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An estimated 75% to 85% of those accused in the early modern witch trials were women, [10] [126] [127] [128] and there is certainly evidence of misogyny on the part of those persecuting witches, evident from quotes such as "[It is] not unreasonable that this scum of humanity, [witches], should be drawn chiefly from the feminine sex" (Nicholas ...
The witch trials in Early Modern Europe came in waves and then subsided. There were trials in the 15th and early 16th centuries, but then the witch scare went into decline, before becoming a major issue again and peaking in the 17th century; particularly during the Thirty Years' War. What had previously been a belief that some people possessed ...
Witch-hunts increased again in the 17th century. The witch trials in Early Modern Europe included the Basque witch trials in Spain, the Fulda witch trials in Germany, the North Berwick witch trials in Scotland, and the Torsåker witch trials in Sweden. There were also witch-hunts during the 17th century in the American colonies.
Simultaneously, the conceptualization of witches and their alleged pacts with the Devil solidified during the Early Modern period, resulting in the infamous witch trials. These trials marked a significant turning point in the Church's engagement with magic, as accusations of heinous acts were projected onto the figure of the witch.
By the early modern period, major witch hunts and witch trials began to take place in Europe, partly fueled by religious tensions, societal anxieties, and economic upheaval. One influential text was the Malleus Maleficarum , a 1486 treatise that provided a framework for identifying, prosecuting, and punishing witches.
It was not unique, but a colonial manifestation of the much broader phenomenon of witch trials in the early modern period, which took the lives of tens of thousands in Europe. In America, Salem's events have been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolation, religious extremism ...
Accusations of witchcraft in Connecticut led to the first large-scale witch trials in the American colonies, predating the infamous Salem Witch Trials by nearly 30 years.
Throughout the era of the European witch trials in the Early Modern period, from the 15th to the 18th century, there were protests against both the belief in witches and the trials. [1] Even those protestors who believed in witchcraft were typically sceptical about its actual occurrence.