Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
[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 Salem witch trials followed in 1692–93, culminating in the executions of 20 people. Five others died in jail. It has been estimated that tens of thousands of people were executed for witchcraft in Europe and the American colonies over several hundred years.
In contrast, the witch trials in the Protestant Netherlands stopped earlier and they were among the least numerous in Europe, while the large-scale mass witch trials which took place in the autonomous territories of the Catholic prince-bishops in Southern Germany were infamous in all of the Western world, and the contemporary writer Herman ...
Later, the Pendle witch trials of 1612 joined the ranks of the most famous witch trials in English history. [64] The Malefizhaus of Bamberg, Germany, where suspected witches were held and interrogated. 1627 engraving. In England, witch-hunting would reach its apex in 1644 to 1647 due to the efforts of Puritan Matthew Hopkins.
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.
Contemporary pamphlet about the Würzburg witch trials. The Würzburg witch trials of 1625–1631, which took place in the self-governing Catholic Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg in the Holy Roman Empire in present-day Germany, formed one of the biggest mass trials and mass executions ever seen in Europe, and one of the largest 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]
Witch bottle; Witch doctor; Witch hat; Witch mark; Witch-cult hypothesis; The Witch-Cult in Western Europe; Witch's ladder; Witch's milk; Witchcraft in early modern Wales; Witchcraft in the Middle East; Witch's mark; Witches' Sabbath