed that the ban in fact allowed the activities of witches to flourish. Thus, the effect of the ban was contrary to what the EIC had intended. During 1857–58, there was a surge in witch-hunting; coinciding during the period of a major rebellion, which has led some scholars to see the resurgence of the activity as a form of resistance to Company rule.

Modern cases

File:Bernau Hexendenkmal.jpg|thumb|upright|Monument for the victims of the witch-hunts of 16th- and 17th-century Bernau, Germany by Annelie GrundAnnelie GrundWitch-hunts still occur today in societies where belief in magic is prevalent. In most cases, these are instances of lynching and burnings, reported with some regularity from much of Sub-Saharan Africa, from Saudi Arabia and from Papua New Guinea. In addition, there are some countries that have legislation against the practice of sorcery. The only country where witchcraft remains legally punishable by death is Saudi Arabia.Witch-hunts in modern times are continuously reported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as a massive violation of human rights. Most of the accused are women and children but can also be elderly people or marginalised groups of the community such as albinos and the HIV-infected.WEB,www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home/opendocPDFViewer.html?docid=4981ca712, UNHCR Research Paper No. 169 Witchcraft allegations, refugee protection and human rights: a review of the evidence, January 2009, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, These victims are often considered burdens to the community, and as a result are often driven out, starved to death, or killed violently, sometimes by their own families in acts of social cleansing.Miguel, Edward. “Poverty and Witch Killing.” The Review of Economic Studies 72, no. 4 (1 October 2005): 1153–72 The causes of witch-hunts include poverty, epidemics, social crises and lack of education. The leader of the witch-hunt, often a prominent figure in the community or a “witch doctor”, may also gain economic benefit by charging for an exorcism or by selling body parts of the murdered.WEB,www.unhcr.org/4d346eab9.html, UNHCR Research Paper No. 197 Breaking the spell: responding to witchcraft accusations against children, January 2011, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, WEB,www.unhcr.org/4d346eab9.html, UNHCR Research Paper No. 235 Seeking meaning: an anthropological and community-based approach to witchcraft accusations and their prevention in refugee situations, May 2012, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR,

Middle East

Levant

On 29 and 30 June 2015, militants of the terrorist group ISIS beheaded two couples on accusations of sorcery and using “magic for medicine” in Deir ez-Zor province.WEB, Mezzofiore, Gianluca,www.ibtimes.co.uk/isis-syria-islamic-state-beheads-2-women-sorcery-reports-syrian-observatory-human-rights-1508572, Isis in Syria: Islamic State beheads 2 women for sorcery reports Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, International Business Times, 30 June 2015, 30 June 2015, Earlier on, the ISIL militants beheaded several “magicians” and street illusionists in Syria, Iraq and Libya.WEB, Armstrong, Jeremy,www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/isis-behead-street-magician-entertaining-4929838, ISIS behead street magician for entertaining crowds in Syria with his tricks, Daily Mirror, 6 January 2015, 30 June 2015,

