History of Europe

Witchcraft trials:where did they come from and how did they unfold?

This article on the witch trials is an excerpt from my new book, Yesterday's Fake News. Crazy conspiracy theories from history"

The belief in witches and the witch trials that follow from it are a myth unparalleled in history. In his time and space, he was believed by such a large part of the population that in the end tens of thousands of innocent people lost their lives. When witch trials emerged in early modern Europe, they were an entirely new phenomenon. The belief in magic is much older in human history. From the earliest times people have believed in supernatural powers, in things that are beyond our comprehension. In Babylonia, in Egypt, in Rome, everywhere there was such a belief in magic that has established itself in the form of religions and superstitions. In its early days, the Christian Church was actually a rare exception to this rule, even if it is hard to believe today. The early church saw the belief in magic, namely the belief in witches and wizards, as a superstition that contradicted the core of Christian teaching. But that changed over the years. At the time of the witch trials things looked very different.

So when exactly did this belief in witches emerge in modern times, as we still imagine it today? As I said (and that is not so often in history) this can be clearly classified both in terms of time and space. Geographically, witch hunts primarily occurred in the Holy Roman Empire, which includes modern-day Germany and Austria, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and to a lesser extent England and what later became the United States, then the English colonies of North America. In southern and eastern Europe, on the other hand, these were virtually non-existent. In terms of time, the phenomenon is also clearly limited to around 300 years, from 1450 to 1750, i.e. more or less the entire period that we call the early modern period. A high point was the hundred years between 1550 and 1650. Before this time, as already mentioned, there was already a widespread belief in magic, but the belief in witches in the form we know today was new. It was not at all clear what exactly a witch was supposed to be until the 14th century and even the word witch does not go back much further than that time. The basis for what would then constitute the belief in witches and lead to the witch trials was laid in the Middle Ages. Because the belief in witches goes back to the idea of ​​making a pact with the devil.

Paint the devil on the wall

This pact with the devil—the idea that individuals could make a deal with the devil, thereby buying themselves superhuman benefits—did not appear until a few centuries earlier. In the 13th century, the great ecclesiastical scholar Thomas Aquinas specified these ideas and also took the opportunity to add what constituted a witch or a magician apart from the devil's pact. He was the first influential author to write down exactly what had to be given for someone to be considered a witch or wizard. He mentioned, for example, animal transformation, flying, making weather, i.e. changing the weather, and the use of harmful magic. Much of this probably sounds familiar to you:it is the image of witches that is still familiar today. But one more thing you can see from the story:how superstitious a church scholar like Thomas Aquinas was at that time. So we are miles away from the attitudes of early Christianity and its rejection of the belief in magic. But the question still arises. Why didn't witch hunts start in the supposedly dark Middle Ages? Why only a few centuries later? Of course, one cannot say that exactly either, but one can assume that the idea of ​​the witch trials is not only based on the theoretical ideas of scholars. The living conditions of the people also have an enormous influence on whether such a belief can spread. And they got progressively worse.

In the 15th century, what is now known as the “little ice age” began in Central Europe. This was a weather phase that lasted several centuries and was unusually cold with wet and cool summers and exceptionally harsh winters. The consequences were crop failures and widespread famine. One theory is that people sought culprits for their everyday suffering and eventually found culprits in witches and wizards. Sections of the church jumped on this trend, but by and large, subsequent witch hunts were almost always carried out by villagers or townsfolk. So the movement came from below and was not - as is often claimed - directed by the Church or the Inquisition. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church was not uninvolved in what followed. There was a direct connection from the witch hunts to the church and this connection even has a name:Heinrich Kramer.

