Editor’s note: Part One of this essay was published on October 30, 2022. (Editor’s note: A different version of this article ran in CRISIS magazine in October 2001.
Witches Everywhere
How many people died in the great European witch-hunt? The old claim of nine million burned is flatly absurd, but it will never be possible to compute an exact death toll because records have been lost over the centuries. (War-ravaged Poland and Prussia are among the frustrating cases.) Some were never precise to begin with. (How many witches is “many”?) In addition to formal trials, a few thousand victims may have perished in unreported extra-judicial killings. When governments seemed too lenient, people took matters into their own hands as happened, for example, in Spain, France, and England. Historians’ best estimate is 50,000 executions from perhaps 100,000 formal trials between 1400 and 1780.
Those 50,000 casualties of the European witch-hunts were not distributed uniformly through time or space, even within particular jurisdictions. Three-quarters of Europe saw not a single trial. The overwhelming majority of trials that did take place clustered in the years 1570-1630—the length of a single lifetime. Witch persecution spread outward from its first center in alpine Italy in the early 15th century, guttering out in Poland, where witchcraft laws were finally repealed in 1788. The center had generally stopped trying witches before the peripheries even started.
Witch-fever could be chronic or acute. In Switzerland, the French-speaking Protestant canton of Vaud (population 70-80,000) steadily executed 1700 people, one-third of them men, over the course of a century (1558-1655). At the other extreme, the imperial abbey of St. Maximin, next to Trier, burned 400 of its 2200 subjects in one decade (1586-96) and another hundred in smaller panics later. In both cases, higher authorities failed to intervene.
Witch-hunting was erratic all across the Continent—and beyond. Three-quarters of all witchcraft trials took place in the Catholic-ruled territories of the Holy Roman Empire, yet Catholic Portugal, Castile, Naples, and the Orthodox lands of Eastern Europe saw almost none. In colonial times, New England held sixty-one witchcraft trials to execute at most 36 persons; a mere handful of trials in New France cost possibly one life. Scotland, with a population only one-fifth of England’s, executed 1,300-1,500 witches while England hanged about 500. As for disparity within a single political entity, during Habsburg rule over the Low Countries (1450-1685), the Duchy of Luxembourg burned more than twice as many witches as all the other provinces that would become today’s Belgium and the Netherlands combined.
Both Catholic and Protestant lands saw both light and heavy witch-hunts. But in the past, some Catholic apologists have exaggerated the scope of Protestant witch-hunting, such as instance the baseless claim that Queen Elizabeth I executed 800 witches a year. Did Protestants kill witches? Of course they did. Consider the harsh Scottish campaigns against witches. They not only dealt out death, they also inspired the thoroughly debunked theories of Margaret Murray that fed into modern Pagan fantasies about witchcraft.
But before casting aspersions, Catholics need to face—and deplore—the horrors inflicted by some Catholic ecclesiastical overlords in Germany as temporal rulers (1580-1640). Note that these trials were not conducted under canon law but in secular criminal courts that perverted or ignored the Imperial code. Here are some death figures from the realms of the worst “witch bishops:” in the prince-electorates of Trier (800), Mainz (1800), Cologne (2000); the prince-bishoprics of Bamberg (900) and Wûrzburg (1200). Determined to reform their recalcitrant flocks, these grim shepherds let fanatical or corrupt officials impose ghastly tortures and gather denunciations from village witch-finders.
Terrible as these situations were, they were outliers. Prince-bishops of lesser status seldom persecuted witches or heretics. The great imperial abbeys that spread Baroque culture staged no witch-hunts. Elsewhere in Germany, lax prelates, such as all the prince-abbots of Kempten, were too busy with their concubines to bother with witches.
The horrific fatality figures for what is now Germany—20,000 witches executed—make it the bloodiest country in absolute terms. But on a proportional basis, the worst witch-hunting place overall was Switzerland. Between 1420 and 1800, it put to death more than 3,500 people, twice the rate of Germany, ten times the rate of France, and almost a hundred times the rate of Italy. Not only was the Swiss rate higher, executions started earlier and lasted longer than anywhere else. The Canton of Vaud was the Protestant champion of witch-hunting and what is now the Canon of Ticino was the champion among Italian-speaking Europe. Finally, it was in the Alpine regions that the sins of sorcery and heresy fused, the idea of the Sabbat emerged, and the first major witch-hunt occurred, all in the early fifteenth century. The land of the Swiss was the fountainhead of the Early Modern Witch-hunt.