Saudi Arabia

Witchcraft or sorcery remains a criminal offense in Saudi Arabia, although the precise nature of the crime is undefined.JOURNAL, Precarious Justice – Arbitrary Detention and Unfair Trials in the Deficient Criminal Justice System of Saudi Arabia, Human Rights Watch, 2008, 143,www.hrw.org/en/node/62304/section/23, The frequency of prosecutions for this in the country as whole is unknown. However, in November 2009, it was reported that 118 people had been arrested in the province of Makkah that year for practicing magic and “using the Book of Allah in a derogatory manner”, 74% of them being female.NEWS, Distance witch finally caught; 118 detained this year,www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2009110453524&archiveissuedate=04/11/2009, Saudi Gazette, 4 November 2009, 6 February 2011, dead,www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2009110453524&archiveissuedate=04%2F11%2F2009," title="web.archive.org/web/20120110161629www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2009110453524&archiveissuedate=04%2F11%2F2009,">web.archive.org/web/20120110161629www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2009110453524&archiveissuedate=04%2F11%2F2009, 10 January 2012, According to Human Rights Watch in 2009, prosecutions for witchcraft and sorcery are proliferating and “Saudi courts are sanctioning a literal witch hunt by the religious police.“PRESS RELEASE, Saudi Arabia: Witchcraft and Sorcery Cases on the Rise, 24 November 2009,www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/11/24/saudi-arabia-witchcraft-and-sorcery-cases-rise, 6 February 2011, In 2006, an illiterate Saudi woman, Fawza Falih, was convicted of practising witchcraft, including casting an impotence spell, and sentenced to death by beheading, after allegedly being beaten and forced to fingerprint a false confession that had not been read to her.NEWS, King Abdullah urged to spare Saudi ‘witchcraft’ woman’s life, The Times, 16 February 2008, After an appeal court had cast doubt on the validity of the death sentence because the confession had been retracted, the lower court reaffirmed the same sentence on a different basis.PRESS RELEASE, Letter to HRH King Abdullah bin Abd al-’Aziz Al Saud on “Witchcraft” Case, Human Rights Watch, 12 February 2008,www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/02/12/letter-hrh-king-abdullah-bin-abd-al-aziz-al-saud-witchcraft-case, 6 February 2011, In 2007, Mustafa Ibrahim, an Egyptian national, was executed, having been convicted of using sorcery in an attempt to separate a married couple, as well as of adultery and of desecrating the Quran.NEWS, Saudi executes Egyptian for practising ‘witchcraft’,www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/03/2080777.htm, ABC News, 3 November 2007, 6 February 2011, Also in 2007, Abdul Hamid Bin Hussain Bin Moustafa al-Fakki, a Sudanese national, was sentenced to death after being convicted of producing a spell that would lead to the reconciliation of a divorced couple.NEWS, Sudanese man facing execution in Saudi Arabia over ‘sorcery’ charges,www.afrik-news.com/article17642.html, Afrik News, 15 May 2010, 6 February 2011, In 2009, Ali Sibat, a Lebanese television presenter who had been arrested whilst on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, was sentenced to death for witchcraft arising out of his fortune-telling on an Arab satellite channel.NEWS, Lebanese TV host Ali Hussain Sibat faces execution in Saudi Arabia for sorcery,www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7085303.ece, The Times, 2 April 2010, 6 February 2011, His appeal was accepted by one court, but a second in Medina upheld his death sentence again in March 2010, stating that he deserved it as he had publicly practised sorcery in front of millions of viewers for several years.PRESS RELEASE, Lebanese PM should step in to halt Saudi Arabia ‘Sorcery’ execution, Amnesty International, 1 April 2010,www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=18702, 6 February 2011, In November 2010, the Supreme Court refused to ratify the death sentence, stating that there was insufficient evidence that his actions had harmed others.NEWS, Saudi court rejects death sentence for TV psychic,www.ctvnews.ca/saudi-court-rejects-death-sentence-for-tv-psychic-1.574429, CTV News, Associated Press, 13 November 2010, 6 February 2011, live,www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20101113/saudi-psychic-sentenced-101113/," title="web.archive.org/web/20111120092804www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20101113/saudi-psychic-sentenced-101113/,">web.archive.org/web/20111120092804www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20101113/saudi-psychic-sentenced-101113/, 20 November 2011, On 12 December 2011, Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar was beheaded in Al Jawf Province after being convicted of practicing witchcraft and sorcery.NEWS, Saudi Arabia: Woman Is Beheaded After Being Convicted of Witchcraft,www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-woman-is-beheaded-after-being-convicted-of-witchcraft.html, 13 December 2011, The New York Times, 12 December 2011, Agence France-Presse, Another very similar situation occurred to Muree bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri and he was beheaded on 19 June 2012 in the Najran Province.NEWS,www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18503550, Saudi man executed for ‘witchcraft and sorcery’, BBC News, 2012-06-19,

