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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.
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 ...
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]
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]
The witch hunt migrated in waves through the villages through village inquisitors toward other cities and Prince Bishoprics and resulted in recurring waves of persecutions with high points in 1593–1598, 1601–1605, 1611–1618 and 1627–1631. [2] Among them were the infamous Fulda witch trials (1603–1606) with 250 deaths, the Alzenau ...
Between 1587 and 1593, 368 people were burned alive for sorcery in twenty-two villages, and in 1588, two villages were left with only one female inhabitant in each. People of both sexes, all ages and all classes, were victims; among the victims, 108 were men, women and children of the nobility, and also people with positions in the government ...
The intense period of witch hunting began in 1649 and continued into 1650, being largely confined to the Lowlands, particularly Lothian and Fife, but spilled over into northern England, where Scottish witch prickers were active. The period of rule by the Kirk party ended when Oliver Cromwell led an army across the border in July 1650. Some 612 ...
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.