Medieval Witch Hunts

In US history, the Puritans of colonial Massachusetts believed in the supernatural powers of witches, and that they were demonically or Satanically inspired, and therefore contrary to Christianity. The witch trials of Salem, MA occurred in 1692 and 1693.

They often didn't fit in; they owned cat; they worked with herbs and medicine.

I believe that Giles Corey in Salem Massachusetts was the only person tortured to death.

No, since werewolves do not exist.

-----

There were werewolf trials, much as there were witch trials. And like most of the witch trials, they typically happened long after the Middle Ages ended.

The Werewolf article in Wikipedia has no information on trials for people accused of being werewolves before the 16th century. It does have information on cures medieval people believed were effective. The link below is to the remedy section of the article.

Our records of witches in the Middle Ages are a bit different from what one might imagine.

Witches were people who practiced sorcery of various types, including anything from speaking to departed spirits, prophesying, or healing, to actually worshiping some spirit other than God. They were punished according to prevailing laws of different times and places. For most of the medieval time, witch burnings were not widely practiced.

During the Early Middle Ages (476-1000), the old laws, derived from Germanic laws, punished people who practiced witchcraft with fines. Those derived from Roman law punished with fines, or, if it could be proven a witch had actually killed someone with a curse, with death.

Charlemagne's law, actually protecting witches to some extent, prescribed death for anyone who punished witches by burning them, and so did Lombardic law.

During the High Middle Ages (1000-1300), the numbers of witches executed was rather low, because Christians were more focused on heretics within their own ranks.

During the Late Middle Ages (1300-1500), the Christians began to focus on the problem of witches, burning people, particularly women, who were suspect at the stake. Things got really bad in some places where men claimed to be experts on the subject and convinced local lords to pay them for each person they killed. The witch burnings, however, increased during the Renaissance.

See the link to a Wikipedia article below.

Matthew Hopkins didn't kill any witches. His evidence caused them to be found guilty in court and sentenced to hang by a judge and jury. The exact number is unknown but estimated to be somewhere around 300 accused, and 150 or so actually found guilty, and slightly less than that number executed due to judicial reprieves.

death of witch

---

Sadly, the death of a witch did not end the witch hunt. The witch hunt went on until all of the accused were dealt with, including those who were accused by people confessing under torture. The result was that hundreds of people could die in a single prosecution.

The reason for this was partly that people in a position to do so sometimes put bounties on the witches brought to justice, so people could enrich themselves by persecuting numbers of others in a really brutal fashion.

The thing that brought the whole movement to an end was clearly not because medieval superstitions were put aside; the witch hunts did not begin until more than 100 years after the Middle Ages ended. Nor was it a matter of the Age of Enlightenment coming; that began after the witch trials ended.

I think the end if witch hunts was more a matter of people getting sick and tired of the whole thing.

During the Salem witch trials, they didn't dunk the witches. That was a European thing. The Europeans believed that if you tied a supposed witch up and attached stones before putting them in the water. If they floated, the devil was holding them up and therefore they were a witch. If they sank, they were innocent and probably dead.

Witchcraft, or the Craft of the Witch is a spiritual path commonly found under the umbrella term Paganism.

The word witch is not gender specific so witches are both men and women.

Most witches follow some form of spiritual path that reveres nature, and celebrate the turning of the seasonal wheel and the phases of the moon. They also try to live conscientious, caring, ethical lives endeavoring to take responsibility for their words, actions and magics.

Many witches are polytheistic, actively revering both the male and female aspects of deity, although the pantheons will vary.

Some witches study, learn, teach, and practice some form or forms of magic, by tapping into and directing the power/energy of the earth and the universe.

A few witches follow spiritual paths that believe it is acceptable to use magic for purposes that are not necessarily kind, ethical, caring or benign.

All witches are human, subject to all the strengths and weaknesses of the human condition.

No one is perfect, not a witch nor a saint, but as with every spiritual path, witches endeavor to be the best person they can.

People who had practices that might be interpreted as witchcraft, or who might have been accused, were much more likely to be treated well during the Middle Ages than they were later.

