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The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-285449-6. Levack, Brian P. (2006). The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. Pearson Education. ISBN 0-582-41901-8. Stack, Richard A. (2006). Dead wrong: violence, vengeance, and the victims of capital punishment. Greenwood Publishing Group.
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.
The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597 was a series of nationwide witch trials that took place in the whole of Scotland from March to October 1597. At least 400 people were put on trial for witchcraft and various forms of diabolism during the witch hunt. The exact number of those executed is unknown, but is believed to be about 200.
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.
Witch trials were most frequent in England in the first half of the 17th century. They reached their most intense phase during the English Civil War of the 1640s and the Puritan era of the 1650s. This was a period of intense witch hunts, known for witch hunters such as Matthew Hopkins.
Frontispiece from Matthew Hopkins's The Discovery of Witches (1647), showing witches identifying their familiar spirits. Following the Lancaster Witch Trials (1612–1634), William Harvey, physician to King Charles I of England, had been ordered to examine the four women accused, [29] and from this there came a requirement to have material proof of being a witch. [30]
Witch hunts began to increase first in southern France and Switzerland, during the 14th and 15th centuries. Witch hunts and witchcraft trials rose markedly during the social upheavals of the 16th century, peaking between 1560 and 1660. [72] The peak years of witch-hunts in southwest Germany were from 1561 to 1670. [73]
Under no other period in Scottish history, possibly with the exception of The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597, were so many tried for witchcraft as during the 1661–1662 witch hunt. The witch hunt started in Midlothian and East Lothian east of Edinburgh, where 206 people were accused of sorcery between April and December 1661. Subsequently ...