Oceania

Papua New Guinea

Though the practice of “white” magic (such as faith healing) is legal in Papua New Guinea, the 1976 Sorcery Act imposed a penalty of up to 2 years in prison for the practice of “black” magic, until the Act was repealed in 2013. In 2009, the government reports that extrajudicial torture and murder of alleged witches – usually lone women – are spreading from the highland areas to cities as villagers migrate to urban areas.WEB,www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world/episode-guide/series-2009/episode-9, Unreported World, Channel 4, For example, in June 2013, four women were accused of witchcraft because the family “had a ‘permanent house’ made of wood, and the family had tertiary educations and high social standing”. All of the women were tortured and Helen Rumbali was beheaded. Helen Hakena, chairwoman of the North Bougainville Human Rights Committee, said that the accusations started because of economic jealousy born of a mining boom.NEWS, McGuirk, Rod, 10 June 2013, Witch hunts in Papua New Guinea linked to jealousy,news.yahoo.com/witch-hunts-papua-guinea-linked-jealousy-054301668.html, dead,web.archive.org/web/20210517051035/https://news.yahoo.com/witch-hunts-papua-guinea-linked-jealousy-054301668.html, 17 May 2021, 10 June 2013, Associated Press, Reports by U.N. agencies, Amnesty International, Oxfam and anthropologists show that “attacks on accused sorcerers and witches – sometimes men, but most commonly women – are frequent, ferocious and often fatal.“WEB,www.theglobalmail.org/feature/its-2013-and-theyre-burning-witches/558/, It’s 2013, and they’re burning ‘witches’, Jo Chandler, Chandler, Jo, The Global Mail, dead,www.theglobalmail.org/feature/its-2013-and-theyre-burning-witches/558/," title="web.archive.org/web/20131002115725www.theglobalmail.org/feature/its-2013-and-theyre-burning-witches/558/,">web.archive.org/web/20131002115725www.theglobalmail.org/feature/its-2013-and-theyre-burning-witches/558/, 2 October 2013, 2017-10-24, It’s estimated about 150 cases of violence and killings are occurring each year in just the province of Simbu in Papua New Guinea alone.JOURNAL, Gibbs, Philip, Philip Gibbs, 2012, Engendered Violence and Witch-killing in Simbu, Engendering Violence in Papua New Guinea, 107–136, j.ctt24hcwt.10, ANU Press, 9781921862854, Reports indicate this practice of witch-hunting has in some places evolved into “something more malignant, sadistic and voyeuristic.” One woman who was attacked by young men from a nearby village “had her genitals burned and fused beyond functional repair by the repeated intrusions of red-hot irons.” Few incidents are ever reported, according to the 2012 Law Reform Commission which concluded that they have increased since the 1980s.

Indian Subcontinent

India

Some people in India, mostly in villages, have the belief that witchcraft and black magic are effective. On one hand, people may seek advice from witch doctors for health, financial or marital problems.NEWS, Black Magic practices in India,www.dw.de/black-magic-practices-in-india/a-15969540, 13 September 2013, Deutsche Welle, 23 May 2012, On the other hand, people, especially women, are accused of witchcraft and attacked, occasionally killed.NEWS, Village ‘witches’ beaten in India,news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8315980.stm?ls, 13 September 2013, BBC News, 20 October 2009, NEWS, ‘Witch’ family killed in India,news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7449825.stm, 13 September 2013, BBC News, 12 June 2008, It has been reported that mostly widows or divorcees are targeted to rob them of their property.NEWS, Bengal tribesmen kill ‘witches’,news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2166856.stm, 13 September 2013, BBC News, 27 March 2003, Reportedly, revered village witch-doctors are paid to brand specific persons as witches, so that they can be killed without repercussions. The existing laws have been considered ineffective in curbing the murders.WEB, Witchcraft allegations, refugee protection and human rights:a review of the evidence,www.unhcr.org/4981ca712.pdf, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHRC, 13 September 2013, Jill Schnoebelen, In June 2013, National Commission for Women (NCW) reported that according to National Crime Records Bureau statistics, 768 women had been murdered for allegedly practising witchcraft since 2008 and announced plans for newer laws.NEWS, NCW demands stringent law against witch-hunts,www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-newdelhi/ncw-demands-stringent-law-against-witchhunts/article4779831.ece, 14 September 2013, The Hindu, 4 June 2013,