Regional Influences
Having quantified the scope of the European witch-hunting, let us examine factors driving the phenomenon.
Local factors, not religious loyalties, determined the severity of witch persecutions. Roman law on the continent was harsher than English common law. Prosecuting maleficium alone, as England and Scandinavia did, yielded fewer victims than prosecuting diabolism (Scotland and Germany) or white magic (Lorraine and France). Unlimited torture in Germany induced more confessions than the limited torture in the Franche-Comte region in France. English third-degree methods such as sleep-deprivation were also effective ways of raising the number of convictions.
Ignoring denunciations procured through torture preserved Denmark from Germany’s dreadful chain-reaction panics in which accused witches would in turn finger other witches. “Spectral evidence” from accusers’ dreams was a significant prosecution device in Salem. Finding a witch’s mark insensitive to pricking “or a witch’s teat,” on which familiars allegedly fed, secured convictions in Scotland and England; uncertainty about the credibility of witch’s marks won acquittals in Geneva. Child witnesses — often-malicious liars — proved deadly in Sweden, the Basque country in Spain, Germany, and England.
Professional witch-finders had dire impact. The best known of these freelance accusers was England’s Matthew Hopkins, who doomed up to 200 people from 1645 through 1647. But special inquisitors or investigative committees were also lethal. Local judges were usually harsher than professional jurists from outside the community. Reviews of convictions by central authorities spared accused witches in Denmark, France, Sweden, and Austria. An informal appeal from ministers outside Salem halted the panic there.
Witch-hunting was typically part of broader campaigns to repress unruly behavior and impose religious orthodoxies. The hunt played out in a world of shrinking opportunities for ordinary folk. Early modern village economies were often zero-sum games, where the death of a cow could ruin a family. Peasants were locked in face-to-face contact with their neighbor-enemies. Feuds could last for generations.
The poorest and most common targets of the witch-hunts, social subordinates and even children sometimes turned the tables by accusing their wealthy superiors of witchcraft.
Women were more prominent than men at witchcraft trials, both as accused and as accusers. Not only did Sprenger’s image of women as the more lustful and malicious sex generate suspicions; the fact that women had a lower social status than men made them easier to accuse. In most regions, about 80 percent of the alleged witches killed were female. Women were then as likely to be accused witches as men were to be saints or violent criminals. That was because women typically fought with curses instead of steel. Although the stereotype did not always fit, the British witch was usually seen as irascible, aggressive, unneighborly, and often repulsive — hardly the gentle healer of neopagan fantasy. Her colorful curses could blight everything down to “the little pig that lieth in the sty.” She magnified her powers to frighten others and extort favors. If she could not be loved, she meant to be feared.
Alternatively, the witches of Lorraine were said to be “fine and crafty, careful not to quarrel with people or threaten them.” Effusive compliments were signs of suspected witchcraft in Lorraine, and suppressed anger could be ominous. Being innocent of the impossible crimes associated with witchcraft did not necessarily mean that witch-hunt victims were “nice.” Some were prostitutes, beggars, or petty criminals. Austria’s Zauberjaeckl trials (1675-1690) punished as witches people who were actually dangerous felons such as the Magic Jacket Society. The Society was a Baroque version of the Hell’s Angels, recruiting waifs whom it controlled through black magic, sodomy, and conjurations with mice. The prince-archbishop of Salzburg, Austria, graciously forbade executing members of the Society who were under the age of twelve. But 200 others were put to death.
Panic and Torture
Witch-hunting could be endemic or epidemic. Its dynamics varied. Small panics (fewer than 20 victims) tended to occur in villages worried about maleficium. Their victims were often poor, obnoxious persons whose removal the rest of the community applauded.
If small panics fed on long-smoldering fears about neighbors, large ones exploded without warning, killing people of all classes and conditions and rupturing social bonds. The worst examples of this were in Germany, where unlimited use of torture (in defiance of imperial law) produced an ever-expanding wave of denunciations. To object was to court death.
