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Between 40,000 and 60,000 [2] [3] were executed, almost all in Europe. The witch-hunts were particularly severe in parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Prosecutions for witchcraft reached a high point from 1560 to 1630, [4] [5] during the Counter-Reformation and the European wars of religion.
These witch-hunts were at least partly driven by economic factors since a significant relationship between economic pressure and witch hunting activity can be found for regions such as Bavaria and Scotland. [60] In Denmark, the burning of witches increased following the reformation of 1536.
Artistic depiction of the execution by burning of three alleged witches in Baden, Switzerland in 1585. This is a list of people executed for witchcraft, many of whom were executed during organized witch-hunts, particularly during the 15th–18th centuries. Large numbers of people were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe between 1560 and 1630. [1]
The witch trials often took place during times of crisis and were directed toward people who were different in some way, by people with whom they had previously been in conflict. Torture was commonly used and the chance of being acquitted was slim. The method of execution in Switzerland was commonly burning at the stake.
In medieval and early modern Europe, witches were usually believed to be women who used black magic against their community, and often to have communed with demons or the Devil. Witches were commonly believed to cast curses; a spell or set of magical words and gestures intended to inflict supernatural harm. [10]
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.
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.
Some 612 records of accusations of witchcraft are known for Scotland in the years 1649 and 1650 and over 300 witches were executed in the trials. Most of these were in ad hoc courts that had a much higher execution rate than those run by professional lawyers. Most of the witches were women and most of these of relatively low social status.