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Throughout the medieval era, mainstream Christian doctrine had denied the belief in the existence of witches and witchcraft, condemning it as a pagan superstition. [14] Some have argued that the work of the Dominican Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century helped lay the groundwork for a shift in Christian doctrine, by which certain Christian theologians eventually began to accept the possibility ...
[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 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.
Modern scholarly estimates place the total number of executions for witchcraft in the 300-year period of European witch-hunts in the five digits, mostly at roughly between 35,000 and 60,000 (see table below for details), [a] The majority of those accused were from the lower economic classes in European society, although in rarer cases high ...
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]
This was a period of intense witch hunts, known for witch hunters such as Matthew Hopkins. In the 16th and 17th centuries people across England, irrespective of status, believed in witches. Witchcraft was first made a capital offence in 1542 under a statute of Henry VIII but was repealed five years later.
Witch trials and witch related accusations were at a high during the early modern period in Britain, a time that spanned from the beginning of the 16th century to the end of the 18th century. Prior to the 16th century, Witchcraft -- i.e. any magical or supernatural practices made by mankind -- was often seen as a healing art, performed by ...
The Catholic Church often accused many types of women of performing magic in order to “bind” the passions of their clients, neighbors, friends, or even family. Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance by Guido Ruggiero offers many examples of “prostitution, concubinage, love magic, renegade clerics, a social hierarchy that largely overlooked the ...