Who Burned the Witches (Part 2) – Catholic World Report

Editor’s note: Part One of this essay was published on October 30, 2022. (Editor’s note: A different version of this article ran in CRISIS magazine in October 2001.

Witches Everywhere

How many people died in the great European witch-hunt? The old claim of nine million burned is flatly absurd, but it will never be possible to compute an exact death toll because records have been lost over the centuries. (War-ravaged Poland and Prussia are among the frustrating cases.) Some were never precise to begin with. (How many witches is “many”?) In addition to formal trials, a few thousand victims may have perished in unreported extra-judicial killings. When governments seemed too lenient, people took matters into their own hands as happened, for example, in Spain, France, and England. Historians’ best estimate is 50,000 executions from perhaps 100,000 formal trials between 1400 and 1780.

Those 50,000 casualties of the European witch-hunts were not distributed uniformly through time or space, even within particular jurisdictions. Three-quarters of Europe saw not a single trial. The overwhelming majority of trials that did take place clustered in the years 1570-1630—the length of a single lifetime. Witch persecution spread outward from its first center in alpine Italy in the early 15th century, guttering out in Poland, where witchcraft laws were finally repealed in 1788. The center had generally stopped trying witches before the peripheries even started.

Witch-fever could be chronic or acute. In Switzerland, the French-speaking Protestant canton of Vaud (population 70-80,000) steadily executed 1700 people, one-third of them men, over the course of a century (1558-1655). At the other extreme, the imperial abbey of St. Maximin, next to Trier, burned 400 of its 2200 subjects in one decade (1586-96) and another hundred in smaller panics later. In both cases, higher authorities failed to intervene.

Witch-hunting was erratic all across the Continent—and beyond. Three-quarters of all witchcraft trials took place in the Catholic-ruled territories of the Holy Roman Empire, yet Catholic Portugal, Castile, Naples, and the Orthodox lands of Eastern Europe saw almost none. In colonial times, New England held sixty-one witchcraft trials to execute at most 36 persons; a mere handful of trials in New France cost possibly one life. Scotland, with a population only one-fifth of England’s, executed 1,300-1,500 witches while England hanged about 500. As for disparity within a single political entity, during Habsburg rule over the Low Countries (1450-1685), the Duchy of Luxembourg burned more than twice as many witches as all the other provinces that would become today’s Belgium and the Netherlands combined.

Both Catholic and Protestant lands saw both light and heavy witch-hunts. But in the past, some Catholic apologists have exaggerated the scope of Protestant witch-hunting, such as instance the baseless claim that Queen Elizabeth I executed 800 witches a year. Did Protestants kill witches? Of course they did. Consider the harsh Scottish campaigns against witches. They not only dealt out death, they also inspired the thoroughly debunked theories of Margaret Murray that fed into modern Pagan fantasies about witchcraft.

But before casting aspersions, Catholics need to face—and deplore—the horrors inflicted by some Catholic ecclesiastical overlords in Germany as temporal rulers (1580-1640). Note that these trials were not conducted under canon law but in secular criminal courts that perverted or ignored the Imperial code. Here are some death figures from the realms of the worst “witch bishops:” in the prince-electorates of Trier (800), Mainz (1800), Cologne (2000); the prince-bishoprics of Bamberg (900) and Wûrzburg (1200). Determined to reform their recalcitrant flocks, these grim shepherds let fanatical or corrupt officials impose ghastly tortures and gather denunciations from village witch-finders.

Terrible as these situations were, they were outliers. Prince-bishops of lesser status seldom persecuted witches or heretics. The great imperial abbeys that spread Baroque culture staged no witch-hunts. Elsewhere in Germany, lax prelates, such as all the prince-abbots of Kempten, were too busy with their concubines to bother with witches.

The horrific fatality figures for what is now Germany—20,000 witches executed—make it the bloodiest country in absolute terms. But on a proportional basis, the worst witch-hunting place overall was Switzerland. Between 1420 and 1800, it put to death more than 3,500 people, twice the rate of Germany, ten times the rate of France, and almost a hundred times the rate of Italy. Not only was the Swiss rate higher, executions started earlier and lasted longer than anywhere else. The Canton of Vaud was the Protestant champion of witch-hunting and what is now the Canon of Ticino was the champion among Italian-speaking Europe. Finally, it was in the Alpine regions that the sins of sorcery and heresy fused, the idea of the Sabbat emerged, and the first major witch-hunt occurred, all in the early fifteenth century. The land of the Swiss was the fountainhead of the Early Modern Witch-hunt.

