What was the witchcraft craze

Summis Desiderantes, Malleus Maleficarum and Compendium Maleficarum Numerous works have been written about witchcraft. This text is considered to have ushered in witch-hunts. An inquisitor and a friar respectively, Kraemer and Sprenger divided the text into 3 main sections that explain how to identify witchcraft, how to protect oneself from it, and how to prosecute the accused.

The witch craze began to spread widely before the Protestant Reformation of the church in the 16th century. In Protestant cities, most of the people accused of witchcraft were Catholic, and in Catholic cities most of the accused were Protestant. The accusers were both male and female, and they were often related to the accused. Among the ways to recognize a witch, according to the beliefs of the time, were physical anomalies such as a third nipple, or marks given by the devil, which usually resembled animals, like bats.

According to the Compendium Maleficarum, witches had to sign a blood pact with the devil and place it on a crossroads.

They were believed to take part in witch gatherings called Sabbat, where they ate human flesh, murdered children, and had orgies. Women from poor backgrounds could not afford a dowry and were forced to remain single and live a life of celibacy. This became particularly pronounced in Protestant lands where many former nuns were expelled from their convents and left destitute.

It is believed that the number of unmarried women in many areas was as high as one in four. They were often seen as a disruptive element in society because women who were not under the control of men were seen as threatening.

The growth in the literature that purported to describe witches and sorcery tended to present witches as single females. This occurred during the moral panics about sorcery, and black magic often led innocent women on the margins of society to be accused of witchcraft. Many have interpreted the accusations of witchcraft against women as an effort to control this group and to maintain the hegemony of males [8]. According to feminists, the existing patriarchy was threatened by the growth in the number of unmarried women, and the witchcraft craze was a systematic attempt to control and intimidate them.

The period's defining feature was the rivalry between the Catholics and the Protestants, and religious wars ravaged the continent. An eminent English historian claimed that both denominations used the witch trials to persecute their rivals in each territory. In this way, they were able to strengthen their hold over a given community.

However, there is also evidence that there were still witchcraft trials, even in areas where there was no confessional conflict. Even in religiously homogenized areas such as Northern Italy, there were burnings and hangings of witches. In the aftermath of the Reformation, there was intense competition between the Catholic Church and the Protestants denominations.

They sought to ensure that there was great religious uniformity among the general population. For the first time, the ecclesiastical elite was concerned with the faith and the observance of the general population. The clergy had instructions to make their congregations comply with the doctrines of the Churches. This occurred in both Catholic and Protestant territories and was designed to instill loyalty to a particular religious grouping.

One of the side-effects of this process was that anything that deviated from doctrine was deemed heretical. They were regularly placed on trial by authorities who interpreted their beliefs and customs as sorcery and diabolical.

The Witchcraft Craze in Europe lasted from The period because of religious changes became more interested in the devil and heresy. This led the elite in the Church to construct an idea of witches who were the devil's servants and who plotted to kill and harm Christians. By sorcery was deemed to be heresy, and the Church had become much more concerned about any deviant practices.

Increasingly the customs and the practices of the semi-pagan rural dwellers were interpreted as witchcraft. This meant that they were extremely vulnerable to accusations of sorcery. The factors that promoted the Witch Craze included the growing Catholic and Protestant rivalry and the need to ensure the population's religious conformity.

Then there were the genuine social tensions because of the endemic warfare, inflation, economic changes, and social change. This created a situation where there was a need to control the population, and witches were used to venting popular discontent and warn the poor not to become rebellious. Women were the chief victims of the Witchcraft Craze, and this was due to social change where single women increased in numbers, which led to tensions, and these were released in widespread charge of witchcraft against unmarried females.

There was no one reason for the hysteria that cost so many their lives. Rather it was often the interplay of all the above factors. Admin , Ewhelan and EricLambrecht. Eva confessed under torture; she, along with two women she implicated, were burned at the stake.

The pace of prosecution picked up from there. By the mids, the territory had burned people as witches—an astonishing feat, for a place that only had 2, residents to begin with.

Why is it that early modern Europe had such a fervor for witch hunting? Conventional wisdom has chalked the killings up to a case of bad weather. Across Europe, weather suddenly got wetter and colder—a phenomenon known as the Little Ice Age that pelted villages with freak frosts, floods, hailstorms, and plagues of mice and caterpillars. Witch hunts tended to correspond with ecological disasters and crop failures, along with the accompanying problems of famine, inflation, and disease. When the going got tough, witches made for a convenient scapegoat.

But a recent economic study pdf , which will soon be published in the The Economic Journal of the Royal Economic Society, proposes a different explanation for the witch hunts—one that can help us understand the way fears spread, and take hold, today. This alternative theory comes down to market competition — between churches. The study views the Catholic and Protestant churches as competing firms, each in the business of supplying a valuable service: Salvation.

As competition for religious market share heated up, churches expanded beyond the standard spiritual services and began focusing on salvation from devilry here on earth. Among both Catholics and Protestants, witch-hunting became a prime service for attracting and appeasing the masses by demonstrating their Satan-fighting prowess. Russ, an economist at Bloom Intelligence, a big-data analysis firm. This concept goes a long way toward explaining not just why witch-hunting mania exploded in Europe, but also why it took hold where it did.

Namely, in Germany. Until the s, the Catholic Church had claimed a monopoly on religion. By nailing his Ninety-five Theses to the door of his local Catholic Church in , Luther was acting as an early consumer protection bureau of sorts, blasting the Catholic church for exploitative practices. Per usual, the Pope declared Luther a heretic and banned the Ninety-five Theses.

This decentralized structure made enforcing Catholicism and rooting out Protestantism much trickier. Plus, Luther had a hometown advantage. Before long, a slew of German princes had flipped over to Lutheranism—enough that, by , they were powerful enough to force the Emperor to decriminalize Lutheranism.

The name of this agreement, the Peace of Augsburg, belies its result. With Lutheranism now officially given the green light, violence broke out across the Holy Roman Empire, as princes fought to force their faith on neighboring territories.

As a result, Germany became the bloodiest battleground in the Catholic-Protestant contest. With Catholic-Protestant rivalries now out in the open, officials had to boost the appeal of their brand to religious consumers by providing more services.

Protestants, for instance, offered lower prices for tithing, while Catholics reaffirmed the cult of saints, which encouraged grassroots engagement by beatifying and canonizing candidates venerated by local communities.