European Witch Hunts

From 1230 to 1430, under the influence of scholasticism, the doubts about the possibility and reality of witchcraft gradually vanish, while the practice of the Inquisition instills the new conception into the popular mind and produces the impression that a great recrudescence of witchcraft was in progress.  Early in this time period, witchcraft was still superstition for the canon law, a civil wrong for the secular law.  Although these ideas still persisted, all magic was held to be heresy. Its reality and heretical nature was expressly maintained by Thomas Aquinas.  Already in 1258 the inquisitors took cognizance of magic as heresy, and from 1320 onwards there was a great increase in. the number of cases. At first the witch was handed over to the secular arm for execution, either as an obstinate heretic or as the worker of evil magic; later it was found necessary to make provision for the numerous cases in which the offender abjured; it was decided that repentance due to fear did not release the witch from the consequences of her heresy.

Later in this time period the jurisdiction passed in France from the spiritual to the secular courts by a decision of the parliament of Paris in 1391. The inquisitors did not, however, resign their work, but extended their sphere of operations; the great European persecution from 1434 to 1447 was ecclesiastical as well as secular. From 1430 onwards the opening of which is marked by this attempt to root out witchcraft, we find that the work of the scholastics and inquisitors has resulted in the complete fusion of originally distinct ideas and the crystallization of our modern idea of witch. To the methods of the inquisitors must be ascribed in great part the spread of these conceptions amongst the people; for the Malleus Male ficarum or Inquisitor’s Manual (1489), following closely on the important bull Summis desiderantes affectibus (Innocent VIII., 1484), gave them a handbook from which they plied their tortured victims with questions and were able to extract such confessions as they desired; by a strange perversion these admissions, wrung from their victims by rack or thumb-screw, were described as voluntary.

The subsequent history of witchcraft may be treated in less detail. In England the trials were most numerous in the 17th century; but the absence of judicial torture made the cases proportionately less numerous than they were on the European continent. One of the most famous witch-finders was Matthew Hopkins, himself hanged for witchcraft after a career of some three years. Many of his methods were not far removed from actual torture; he pricked the body of the witch to find anaesthetic areas; other signs were the inability to shed tears, or repeat the Lord’s Prayer, the practice of walking backwards or against the sun, throwing the hair loose, intertwining the fingers, &c. Witches were also weighed against the Bible, or thrown into water, the thumbs and toes tied crosswise, and those who did not sink were adjudged guilty; a very common practice was to shave the witch, perhaps to discover insensible spots, but more probably because originally the familiar spirit was supposed to cling to the hair. The last English trial for witchcraft was in 1712, when Jane Wenham was convicted, but not executed. Occasional cases of lynching continue to occur, even at the present day.

In Scotland trials, accompanied by torture, were very frequent in the 17th century. A famous witch-finder was Kincaid. The last trial and execution took place in 1722.

In New England there was a remarkable outburst of fanaticism

—the famous Salem witchcraft delusion—in 1691—1692; but many of the prisoners were not convicted and some of the convicts received the governor’s pardon (see SALEM, MASS.).

On the continent of Europe the beginning of the 16th century saw the trial of witchcraft cases taken out of the hands of the Inquisition in France and Germany, and the influence of the Malleus became predominant in these countries. Among famous continental trials may be mentioned that of a woman named Voisin in 1680, who was burnt alive for poisoning, in connection with the Marquise de Brinvilliers. Trials and executions did not finally cease till the end of the 18th century. In Spain a woman was burnt in 1781 at Seville by the Inquisition; the secular courts condemned a girl to decapitation in 1782; in Germany an the execution took place in Posen in 1793. In South America and Mexico witch-burning seems to have lasted till well on into the second half of the 19th century, the latest instance apparently being in 1888 in Peru.

The total number of victims of the witch persecutions is variously estimated- at from 100,000 to several millions. If it is true that Benedict Carpzov (1595—1666) passed sentence on 20,000 victims, the former figure is undoubtedly too low.