Regional Influences

Having quantified the scope of the European witch-hunting, let us examine factors driving the phenomenon.

Local factors, not religious loyalties, determined the severity of witch persecutions. Roman law on the continent was harsher than English common law. Prosecuting maleficium alone, as England and Scandinavia did, yielded fewer victims than prosecuting diabolism (Scotland and Germany) or white magic (Lorraine and France). Unlimited torture in Germany induced more confessions than the limited torture in the Franche-Comte region in France. English third-degree methods such as sleep-deprivation were also effective ways of raising the number of convictions.

Ignoring denunciations procured through torture preserved Denmark from Germany’s dreadful chain-reaction panics in which accused witches would in turn finger other witches. “Spectral evidence” from accusers’ dreams was a significant prosecution device in Salem. Finding a witch’s mark insensitive to pricking “or a witch’s teat,” on which familiars allegedly fed, secured convictions in Scotland and England; uncertainty about the credibility of witch’s marks won acquittals in Geneva. Child witnesses — often-malicious liars — proved deadly in Sweden, the Basque country in Spain, Germany, and England.

Professional witch-finders had dire impact. The best known of these freelance accusers was England’s Matthew Hopkins, who doomed up to 200 people from 1645 through 1647. But special inquisitors or investigative committees were also lethal. Local judges were usually harsher than professional jurists from outside the community. Reviews of convictions by central authorities spared accused witches in Denmark, France, Sweden, and Austria. An informal appeal from ministers outside Salem halted the panic there.

Witch-hunting was typically part of broader campaigns to repress unruly behavior and impose religious orthodoxies. The hunt played out in a world of shrinking opportunities for ordinary folk. Early modern village economies were often zero-sum games, where the death of a cow could ruin a family. Peasants were locked in face-to-face contact with their neighbor-enemies. Feuds could last for generations.

The poorest and most common targets of the witch-hunts, social subordinates and even children sometimes turned the tables by accusing their wealthy superiors of witchcraft.

Women were more prominent than men at witchcraft trials, both as accused and as accusers. Not only did Sprenger’s image of women as the more lustful and malicious sex generate suspicions; the fact that women had a lower social status than men made them easier to accuse. In most regions, about 80 percent of the alleged witches killed were female. Women were then as likely to be accused witches as men were to be saints or violent criminals. That was because women typically fought with curses instead of steel. Although the stereotype did not always fit, the British witch was usually seen as irascible, aggressive, unneighborly, and often repulsive — hardly the gentle healer of neopagan fantasy. Her colorful curses could blight everything down to “the little pig that lieth in the sty.” She magnified her powers to frighten others and extort favors. If she could not be loved, she meant to be feared.

Alternatively, the witches of Lorraine were said to be “fine and crafty, careful not to quarrel with people or threaten them.” Effusive compliments were signs of suspected witchcraft in Lorraine, and suppressed anger could be ominous. Being innocent of the impossible crimes associated with witchcraft did not necessarily mean that witch-hunt victims were “nice.” Some were prostitutes, beggars, or petty criminals. Austria’s Zauberjaeckl trials (1675-1690) punished as witches people who were actually dangerous felons such as the Magic Jacket Society.  The Society was a Baroque version of the Hell’s Angels, recruiting waifs whom it controlled through black magic, sodomy, and conjurations with mice. The prince-archbishop of Salzburg, Austria, graciously forbade executing members of the Society who were under the age of twelve. But 200 others were put to death.

Panic and Torture

Witch-hunting could be endemic or epidemic. Its dynamics varied. Small panics (fewer than 20 victims) tended to occur in villages worried about maleficium. Their victims were often poor, obnoxious persons whose removal the rest of the community applauded.

If small panics fed on long-smoldering fears about neighbors, large ones exploded without warning, killing people of all classes and conditions and rupturing social bonds. The worst examples of this were in Germany, where unlimited use of torture (in defiance of imperial law) produced an ever-expanding wave of denunciations. To object was to court death.