Recent cases

Between 2001 and 2006, an estimated 300 people were killed in the state of Assam.NEWS, Killing of women, child “witches” on rise, U.N. told,www.reuters.com/article/us-religion-witchcraft-idUSTRE58M4Q820090923, 13 September 2013, Reuters, 23 September 2009, Between 2005 and 2010, about 35 witchcraft related murders reportedly took place in Odisha’s Sundergarh district.NEWS, Witch Killings in Orissa District Cause Concern,news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=705806, Outlook (Indian magazine), Outlook, 21 December 2010, dead, 12 September 2021, 2 February 2014,news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=705806," title="web.archive.org/web/20140202175052news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=705806,">web.archive.org/web/20140202175052news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=705806, In October 2003, three women were branded as witch and humiliated, afterwards they all committed suicide in Kamalpura village in Muzaffarpur district in Bihar.NEWS, Three ‘witches’ kill themselves,news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3211535.stm, 13 September 2013, 24 October 2003, In August 2013, a couple were hacked to death by a group of people in Kokrajhar district in Assam.NEWS, In Assam, a rising trend of murders on allegations of witchcraft,www.ndtv.com/article/india/in-assam-a-rising-trend-of-murders-on-allegations-of-witchcraft-414016, 13 September 2013, NDTV, 4 September 2013, In September 2013, in the Jashpur district of Chhattisgarh, a woman was murdered and her daughter was raped on the allegation that they were practising black magic.NEWS, Girl raped, mom killed for her alleged indulgence in black magic in Chhattisgarh,articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-09-03/raipur/41725310_1_black-magic-jharkhand-jashpur,articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-09-03/raipur/41725310_1_black-magic-jharkhand-jashpur," title="web.archive.org/web/20130906085820articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-09-03/raipur/41725310_1_black-magic-jharkhand-jashpur,">web.archive.org/web/20130906085820articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-09-03/raipur/41725310_1_black-magic-jharkhand-jashpur, dead, 6 September 2013, 13 September 2013, The Times of India, 3 September 2013, A 2010 estimate places the number of women killed as witches in India at between 150 and 200 per year, or a total of 2,500 in the period of 1995 to 2009.The Hindu, Nearly 200 women killed every year after being branded witches, 26 July 2010. Herald Sun,200 ‘witches’ killed in India each year – report, 26 July 2010. The lynchings are particularly common in the poor northern states of Jharkhand,A Jharkhand case publicized in international media in 2009 concerned five Muslim women. BBC News, 30 October 2009. Bihar and the central state of Chhattisgarh.Witch hunts are also taking place among the tea garden workers in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal India.WEB,msutoday.msu.edu/news/2012/witch-hunts-targeted-by-grassroots-women/, Witch hunts targeted by grassroots women’s groups, The witch hunts in Jalpaiguri are less known, but are motivated by the stress in the tea industry on the lives of the adivasi workers.BOOK,rowman.com/ISBN/9780739149942, Witches, Tea Plantations, and Lives of Migrant Laborers in India: Tempest in a Teapot, In India, labeling a woman as a witch is a common ploy to grab land, settle scores or even to punish her for turning down sexual advances. In a majority of the cases, it is difficult for the accused woman to reach out for help and she is forced to either abandon her home and family or driven to commit suicide. Most cases are not documented because it is difficult for poor and illiterate women to travel from isolated regions to file police reports. Less than 2 percent of those accused of witch-hunting are actually convicted, according to a study by the Free Legal Aid Committee, a group that works with victims in the state of Jharkhand.Womensnews.org.Bailey, Frederick George 1994: The Witch-Hunt, or the Triumph of Morality. New York: Cornell University Press.

Nepal

Witch-hunts in Nepal are common, and are targeted especially against low-caste women.NEWS,www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/7241937/Witch-hunts-of-low-caste-women-in-Nepal.html,ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/7241937/Witch-hunts-of-low-caste-women-in-Nepal.html, 12 January 2022, subscription, live, Witch-hunts of low-caste women in Nepal, Deepesh Shrestha, in Pyutar for AFP, 15 February 2010, Telegraph.co.uk, {{cbignore}}WEB,www.whrin.org/nepal-a-study-on-violence-due-to-witchcraft-allegation-and-sexual-violence-2/, Nepal – A study on violence due to witchcraft allegation and sexual violence, 2013-07-31, WHRIN, 2019-08-26, The main causes of witchcraft-related violence include widespread belief in superstition, lack of education, lack of public awareness, illiteracy, caste system, male domination, and economic dependency of women on men. The victims of this form of violence are often beaten, tortured, publicly humiliated, and murdered. Sometimes, the family members of the accused are also assaulted.In 2010, Sarwa Dev Prasad Ojha, minister for women and social welfare, said, “Superstitions are deeply rooted in our society, and the belief in witchcraft is one of the worst forms of this.“NEWS,www.abc.net.au/news/2010-02-07/witch-hunt-victim-recounts-torture-ordeal/2580662, Witch-hunt victim recounts torture ordeal, ABC News, 2010-02-07,

