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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]
The use of torture has been identified as a key factor in converting the trial of one accused witch into a wider social panic, as those being tortured were more likely to accuse a wide array of other local individuals of also being witches. [76] Burning of three witches in Baden, Switzerland (1585), by Johann Jakob Wick The burning of a French ...
Another important element of the persecution of witches were denunciations. "In England, most of the accusers and those making written complaints against witches were women." [73] Informers did not have to be revealed to the accused, which was important for the success of the witch trials. In practice, appeals were made to other witnesses to ...
A 1555 German print showing the burning of witches. Current scholarly estimates of the number of people executed for witchcraft in Europe vary between 40,000 and 100,000. [a] The number of witch trials in Europe known to have ended in executions is around 12,000. [70]
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.
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.
In the years since the witch trials, the unfairly-accused have been exonerated and, in 1957, Massachusetts issued a formal apology for the trials, stating that the proceedings were "shocking" and ...
There are no official records and little documentation of the trials and burnings, but they were made famous in contemporary Germany by a well-known popular print, in which they were illustrated and described. The print, which is a typical example of so-called 'witch newspapers' or pamphlets found in Southern Germany during the height of its ...