Large witch-panics started with the usual obscure suspects and worked up the social scale to prosperous citizens, reputable matrons, high-ranking clerics, town officials, and even judges. The longer a panic lasted, the higher was the proportion of male and wealthy victims.
According to the Dutch Jesuit Cornelius van Loos, confiscations from suspected witches in large panics could “coin gold and silver from human blood,” Youngsters were legally old enough to burn as soon as they could distinguish “gold from an apple.” Children as young as nine were burned in Wurzburg, including the bishop’s nephew, and boys ages three and four were imprisoned as Satan’s catamites.
Unspeakable tortures were routine. Confessing “without torture” in Germany meant without torture that drew blood. Nearly all who underwent this broke, even the blameless.
Yet witches sometimes did turn themselves in and confess spontaneously, the equivalent of today’s “suicide by police.” The same melancholy, frustration, and despair that they claimed had driven them into the devil’s arms brought them willingly to the stake. They had apparently come to believe the wish-fulfillment fantasies of pleasure and revenge enacted in the theaters of their minds. Nevertheless, they still hoped to save their souls through pain.
A few brave men spoke up for justice. In 1563, Johann Weyer, a Protestant court physician, drew attention to the cruelty of the trials and the mental incompetence of many of the accused. English country gentleman Reginald Scot mocked witchcraft as popish nonsense in 1584. In 1631, the Jesuit Friedrich von Spec, confessor to witches burned at Mainz, proclaimed them innocent victims. Van Loos, witness to the horrors of witchcraft trials at Trier, had his manuscript confiscated in 1592 before it could be published and was himself imprisoned and banished.
Ironically, a judge of the Spanish Inquisition named Alonso Salazar Frías mounted the most dramatic challenge to the witch-craze. In 1610, when a cascading panic engulfed almost 2,000 people including 1,500 children in the Spanish Basque country, Salazar used basic detective techniques and sound logic to demonstrate that witches were simply an artifact of witch-hunting. “There were neither witches nor bewitched until they were talked and written about,” he argued. The Supreme Council of the Inquisition agreed in 1614. It released the accused and permanently forbade the execution of witches. Although Salazar’s report remained unpublished, he had snuffed out countless pyres.
Cooling Ashes
Slowly, the critics were vindicated, and ashes cooled all across Europe during the 18th century. This was no simple triumph of Enlightenment wisdom. Witch beliefs persisted — as they do today — but witches no longer faced stakes, gallows, or swords. The great witch-panics had left a kind of psychic weariness in their wake. Realizing that innocents had been cruelly sent to their deaths, people no longer trusted their courts’ judgments. As Montaigne had written 200 years earlier, “It is putting a very high price on one’s conjectures to have a man roasted alive because of them.” What could please the Devil more than the destruction of innocents?
After a 20th century unmatched for bloodshed, the world today is in no position to disparage early modern Europe. Historic witch-hunts have much in common with contemporary political purges, cancel culture, and bizarre conspiracy theories. Our capacity to project enormities on the enemy Other is as strong as ever.
The truth about witch-hunting is worth knowing for its own sake. But the issue has added significance for Catholics because it has provided ammunition for rationalists, pagans, and radical feminists to attack the Church. It is helpful to know that the number of victims has been grossly exaggerated, and that the reasons for the persecutions had as much to do with social factors as with religious ones.
But although Catholics have been fed comforting errors by overeager apologists about the Church’s part in persecuting witches, we must face our own tragic past. Fellow Catholics, to whom we are forever bound in the communion of saints, did sin grievously against people accused of witchcraft. If our historical memory can be truly purified, then the smoke from the Burning Times can finally disperse.
SUGGESTED READING
Overviews:
Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, ed. Bengt Ankerloo and Stuart Clark. VI vols., (1999-2002).
Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts. (2004).
Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. Richard M. Golden. IV vols. (2006).
Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. 3rd. ed. (2006)1996.
Specialized Studies:
Wolfgang Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria: Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and Reasons of State in Early Modern Europe. (1997).
Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. (1996).
Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study. (1970).