Sub-Saharan Africa

{{Further|Witchcraft accusations against children in Africa}}In many societies of Sub-Saharan Africa, the fear of witches drives periodic witch-hunts during which specialist witch-finders identify suspects, with death by lynching often the result.JOURNAL, Diwan, Mohammed, 2004-07-01, Conflict between State Legal Norms and Norms Underlying Popular Beliefs: Witchcraft in Africa as a Case Study,scholarship.law.duke.edu/djcil/vol14/iss2/5, Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law, 14, 2, 351–388, 1053-6736, Countries particularly affected by this phenomenon include South Africa,THESIS, Doctorate of Psychology, Ally, Yaseen, Witchcraft accusations in South Africa: A feminist psychological exploration, 2014, University of South Africa,uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/13863 Witch-hunts against children were reported by the BBC in 1999 in the CongoNEWS, Congo witch-hunt’s child victims,news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/575178.stm, 22 December 1999, 16 April 2007, BBC News, and in Tanzania, where the government responded to attacks on women accused of being witches for having red eyes.NEWS, Tanzania arrests ‘witch killers’,news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3209047.stm, 23 October 2003, 16 April 2007, BBC News, It is believed that any aged, old woman with red eyes is a witch, 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.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 of Zambia.A Modern Movement of Witch Finders Audrey I Richards (Africa: Journal of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, Ed. Diedrich Westermann.) Vol VIII, 1935, published by Oxford University Press, London. 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 witch-finders 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 to 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 wartings, 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.{{Citation needed|date=December 2008}}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.PERIODICAL,hayesfam.bravehost.com/WITCH1.HTM, Christian responses to witchcraft and sorcery, Stephen Hayes archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060703031213hayesfam.bravehost.com/WITCH1.HTM date= November 1995 volume= 23 pages= 339–354, Cameroon has re-established witchcraft-accusations in courts after its independence in 1967.{{efn|BOOK,books.google.com/books?id=dxzIIldBB1gC&pg=PA401, 401–422 Section 251 of the Cameroonian penal code, 26 August 2004, 9780815336709, Levack, Brian P., Routledge, (introduced 1967).BOOK, Cyprian F., Fisiy, Containing occult practices: Witchcraft trials in Cameroon, New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology: Witchcraft in the modern world, 6, Levack, Brian P., 2001, Two other provisions of the penal code [translation] “state that witchcraft may be an aggravating factor for dishonest acts” (Afrik.com 26 August 2004). A person convicted of witchcraft may face a prison term of 2 to 10 years and a fine.WEB,www.unhcr.org/refworld/publisher,IRBC,,CMR,440ed6e819,0.html,www.unhcr.org/refworld/publisher,IRBC,,CMR,440ed6e819,0.html," title="archive.today/20120914094636www.unhcr.org/refworld/publisher,IRBC,,CMR,440ed6e819,0.html,">archive.today/20120914094636www.unhcr.org/refworld/publisher,IRBC,,CMR,440ed6e819,0.html, dead, 