Large witch-panics started with the usual obscure suspects and worked up the social scale to prosperous citizens, reputable matrons, high-ranking clerics, town officials, and even judges. The longer a panic lasted, the higher was the proportion of male and wealthy victims.

According to the Dutch Jesuit Cornelius van Loos, confiscations from suspected witches in large panics could “coin gold and silver from human blood,” Youngsters were legally old enough to burn as soon as they could distinguish “gold from an apple.” Children as young as nine were burned in Wurzburg, including the bishop’s nephew, and boys ages three and four were imprisoned as Satan’s catamites.

Unspeakable tortures were routine. Confessing “without torture” in Germany meant without torture that drew blood. Nearly all who underwent this broke, even the blameless.

Yet witches sometimes did turn themselves in and confess spontaneously, the equivalent of today’s “suicide by police.” The same melancholy, frustration, and despair that they claimed had driven them into the devil’s arms brought them willingly to the stake. They had apparently come to believe the wish-fulfillment fantasies of pleasure and revenge enacted in the theaters of their minds. Nevertheless, they still hoped to save their souls through pain.

A few brave men spoke up for justice. In 1563, Johann Weyer, a Protestant court physician, drew attention to the cruelty of the trials and the mental incompetence of many of the accused. English country gentleman Reginald Scot mocked witchcraft as popish nonsense in 1584. In 1631, the Jesuit Friedrich von Spec, confessor to witches burned at Mainz, proclaimed them innocent victims. Van Loos, witness to the horrors of witchcraft trials at Trier, had his manuscript confiscated in 1592 before it could be published and was himself imprisoned and banished.

Ironically, a judge of the Spanish Inquisition named Alonso Salazar Frías mounted the most dramatic challenge to the witch-craze. In 1610, when a cascading panic engulfed almost 2,000 people including 1,500 children in the Spanish Basque country, Salazar used basic detective techniques and sound logic to demonstrate that witches were simply an artifact of witch-hunting. “There were neither witches nor bewitched until they were talked and written about,” he argued. The Supreme Council of the Inquisition agreed in 1614. It released the accused and permanently forbade the execution of witches. Although Salazar’s report remained unpublished, he had snuffed out countless pyres.

Cooling Ashes

Slowly, the critics were vindicated, and ashes cooled all across Europe during the 18th century. This was no simple triumph of Enlightenment wisdom. Witch beliefs persisted — as they do today — but witches no longer faced stakes, gallows, or swords. The great witch-panics had left a kind of psychic weariness in their wake. Realizing that innocents had been cruelly sent to their deaths, people no longer trusted their courts’ judgments. As Montaigne had written 200 years earlier, “It is putting a very high price on one’s conjectures to have a man roasted alive because of them.” What could please the Devil more than the destruction of innocents?

After a 20th century unmatched for bloodshed, the world today is in no position to disparage early modern Europe. Historic witch-hunts have much in common with contemporary political purges, cancel culture, and bizarre conspiracy theories. Our capacity to project enormities on the enemy Other is as strong as ever.

The truth about witch-hunting is worth knowing for its own sake. But the issue has added significance for Catholics because it has provided ammunition for rationalists, pagans, and radical feminists to attack the Church. It is helpful to know that the number of victims has been grossly exaggerated, and that the reasons for the persecutions had as much to do with social factors as with religious ones.

But although Catholics have been fed comforting errors by overeager apologists about the Church’s part in persecuting witches, we must face our own tragic past. Fellow Catholics, to whom we are forever bound in the communion of saints, did sin grievously against people accused of witchcraft. If our historical memory can be truly purified, then the smoke from the Burning Times can finally disperse.

SUGGESTED READING

Overviews:

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, ed. Bengt Ankerloo and Stuart Clark. VI vols., (1999-2002).

Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts. (2004).

Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. Richard M. Golden. IV vols. (2006).

Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. 3^rd. ed. (2006)1996.

Specialized Studies:

Wolfgang Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria: Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and Reasons of State in Early Modern Europe. (1997).

Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. (1996).

Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study. (1970).

Christina Larner, Enemies of God: The Witch-hunt in Scotland. (1981).

H.C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany: The Social and Intellectual Foundations. 1562-1684. (1972).

E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands during the Reformation. (1976).

James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England. (1997).