Christina Larner, Enemies of God: The Witch-hunt in Scotland. (1981).
H.C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany: The Social and Intellectual Foundations. 1562-1684. (1972).
E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands during the Reformation. (1976).
James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England. (1997).
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“Pweeeeeaaase don’t punish witchies!”
I’ve had it with this liberal nonsense. The Church was right to prosecute witchcraft. The Bible mandates it.
From The Woman Who Inspired Wicca
Francis Young for First Things, August 25, 2020.
Excerpt:
“Murray’s engaging prose style, her marshalling of apparent evidence, and her impressive academic credentials overawed her non-specialist readers and drowned out the skeptical voices of scholars far better versed in the history of witchcraft than she. Murray was lauded by the Folklore Society (she became its president in the 1950s) and, crucially, authored the Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry on “Witchcraft.” In an age when the Encyclopedia Britannica was considered a definitive reference work, Murray managed to imprint her highly eccentric view of witchcraft as a secret fertility religion on the popular imagination.”
From The Exorcism Files: True Stories of Demonic Possession, by Adam Blai, page 31 of the Kindle edition:
Excerpt:
It was the Wikipedia of its day, having articles on just about every conceivable topic. If it was in the encyclopedia, it could be trusted and cited as fact. So, when the Encyclopedia Britannica ran Murray’s article from 1929 until 1969, her theory, though completely baseless, became the truth about witchcraft in western society. In 1969, the Encyclopedia finally printed a retraction of her theory, acknowledging that it was not accepted or supported by academic authorities — but that did little to lessen public belief in her ideas. One of the people who believed Margaret Murray’s ideas to be factual was Gerald Gardner, the founder of modern Wicca.
Although I acknowledge Sandra Miesel’s good intention in her extensive historical fact gathering on witches and witchcraft, and interpretation of these facts, there is reason to believe that there were and are persons engaged in evil akin to witchcraft through the power of Satan.
Missionaries for example have had experience with phenomena other than possession linked to obsession with evil, the power given to adherents. My experience in Mchinji Malawi as a layman lecturer at a seminary located in the remote West, was of a cult among the Acewa people called the Nyau Nyau. Accounts seemed viable. Similar to Haitian Voodoo a religious derivative from the Nigerian Yoruba tribe.
Sandra Miesel is correct in principle, that evidence points to hysteria, ulterior motivation for witch hunts and burnings.
For interest there’s a Swedish film on the subject called Häxan. The Witches. Subtitled Witchcraft Through The Ages. A 1922 Swedish Danish silent film written and directed by Benjamin Christensen. The film was made as a documentary, based partly on Christensen’s study of the Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th century German guide for inquisitors. Häxan is a study of how superstition and the misunderstanding of diseases and mental illness could lead to the hysteria of the witch hunts.
Yes, Fr. Morello, there are and were people who work black magic. But the question here is, were the victims of the great European witch-hunt guilty of doing this? How are the guilty to be detected? By testimony after hideous tortures? By what witnesses say they did in other people’s dreams? They certainly were not assembling/flying to meet and worship Satan because the Sabbat never existed. Correlation is not causation. Magical malefice is not a crime that can be proven under canon or Western secular law. Both the Spanish Inquisition and governments came to that conclusion and the European witch-hunt petered out. It was a tragic phenomenon to repent of, not excuse–much less repeat.
Witchcraft is a serious contemporary problem in sub-Saharan Africa where evil witch-doctors kill people to use their body parts for magical purposes. People harm or murder those they think are witches, without criminal consequences in some countries. “Witch-cleansing” went on before colonialism and despite colonial laws forbidding it, has resumed since African countries gained their independence. The phenomenon has many parallels with the European witch-hunt, including high fatalities. For example 5,000 witches killed in Tanzania 1994-98.
Although I agree in principle, I’m not convinced the witch hunts were tragic to do about nothing. Certainly they were out of control persecutions, and guilty of the reprehensible use of torture. And it should be clear, hopefully, that I’m not attempting to disprove you. That you agree there was ‘black magic’ means we agree.