2012-09-14, Cameroon: Witchcraft in Cameroon; tribes or geographical areas in which witchcraft is practised; the government’s attitude, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2004, Whereas witchcraft cases in the colonial era, especially in former British Central Africa, were based on the official dogma that witchcraft is an illusion (so that people invoking witchcraft would be punished as either impostors or slanderers), in contemporary legal practice in Africa witchcraft appears as a reality and as an actionable offence in its own right.WEB, Wim, van Binsbergen,www.shikanda.net/african_religion/witchtxt.htm,www.shikanda.net/african_religion/witchtxt.htm," title="web.archive.org/web/20030511000417www.shikanda.net/african_religion/witchtxt.htm,">web.archive.org/web/20030511000417www.shikanda.net/african_religion/witchtxt.htm, dead, 2003-05-11, Shikanda.net, Witchcraft in Modern Africa, 2002, }}It was reported on 21 May 2008 that in Kenya a mob had burnt to death at least 11 people accused of witchcraft.NEWS,www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL21301127, Mob burns to death 11 Kenyan “witches”, Reuters, 2008-05-21, dmy-all, In March 2009, Amnesty International reported that up to 1,000 people in the Gambia had been abducted by government-sponsored “witch doctors” on charges of witchcraft, and taken to detention centers where they were forced to drink poisonous concoctions.WEB,www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/gambia-hundreds-accused-%E2%80%9Cwitchcraft%E2%80%9D-and-poisoned-government-campaign-20, The Gambia: Hundreds accused of “witchcraft” and poisoned in government campaign, 18 March 2009, dead,www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/gambia-hundreds-accused-%E2%80%9Cwitchcraft%E2%80%9D-and-poisoned-government-campaign-20," title="web.archive.org/web/20141223175800www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/gambia-hundreds-accused-%E2%80%9Cwitchcraft%E2%80%9D-and-poisoned-government-campaign-20,">web.archive.org/web/20141223175800www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/gambia-hundreds-accused-%E2%80%9Cwitchcraft%E2%80%9D-and-poisoned-government-campaign-20, 23 December 2014, On 21 May 2009, The New York Times reported that the alleged witch-hunting campaign had been sparked by the Gambian President, Yahya Jammeh.NEWS,www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/africa/21gambia.html?ref=africa, Witch Hunts and Foul Potions Heighten Fear of Leader in Gambia, Adam, Nossiter, The New York Times, 2009-05-20, dmy-all, In Sierra Leone, the witch-hunt is an occasion for a sermon by the kÉ›mamÉ”i (native Mende witch-finder) on social ethics : “Witchcraft ... takes hold in people’s lives when people are less than fully open-hearted. All wickedness is ultimately because people hate each other or are jealous or suspicious or afraid. These emotions and motivations cause people to act antisocially”.Studia Instituti Anthropos, Vol. 41. Anthony J. Gittins : Mende Religion. Steyler Verlag, Nettetal, 1987. p. 197. The response by the populace to the kÉ›mamÉ”i is that “they valued his work and would learn the lessons he came to teach them, about social responsibility and cooperation.”Studia Instituti Anthropos, Vol. 41. Anthony J. Gittins : Mende Religion. Steyler Verlag, Nettetal, 1987. p. 201.

