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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.
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]
These witch-hunts were at least partly driven by economic factors since a significant relationship between economic pressure and witch hunting activity can be found for regions such as Bavaria and Scotland. [60] In Denmark, the burning of witches increased following the reformation of 1536.
False witch-pricking bodkins from Reginald Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584. The great Scottish witch hunt of 1649–50 was a series of witch trials in Scotland.It is one of five major hunts identified in early modern Scotland and it probably saw the most executions in a single year.
Bamberg Cathedral Engraving of Johann Georg Fuchs von Dornheim by Johann Salver. Witch prison Witch burning. The Bamberg witch trials of 1627–1632, which took place in the self-governing Catholic Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg in the Holy Roman Empire in present-day Germany, is one of the biggest mass trials and mass executions ever seen in Europe, and one of the biggest witch trials in history.
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]
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.
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 ...