What ‘black magic means’ is a wide subject. The hysteria and excesses of the period of witch hunts, ‘black magic’ the likely presumed correlation, unjust, unreasonable as it was, was nevertheless the likely cause. My interest is its relation to verifiable diabolic influences, obsession and possession. That, during the period that led up to the tragedy of the inquisition of witches, that these satanic phenomena likely existed and served as the catalyst for fear, unjust persecutions, and excesses.
Exorcists Fr Theophilus Reisinger OFM Cap and the Vatican’s Fr Gabriel Amorth left us with ‘opinions’ that can’t be proved, that were elicited during the exorcisms. The use of spells, rites, charms items that were thought to effect the possession. And we agree, I believe, that what’s occurred in Tanzania is similar to the events that precipitated the great witch hunts and burnings in medieval Europe.
Fr. Morello, I consider “black magic” to mean harmful magic, which encompasses everything from sticking pins in a doll to drawing pentagrams to summon demons for mischief. I fully agree that we should avoid occult practices, even simple ones like the ouija board, lest we attract the attention of Dark Powers.
But I think you’re reading modern experiences back into the age of the great witch-hunts. The most famous cases of possession (in Salem and Sweden) in witch-hunts were fraudulent. The Devils of Loudon and similar incidents look an awful lot like hysteria and not actual possession by demons. Early modern epidemics of possession and exorcism were a separate thing, for which see DEMONIC POSSESSION AND EXORCISM IN EARLY MODERN FRANCE by Sarah Ferber.
Sandra we’re really in accord on this history of witch hunts. That accounts of all these witches covens, witches flying about at night were myth. You’re extensive research is appreciated and caused me to do research that confirmed your overall view.
This is a very interesting article. But perhaps what would be more interesting is that which is left out. It appears that the author assumes that NONE of those persecuted/prosecuted were witches. [Surely, if there were witches established, it would be just to burn them (at least some of them) (C.S. Lewis might be read to imply this conclusion).] And certainly, that none of those accused during this time period were witches may be an entirely true fact, even if one believes in the existence of witches and witchcraft.
But what I am curious about is why so many witch trials in this period in either circumstance? It is not as if early periods in Christendom did not believe in witches. The answer would be fascinating, whether or not any of the victims (or culprits) actually were witches.
If there was a surge in real witches and witchcraft during this time, why? If not, why was their a surge of homicidal hysteria at this time? Assuming either circumstance for a moment, even if one does not attach witch trials to Protestantism, was the Reformation related somehow? One would like to hear the author’s opinion on the matter, as she seems to have studied the phenomenon.
Why the surge in witch-hunts is a very good question without a simple answer. The corollary, why one place will have a witch panic and another next door not is also vexing. To start with the second question, sporadic outbreaks can happen by unfortunate chance. For instance, take away Matthew Hopkins, “The Witchfinder General,” and 200 English lives are spared. Some random incident can start a village panic; an official’s obsession can drive a huge chain-reaction hunt.
But back to you original query. Although we know that people have feared magical harm as long as records have been kept, Christians of the first millennium were confident that Christ had conquered: when saints said “Begone, Satan,” the Devil fled. The decree called “Canon Episcopi” was a barrier to organized witch-hunting. But the flowering of medieval civilization also saw elaborations of theological thinking about demons. All occult practices from traditional charms to elaborate book-learned rituals were lumped together as forbidden magic and further conflated with heresy in the late Middle Ages. A few panics in Alpine regions were publicized through international communication networks and the new art of printing. The MALLEUS MALIFICARUM, other manuals and treatises for witch-hunters appear. Busily preach and talk about diabolical witchcraft to populations badly stressed by the Reformation, religious wars, waves of plague, economic upheaval, and they will react when triggered. The ghastly panics in Germany had a lot to do with the policies and personalities of the “witch-bishops” and the absence of strong central authorities to stop them. (As a general rule, when authorities crack down, witch-hunts stop.)
William Monter has a good discussion of the German situation is in Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark, WITCHCRAFT AND MAGIC IN EUROPE: THE PERIOD OF THE WITCH TRIALS. In the previous volume of this same series, THE MIDDLE AGES, Edward Peters surveys and summarizes the multiple factors that brewed the perfect storm of the European witch-hunt. This is why I provided a basic bibliography.
