HIEU 164 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Demonology, Clinical Trial, Small Government
HIEU 164 – Textbook Notes (Wiesner-Hanks) – Chapter 7: Witchcraft
• People believed in witches for hundreds of years before this period, but during this period there
were 100-200,000 tried and 40-60,000 executed for the act
• At the time, increasing amount of witches seen as byproduct of coming of the end of the world
• Witch hunts result of religious fervor, Inquisition
• Most popular period of witch-hunting late 16th and early 17th centuries
Intellectual and Cultural Factors
• Previously, witches thought of as witches for using magic to get what they wanted
• Intellectuals thinking witches were used by the devil to do what he wanted
o Witch not what one did but what one was, and no longer had to prove they practiced magic
in order to accuse someone of witchcraft
• Witches seen as being in hierarchical organization similar to angels and archangels to overthrow
Christianity
• Ideal that witchcraft an international problem as questions being asked about witchcraft were
getting similar answers all around the world
• Demonology as an intellectual system that attracted elite thinkers
• Trials secret, but executions public
• Diabolism: witches dependent agents of male devil rather than independently directing demons
themselves
o Fit into gender roles with women being controlled by men
• Died down during first decades of Protestant Reformation due to religious infighting, but picked
up 1560s
• Protestants and Catholics both believed in witches and preached the ideas to laypeople
• Protestants didn't believe in rituals that would cure witches like exorcisms
• Way for elites to control/suppress popular culture?
Political, Economic, and Social Explanations
• Consolidation of power, proving control over subjects through punishing religious outsiders,
heretics, witches
• Witchcraft as evil, against community, state, church, God
o Witches internal enemy and symbol of hostility
• Accuser bringing charges (accusatorial procedure) -> legal authorities bringing charges
(inquisitorial procedure)
o People more likely to accuse others since didn't have to be responsible for their actions
o Required confession in order to execute in order to protect innocent people from death, but
in reality just led to more torturing of people on the stand
• Torture in order to confess, get people to name more witches since believed no witch acted alone
• Inquisitions w/capital I didn't prosecute many witches, for even if they suspected people of evil-
doings, they doubted they made an actual pact with devil
• Witch hunts after large-scale climate disaster
• More people accused were poor, so economic factors?
• Household/neighborhood antagonisms/fights leading to accusations
• More women living longer, getting married later/not marrying at all
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