A superstitious fear of witches has existed in many societies, and medieval Europe was no exception. There were cases of witches being killed by various groups of people, at times. And so it was necessary for governments to step in. The laws of the Franks and the Lombards, at the time of Charlemagne, explicitly made belief in witchcraft a superstition, and made killing a person for practicing witchcraft murder, unless it could be proven that the witch had actually killed someone.

The Middle Ages lasted a thousand years, and there were many countries, with many different legal codes, in it. There were countries where witchcraft was considered a crime. But this was not general over all of Europe, or even over all of Western Europe.

Inquisitions, or investigations, into witchcraft began in various parts of Europe at just about the same time as the Italian Renaissance. The early inquisitions were not aimed at large parts of populations, and were not witch hunts, as they only took place where there were accusations against individuals. No one was actively trying to look through everyone in town to find out who were witches, and who were not.

The inquisitions in which entire populations were put to the test did not happen until the Middle Ages were over. The first set of instructions on how to identify witches began to circulate in 1487, a year after the end date most historians use for the Middle Ages. Witch hunts, with large numbers of people identified as witches and punished for that practice, came after that.

I have seen estimates of that there were about 1000 people executed as witches during the Middle Ages, though such estimates are really professional guesses. The best estimates for the number of people executed as witches during the time of 1450 to 1750 seem to run from about 35000.

So the people of medieval Europe, who are commonly called superstitious, executed an average of one person per year in the entire continent. But the people of the European Renaissance and the years following, who are thought of as enlightened, executed an average of about 1100 to 1200.

they believe that they were evil and crazy and that they live alone in the woods with no honey moon cause they were too scared to go by that they would cast a spell on people hahaha kiss witches butts....................................

In Plilibelpia!

Yes. There was a witch that lived in the america's during the 17 century. It is believed that she lived for 100 years. Colminating the myth about her for years.

During early america, she was one of several witches that were spoken of in popular wica myths. Although here story is vage and unclear, many think that later she spoke to the lead singer of the rock band ALICE COOPER aka Vincent Furnier during a ouija board session that in the later 1960's the band changed its name from the Nazz to Alice Cooper and took on a more dark rock look.

4

witches were caught int he 16th and 17th century by being tested in different ways

because witches were very scary then people didnt think witches were very nice

they were burned alive

King James I had a profound interest in witchcraft, influenced by his belief in the supernatural and his personal experiences. His fascination intensified after the North Berwick witch trials in Scotland, where he believed witches conspired to kill him. This led him to author "Daemonologie" in 1597, a treatise defending the persecution of witches, and later to support the witch hunts in England. His reign reflected a broader societal fear of witchcraft, which was often exploited for political and social control.

It was a vile process of genocide that swept much of Europe in the 16th & 17th Centuries- principle nations involved were England, France, Spain, Germany and other Northern European nations, although some Central European countries such as present-day Romania, Poland and Hungary were also involved. It is one of the biggest genocidal campaigns in history, comparable to the Holocaust and Stalin's purges in it's intensity- over 9 million people died horribly, most of them women but including some men and even, I'm sorry to say, children and even animals. The USA also conducted witch-hunts in the early years of it's existence, but on a lesser scale than was done in Europe- it began and ended later in the US, dying out in the early 19th Century. The famous Salem Witch Trials were amongst the last to be conducted in the US.

A belief held widely in England in the middle ages was that a witch would not sink in water but people who weren't witches would sink. It was supposed to be a test to see who was a witch and who wasn't.

wheelchairs

Senator Joseph McCarthy is best known for his witch hunts against alleged communists in the early 1950s during the Red Scare in the United States. He targeted various individuals, including government officials, Hollywood figures, and members of the media, accusing them of being communist sympathizers or spies without substantial evidence. His aggressive tactics and unfounded accusations created a climate of fear and paranoia, leading to the blacklisting and ruin of many careers. Ultimately, McCarthy's actions are often seen as a violation of civil liberties and an abuse of power.

Witch hunts were motivated by superstitious fear. Since people in the middle ages had no understanding of most of the aspects of their lives, such as the causes of disease, the causes of bad weather, and so forth, they tried to explain everything in terms of supernatural causes. If something bad happened, it must be the result of a witch's curse. So, the witch had to be found and killed.

No. You just have exceptional observational skills, and recognize behavior without consciously being aware of how you actually have come into your knowledge.

because they found witches