He had been appointed by the church as an inquisitor in southern Germany to promote the persecution of heretics there, but in the process he bit his teeth into the witches. In addition to the persecution of heretics promoted by the church, he also pushed the persecution of witches. Then, in the 1480s, Heinrich Kramer wrote a book that would have the greatest influence on the witch trials that followed:the Hexenhammer, originally titled (much less pompously) Malleus Maleficarum. In it, Kramer not only wrote down again what makes a witch and how she could be convicted, but above all how she was then to be punished. At a time when book printing was just beginning to triumph, the Hexenhammer became one of the first bestsellers in human history. It was only replaced almost half a century later by Luther's translation of the Bible. But what exactly did Kramer write in this book? Basically quite simple:that the devil is personally behind the witchcraft and wants to herald the end of the world. To be honest, I don't understand why that was such a problem for Kramer. Actually, the Christian church was pretty excited about the end of times at the time. There are still enough groups today that are just waiting ... But good:For Kramer, the end of the world was obviously a threat that had to be countered. And with the witch's hammer, he showed the world exactly how it could do that. Nothing stood in the way of witch hunts.

How did witch trials work?

The course of a witch trial was always quite similar in the next centuries. Allegations of witchcraft mostly came from within the local community itself. And if you know anything about group dynamics, you can imagine who tended to be the victims:those people who lived nonconformistly and didn't behave exactly like the rest of the community. In short:the weakest in society. These initial suspicions, which often circulated through the village or town for years, were eventually followed by a complaint. This came either directly from the rumor mill or often by naming other suspects. In the course of their torture, the accused arbitrarily named “co-conspirators” who allegedly worked with them on the plot of the witches and the devil. Of course, they often named names that were already circulating. That was the most believable.

In the process itself, a handful of witch tests were usually used. But what you often see in American films, that a witch is chased over a cliff armed with a broom, wasn't one of them. Instead, for example, the Crucible was used. The accused had to touch a red-hot piece of metal, and if the person was burned, they were a witch. Because God would save an innocent person from being burned! Another test was the water test. For this, the suspect was thrown into a body of water and if he swam up, it was a witch. So we can say:It was all pretty arbitrary and in the end the outcome of these "trials" didn't matter anyway. In the legal understanding of the time, only the confession counted.

Completely no matter how the witch tests turned out, the interrogation was carried out afterwards and only with the confession of the interrogated, the interrogated, there was a judiciary. And "interrogation" only sounds like a fair trial at first glance. But this idea does not even apply to the first phase:the amicable interrogation. As a suspect you could answer questions and openly admit that you were a witch. But if you didn't do that, the second phase was to show the torture devices. And if you still didn't speak, the embarrassing interrogation followed. That's the nice old word for torture. If you were then under torture at some point, the witches were usually burned or the person was simply hanged. However, if one did not confess under torture, the accused were released again and again. You can probably imagine the state in which this happened.

Who performed the processes?

From the 18th century, however, the practice was questioned more and more often because the Enlightenment was slowly coming in, which could not derive the belief in witches quite so pragmatically. But that doesn't mean that there weren't critics before that, at the height of the witch trials. From the beginning of the witch craze there were also voices who were of the opinion that witchcraft could not exist at all. They represented this conviction mostly out of a Christian faith. After all, skills like making the weather were reserved for God alone. Even the devil and, accordingly, witches could not accomplish such a thing. However, as already mentioned, the Church was rather divided on the matter. She was partly involved in the persecutions, since, as with Heinrich Kramer, the boundary between the inquisition against heretics and the persecution of witches was often a blurred one.

But by and large, the local community was the driving factor behind the craze, not the church. On the other hand, those who were by no means uninvolved were the secular rulers and their administrators. After all, who carried out the witch trials? It was secular courts where the "witches" were tried, especially in small principalities! One reason was that these states had the least educated legal professionals, which meant that many trials ended quite unexpectedly. But once it started in one of these principalities, the witch craze soon spread to the neighboring principalities, since the residents there wanted their rulers to handle the danger of witches just as consistently as their neighbors.