ArtNetNews has an article describing an exhibition of artifacts related to the Salem witch trials, originally shown at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, and now at the New York Historical Society, until January 22, 2023. The article is well worth your attention.
A New York Exhibition on the Salem Witch Trials Explores the Legacy of the Dark Historical Chapter on the Descendants of the Accused
Sarah Cascone, October 31, 2022
The article concludes with a helpful paragraph that provides you with an opportunity to test your automatic eye-roll response:
And then there are portraits of modern-day witches—women who have embraced elements of witchcraft and magic—shot by New York photographer Frances F. Denny, a descendant of Samuel Sewall, one of the judges who oversaw the trials.
“There’s a huge difference between being accused of being a witch and claiming it on your own as a religious or political identity,” Danziger Halperin said. “These women do call themselves witches, and some lay claim to long historical roots in witchcraft practices and different kinds of traditions. It shows that witch doesn’t have to be this dirty word—magic doesn’t have to be this evil incarnate kind of power.”
Two excellent studies of the Salem trials are: Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (1974) and Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (1987). In this exhaustively studied event, the one and only person who worked any magic was the slave woman. She survived but 20 innocent people died. I used to work with an editor at another Catholic publication who was descended from Rebecca Nurse, one of the hanged witches. My old friend sf writer Andre Norton was descended from the judge Samuel Sewall. Small world.
Thank you very much for the link. The article seemed to suggest that Salem was rather unique in having men executed as well as women but that was also the case in Connecticut’s witch trials which preceded Salem’s.
Across the Continent, the Great Witch Hunt averaged 20% male victims. Some individual outbreaks had one-third male victims and in Scandanavia the rate was sometimes higher still. Christina Larner (cited in my bibliography) has another study, WITCHCRAFT AND RELIGION: THE POLITICS OF POPULAR BELIEF, that efficiently rebuts the common idea that “witch-hunting was woman-hunting.”
It bothers me that the tourist attractions in Salem include so many cutesy bows to modern Pagan and New Age concepts of The Witch because that’s a commercial exploitation of human deaths.
There are no neutral acts in Catholic moral doctrine that reveal moral purpose. On that basis we may reasonably assume there were acts that precipitated the excesses of the witch hunts.
“Exodus 22:18, ‘wizards thou shalt not suffer to live’. ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’. The whole narrative of Saul’s visit to the witch of Endor 1 Samuel 28 implies the reality of the witch’s. The prohibitions of sorcery in the New Testament leave the same impression, Galatians 5:20, compared with Apocalypse 21:8; 22:15; and Acts 8:9; 13:6. Supposing that the belief in witchcraft were an idle superstition, it would be strange that the suggestion should nowhere be made that the evil of these practices only lay in the pretending to the possession of powers which did not really exist. Alexander IV, indeed, ruled 1258 that the inquisitors should limit their intervention to those cases in which there was some clear presumption of heretical belief [manifeste haeresim saparent], but Hansen [Gitte Hansen Professor in Medieval archaeology at the University Museum of Bergen, University of Bergen] shows reason for supposing that heretical tendencies were very readily inferred from almost any sort of magical practices. Probably the most disastrous episode was the publication by the inquisitors of the book ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ Heinrich Kramer 1487 [the hammer of witches] professed in part fraudulently to have been approved by the University of Cologne, and it was sensational in the stigma it attached to witchcraft as a worse crime than heresy and in its notable animus against the female sex.
We meet in 1275 the earliest example of a witch burned to death after judicial sentence of an inquisitor. The case a certain Hugues de Baniol Cauzons, La Magic, II, 217. The woman, probably half crazy, claimed intercourse with the devil. The possibility of such carnal intercourse between human beings and demons was unfortunately accepted by some of the great schoolmen, even, for example, by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure” (New Advent).
Although, is the bizarre possible? St Teresa of Avila claims a sister in her convent alleged she had intercourse with Our Lord, who Teresa said was the Demon. The remainder of New Advent supports the thesis of Sandra Miesel.