Figurative use of the term

{{see also|Siege mentality|Victimisation}}The term ‘witch-hunt’ can be used as a metaphor for the ostracism of a person or group, often based on their political persuasions. Specific terms include ‘Stalinist witch-hunt’Jackie Mansky, ‘The True Story of the Death of Stalin’, Smithsonian.com, 10 October 2017 and ‘McCarthyite witch-hunt’.Arthur Miller, “Why I wrote ‘The Crucible’”, The New Yorker, 13 October 1996 The Telegraph has compared cancel culture to “modern-day witch trials”.NEWS, Telegraph Video, 2021-02-05, Is cancel culture the modern-day witch trials?, en-GB, The Telegraph,www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/cancel-culture-modern-day-witch-trials/,ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/cancel-culture-modern-day-witch-trials/, 12 January 2022, subscription, live, 2021-10-18, 0307-1235, {{cbignore}} Former US president Donald Trump frequently used the term on Twitter, referring to various investigationsWEB, Al-Arshani, Sarah, Trump calls New York criminal probe a ‘witch hunt’ and claims a poll shows he is the frontrunner in 2024, May 25, 2021,www.businessinsider.com/trump-calls-new-york-criminal-probe-a-witch-hunt-2021-5, 2021-09-19, Business Insider, en-US, NEWS, Shear, Michael D., Savage, Charlie, Haberman, Maggie, 2017-06-16, Trump Attacks Rosenstein in Latest Rebuke of Justice Department, en-US, The New York Times,www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/politics/trump-investigation-comey-russia.html, 2021-09-19, 0362-4331, and the impeachment proceedings against him as witch-hunts.WEB, Trump calls impeachment effort ‘greatest witch hunt’,www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/trump-calls-impeachment-effort-greatest-witch-hunt/2107634, 2021-09-19, www.aa.com.tr, NEWS, Trump calls impeachment case a ‘witch hunt’ and hints at a political return, en-US, Washington Post,www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-impeach-senate-maga/2021/02/13/d598968e-6e1b-11eb-9ead-673168d5b874_story.html, 2021-09-19, 0190-8286, NEWS, Markham-Cantor, Alice, 2019-10-28, What Trump Really Means When He Cries ‘Witch Hunt’, The Nation, en-US,www.thenation.com/article/archive/trump-witch-hunt/, 2021-09-19, 0027-8378, During his presidency he used the phrase over 330 times.WEB, Almond, Philip C., You think this is a witch hunt, Mr President? That’s an insult to the women who suffered,theconversation.com/you-think-this-is-a-witch-hunt-mr-president-thats-an-insult-to-the-women-who-suffered-129775, 2021-09-19, The Conversation, 20 January 2020, en, The National Rifle Association of America used the term in an unsuccessful bid to dismiss the New York attorney general’s lawsuit against the organization for alleged fraud.WEB, Gregorian, Dareh, 2022-06-10, Judge dismisses NRA’s claims that it’s the victim of NY AG ‘witch hunt’,www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/judge-dismisses-nras-claims-victim-ny-ag-witch-hunt-rcna33010, 2022-06-11, NBC News, en,

List of witch trials

{{incomplete list|date=March 2017}}{{see also|List of people executed for witchcraft|Category:Witch trials}}

• Amersfoort and Utrecht witch trials
• (:nl:Heksenprocessen te Asten|Asten witch trial (in Dutch))
• Basque witch trials
• Bideford witch trial
• Bredevoort witch trials
• Derenburg witch trials
• Islandmagee witch trial
• Liechtenstein witch trials
• North Berwick witch trials
• Northern Moravia witch trials
• Orkney witch trials
• Pendle witches
• Ramsele witch trial
• Roermond witch trial
• Salem witch trials
• Spa witch trial
• St Osyth Witches
• TorsÃ¥ker witch trials
• Trier witch trials
• Vardø witch trials as part of the Christianization of the Sámi people
• Wiesensteig witch trial
• Witches of Warboys
• Würzburg witch trial

See also

{hide}columns-list|colwidth=15em|

• {{annotated link|Ecclesiastical court{edih}
• {{annotated link|Femicide}}
• {{annotated link|Gendercide}}
• {{annotated link|Feminist interpretations of the Early Modern witch trials}}
• {{annotated link|European witchcraft}}
• {{annotated link|Execution by burning}}
• {{annotated link|Christianity and paganism}}
• {{annotated link|Christian views on magic}}
• {{annotated link|Conspiracy theory}}
• {{annotated link|Magic and religion}}
• {{annotated link|Moral panic}}
• {{annotated link|Satanic panic}}
• {{annotated link|Scapegoating}}
• {{annotated link|Trial by ordeal}}
• {{annotated link|Medical explanations of bewitchment}}
• {{annotated link|Auto-da-fé|Auto-da-fé}}
• {{annotated link|Donas de fuera}}
• {{annotated link|Marie-Josephte Corriveau}}
• {{annotated link|Pierre de Lancre}}
• {{annotated link|The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street|“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street“}}
• {{annotated link|West Memphis Three}}
• {{annotated link|Witch trials in the early modern period}}
• {{annotated link|Salem witch trials}}
• {{annotated link|Modern witch-hunts}}
• {{annotated link|Witch-hunts in Nepal}}
• {{annotated link|Women and religion}}
• {{annotated link|Women in Christianity}}
• {{annotated link|The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope}}
• {{annotated link|Kiki’s Delivery Service}}