You don't have to be loyal to the pope to hate witches

Another common misconception about witchcraft is that it has something to do with the Christian denomination. So that either in Protestant or in Catholic areas more witch trials took place and more people had to believe in it. However, that is not true. Witch hunts took place in both Protestant and Catholic areas, although there were differences. Interestingly, in Protestant areas such as Scandinavia, significantly more men were among the victims than further south. This could have been due to the fact that the Latin sources were translated and interpreted differently there, so that witches were mentioned less often and magicians more often. However, there were also executions of men in Catholic southern Germany, and children were often among the victims.

A good example is my former home town of Freising:In the 18th century, street children were burned there under the pretext of witchcraft, just because they were orphans and lived on the streets. Whether an area was Protestant or Catholic only made a limited difference in the persecutions. Outside the Christian area and also in orthodox Christianity there was no significant persecution of witches and they hardly occurred in Catholic southern Europe either. This in turn could be due to the fact that the harvests in the Little Ice Age were noticeably better there than in the north. The total number of victims of the witch trials is ultimately one of the misunderstandings on the subject. It has long been greatly exaggerated. Until a few decades ago, there was talk of millions of deaths. Estimates went up to nine million people. Realistically, however, it is assumed today that around 60,000 people were executed in these 300 years. About three quarters of them were women.

The Salem Witch Trials

Finally, to give a concrete example of how such a witch trial might have happened, I would like to share another classic story with you:The Salem witch trials. Salem is a settlement in New England, which is now part of Massachusetts. The trials took place there in 1692, and pretty much all of the conditions I've talked about so far apply to this case as well. There was a constant threat of attack from Native Americans in Salem, who, not entirely inexplicably, were resentful that these settlers had established themselves there. In addition, the political position of the settlement was questioned shortly before the trials. At that time, the Glorious Revolution was taking place in motherland England and William of Orange became the new king. As a result, it was now unclear whether Salem's charter of incorporation was still valid or whether it needed to be revoked. Thus the place lived in double insecurity, not to mention the general supply difficulties of the North American settlers.

The story of the trials then begins in the winter of 1691. One day, two girls from the village started talking strangely and crawling on the ground. After doctors had been called, but they didn't really have an explanation ready, the suspicion quickly arose:demon possession. The puritanical local pastor immediately exercised caution and declared the entire village to be possessed by the devil. The two girls were pressed to name the witches responsible for their possession. They did. They named three women from the village who were already known in the community. They all fell into the classic category:people who were not particularly deeply rooted in the village community and some of whom had only been living in Salem for a short time. From then on, the situation developed like a snowball. Each suspect gave new names, and over the next few months, nearly 200 people in this small village of 2,000 to 3,000 people were accused of making a pact with the devil. Twenty of them were also executed. The Salem witch trials are thus a typical example of how such a witch trial usually proceeded.

So what were the reasons for the witch trials?

I think the reason for the early modern witch hunts is to be found in a combination of factors. The changing climate, the deteriorating living conditions, the deep-rooted superstitions, the search for easy scapegoats and then - and this should not be underestimated - local conflicts. It was certainly the case in many places that people wanted to get rid of their adversaries by denouncing them as witches. Interpersonal conflicts in the settlements were thus “solved” in this way. In the end, this unfortunate combination probably led to the fact that around 60,000 people had to die over these 300 years.

The witch trials and belief in witches show the power that collective fear can have and the power that social exclusion has. A marginalized group of people who were not well integrated into the villages and towns, perhaps new residents or in some way non-conforming, could easily become the target of large-scale persecution here. The states, in turn, were willing to participate in this madness. In this case we can actually say:There were 60,000 deaths and that without any great plan by any single actor. And that should make everyone think. Witch-hunting has also - and this is at least as remarkable - demonstrated extreme longevity. Even today, each of us has an idea of ​​what a witch is. It even goes so far that whenever a Donald Trump talks about his "persecution," he speaks of a witch hunt. Many of these ideas go back to exactly that time and many of the ideas even go back directly to Heinrich Kramer's Hexenhammer. After almost 600 years, that's a remarkable fact.