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A 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.
[a] The number of witch trials in Europe known to have ended in executions is around 12,000. [70] There were an estimated 110,000 witchcraft trials in Europe between 1450 and 1750, with half of the cases seeing the accused being executed. [71] Witch hunts began to increase first in southern France and Switzerland, during the 14th and 15th ...
The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America (2013) excerpt and text search; Gibbons, Jenny (1998). "Recent Developments in the Study of the Great European Witch Hunt". The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. Vol. 5. Gouges, Linnea de (2018). Witch hunts and State Building in Early Modern ...
The myth of the witch had a strong cultural presence in 17th century New England and, as in Europe, witchcraft was strongly associated with devil-worship. [3] About eighty people were accused of practicing witchcraft in a witch-hunt that lasted throughout New England from 1647 to 1663. Thirteen women and two men were executed. [4]
Those same years saw, in central Europe at least, the worst of all witch-persecutions, the climax of the European craze. Many of the witch-trials of the 1620s multiplied with the Catholic reconquest. In some areas the lord or bishop was the instigator, in others the Jesuits. Sometimes local witch-committees were set up to further the work.
European witch-hunts and witch trials in the early modern period led to tens of thousands of executions. While magical healers and midwives were sometimes accused of witchcraft themselves, [7] [4] [8] [9] they made up a minority of those accused. European belief in witchcraft gradually dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment.
Bamberg Cathedral Engraving of Johann Georg Fuchs von Dornheim by Johann Salver. Witch prison Witch burning. The Bamberg witch trials of 1627–1632, which took place in the self-governing Catholic Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg in the Holy Roman Empire in present-day Germany, is one of the biggest mass trials and mass executions ever seen in Europe, and one of the biggest witch trials in history.
A number of extremely large mass trials against witchcraft, which took place in the autonomous Catholic Prince Bishop-states in south-western Germany between 1587 and 1639, are estimated to have amounted to a third of all executions for witchcraft in Germany, and a fourth of all executions of witchcraft in all Europe. [2] The mass witch trials ...