}}

Footnotes

{{notelist|25em}}

References

{{reflist|25em}}

Further reading

• Andreassen, Reidun Laura and Liv Helene Willumsen (eds.), Steilneset Memorial. Art Architecture History. Stamsund: Orkana, 2014. {{ISBN|978-82-8104-245-2}}
• Behringer, Wolfgang. Witches and Witch Hunts: A Global History. Malden Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2004.
• Briggs, K.M. Pale Hecate’s Team, an Examination of the Beliefs on Witchcraft and Magic among Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and His Immediate Successors. New York: The Humanities Press, 1962.
• 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.
• Burns, William E. Witch hunts in Europe and America: an encyclopedia (2003)
• Cohn, Norman. (Europe’s Inner Demons|Europe’s Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt) (1975), Revised Edition: Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993.
• Durrant, Jonathan B. Witchcraft, Gender, and Society in Early Modern Germany, Leiden: Brill, 2007.
• BOOK, Silvia Federici, Federici, Silvia, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation, Autonomedia, 2004, 1-57027-059-7, Brooklyn, NY,
• Golden, William, ed. Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition (4 vol. 2006) 1270pp; 758 short essays by scholars.
• BOOK, Goode, Erich, Ben-Yahuda, Nachman, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance,archive.org/details/moralpanicssocia0000good, registration, Wiley-Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, 1994, 978-0-631-18905-3,
• Gouges, Linnea de, Witch hunts and State Building in Early Modern Europe (2018)
• Klaits, Joseph. Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985
• Levack, Brian P. The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661–1662, The Journal of British Studies, Vol. 20, No, 1. (Autumn, 1980), pp. 90–108.
• Levack, Brian P. The witch hunt in early modern Europe, 3rd ed., London and New York: Longman, 2006.
• Macfarlane, Alan. Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A regional and Comparative Study. New York and Evanston: Harper & Row Publishers, 1970.
• Midlefort, Erick H.C. Witch Hunting in Southeastern Germany 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundation. California: Stanford University Press, 1972. {{ISBN|0-8047-0805-3}}
• JOURNAL, Monter, William, 1972, The Historiography of European Witchcraft: Progress and Prospect, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2, 4, 435–451, 10.2307/202315, 202315,
• Oberman, H. A., J. D. Tracy, Thomas A. Brady (eds.), Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Visions, Programs, Outcomes (1995) {{ISBN|90-04-09761-9}}
• Oldridge, Darren (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader (2002) {{ISBN|0-415-21492-0}}
• Poole, Robert. The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories (2002) {{ISBN|0-7190-6204-7}}
• 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: Routledge, 1996, pp. 7–29.
• Robisheaux, Thomas. The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. (2009) {{ISBN|978-0-393-06551-0}}
• Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World, Random House, 1996. {{ISBN|0-394-53512-X}}
• David W. Thompson, “Sister Witch: The Life of Moll Dyer” (2017 Solstice Publishing) {{ISBN| 978-1973105756}}
• Thurston, Robert. The Witch Hunts: A History of the Witch Persecutions in Europe and North America. Pearson/Longman, 2007.
• Purkiss, Diane. The Bottom of the Garden, Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things. Chapter 3 Brith and Death: Fairies in Scottish Witch-trials New York: New York University Press, 2000, pp. 85–115.
• West, Robert H. Reginald Scot and Renaissance Writings. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984.
• Willumsen, Liv Helene. The Witchcraft Trials in Finnmark, Northern Norway. Bergen: Skald, 2010. {{ISBN|978-82-7959-152-8}}
• Willumsen, Liv Helene. Witches of the North:Scotland and Finnmark. Leiden: Brill, 2013. {{ISBN|9789004252912}}. E-{{ISBN|9789004252929}}
• Winkler, Albert (2023) “Judicial Murder: The Witch-Craze in Germany and Switzerland,” Swiss American Historical Society Review, Vol. 59: No. 1, Available at:scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol59/iss1/2

External links

{{wiktionary|witch-hunt}}{{commons category|Witch hunts}}

• 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia entry on “Witchcraft”
• Douglas Linder (2005), www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/witchhistory.html" title="web.archive.org/web/20090603030841www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/witchhistory.html">A Brief History of Witchcraft Persecutions before Salem

{{Witch Hunt}}{{Witchcraft}}{{Authority control}}