Correction: New Advent’s reference of Hansen is not Norwegian historical archaeologist Gitte Hansen, rather more likely German Joseph Hansen in Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexen-verfolgung im Mittelalter (Bonn, 1900)
I’ll go over this one more time, Father, and then we should adjourn to a private forum. Examining the records and circumstances of Early Modern witch-hunts, one has to conclude that very few actual acts of witchcraft had been performed. Small panics were fed by antagonisms within communities. Neighbors denounced each other out of fear, jealousy, malice, revenge or to acquire power or even for money.
In the huge outbreaks like the German ones, people were executed merely on the basis of denunciations extracted after horrible torture. Frederich von Spee, confessor to the witches condemned at Mainz, wrote CAUTIO CRIMINALIS in reaction to the injustice of their deaths.
The dynamic of these events resembles the Satanic child abuse panics of the late 20th C such as the McMartin nursery school case. Children really are molested. Real Satanists– not Anton LeVey humbugs–do exist. Real Satanists undoubtedly have molested children at times. But no one tried during the commotion had abused children even though some were sentenced to prison for these imaginary crimes, Nor was there a vast network of ritual abusers kidnapping and murdering 50,000 children a year. All the accusations were fabricated. (For the record, I don’t believe in QAnon’s current iteration of similar conspiracies.)
In addition to the reading suggestions already mentioned, may I recommend a quick but trustworthy survey: MAGIC AND SUPERSTITION IN EUROPE: A CONCISE HISTORY FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT by Michael D. Bailey (2007).
“One has to conclude that very few actual acts of witchcraft had been performed. Small panics were fed by antagonisms within communities”, which is my conclusion Sandra modifying my previous sense that there were likely more than a few actual acts.
What helped me reach that conclusion, which was of course your essay by extending my previous brief research especially Church response, the more sober professional assessments of the nightmare of false accusations, burning of innocent persons. Joseph Hansen in Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexen-verfolgung im Mittelalter, Sources and studies on the history of the witch craze and witch hunts in the Middle Ages. With an investigation into the history of the word witch (Bonn, 1900) reached the same conclusion.
Witchcraft bears in law ONLY penalties, whether in tort or crime; and it depends on evidences. You could have witchcraft on its own or tort with witchcraft. If you are unaware of the witchcraft you can still react against the tort. I want to go over this in public.
In tort it falls under general trespasses including slander; but also nuisances. There could be occasion when negligence can be drawn into it as well as other torts. Tort offences bring damages and malicious torts bring penal and exemplary damages.
People who are experienced in uncovering stalking and trolling, can be helpful in bringing these physical activities to the light of day -whether or not they uncover any witchcraft at the same time. All tort law except fraud, works through proofs on a balance of probabilities. Practically speaking, to get at witchcraft that might be present you have to be alert for the signals.
Some levels of malice can bring general torts into the realm of crime without any underlying witchcraft; where the standard of proof is the criminal standard. In Natural Law witchcraft is crime. That is what the criminal law must reflect.
Witchcraft itself being crime, it would have its own structure in mens and actus. External physical activity, or, some social impact, is not needed. You need proof of the witchcraft. It is not good enough to implicate that “witches were unjustly burned everywhere” by “the strength of accusation only”. Thomas More as judge penalized witches on the strength of due evidences.
What should the criminal penalty be for witchcraft. This goes back to Natural Law. In Natural Law witchcraft depending of degree and actual effects and determination, is capital crime. And without any actual tort proved you would still be able to get some measures of civil damages, like distress.
If witchcraft can be shown to have been, or, to be, involved, in a tort, the criminal law standard of proof, beyond a reasonable doubt, is going to be surmounted without too much difficulty. That is how presumptions intertwine in criminal law.
Part of the problem arises from the witch mentality that could suggest and insinuate that it is all “harmless fun” done “without any purpose of hurt”; or that it “always meant well and for good”; or that it is “innocent white witchcraft”. With witchcraft, that is all a lie. If you review old Starsky and Hutch movies you will see the recurring constant presence of occult signalling.
In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien identifies a sign of Sauron as his “White Hand”; which is evil that looks good or made to look good, or, evil that is deceptive. I maintain that Tolkien’s whole work and his effort itself are together BOTH a production and a manifesto, in spiritism and “white witchcraft”. Some class it to the literary standard of “high epic fantasy”; and that could be but of itself can’t save from witchcraft.