Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
After 1334 the political dimension of witchcraft accusations disappeared, while the charges remained mild. The large majority of trials until 1375 were in France and Germany. The number of witch trials rose after 1375, when many municipal courts adopted inquisitorial procedure and penalties for false accusations were abolished.
Hutton and Davies note that folk healers were sometimes accused of witchcraft, but made up a minority of the accused. [31] [22] It is also possible that a small proportion of accused witches may have genuinely sought to harm by magical means. [32] Éva Pócs writes that reasons for accusations of witchcraft fall into four general categories: [6]
Accusations of witchcraft is the only justifiable reason for the refusal to house a family member, no matter how distant the relation. [ 16 ] In Gambia , about 1,000 people accused of being witches were locked in detention centers in March 2009.
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, [8] [4] [9] [10] they made up a minority of those accused. European belief in witchcraft gradually dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment.
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 ...
Bishop Antonio Venegas de Figueroa (1540) cautioned against confusing witchcraft with mental illness. [22] When French surgeon Pierre Pigray (1589) was asked by the Parliament to examine several people accused of being witches, [23] he dismissed the allegations on the basis that the accused were deluded and in need of medical care. [24]
Ghana's parliament on Friday passed a bill to protect people accused of witchcraft, making it a crime to abuse them or send them away from communities. The new law was suggested after a 90-year ...
The Acts of Elizabeth and James changed the law of witchcraft by making it a felony, thus removing the accused from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts to the courts of common law. This provided, at least, that the accused persons theoretically enjoyed the benefits of ordinary criminal procedure.