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 ...
In the early modern period, from about 1400 to 1775, about 100,000 people were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe and British America. [1] 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.
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]
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 .
As early as circa the year 1400, the high profile Stedelen case documents a witch trial in the region. Switzerland, or at least a part of it, was the location of the first European mass witch trial: the Valais witch trials, which lasted between 1428 and 1459, long before the publication of Malleus Maleficarum (1486). This unleashed the first ...
Fründ speaks of a conspiracy of "700" witches of which "more than 200" had been burned two years into the trials (c. 1430). [11] Contrary to the later phase of the European witch-trials, when the majority of those accused were women, the victims in the Valais witch trials are estimated to have been two-thirds male and one-third female. [4]
Witches were said to make pacts with the devil in exchange for powers, belief and prosecution of witchcraft in Scotland was especially focused on the demonic pact. Witches no longer were seen as healers or helpers, but rather were believed to be the cause of many natural [5] and man-made disasters. Witches were blamed for troubles with ...
An 1562 [1] Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts (5 Eliz. 1.c. 16) was passed early in the reign of Elizabeth I.It was in some respects more merciful towards those found guilty of witchcraft than its predecessor, demanding the death penalty only where harm had been caused; lesser offences were punishable by a term of imprisonment.