1. A Witch Hunt Simulation: Germany 1628

2. Directions

3. Witch Scare Time
During the Reformation (from ) the practice of witch hunting escalated to alarming rates, touching every part of Europe from Ireland to Russia.
Scholars currently estimate that during the 16th and 17th centuries between 100,000 and 200,000 people were officially tried for witchcraft, and between 50,000 and 300,000 were executed.
Witch hunts died out in the late 1600s, but spread to the New World.
Some towns there were no women left.
Children and priests killed in some towns in Germany

4. What was a witch?

5. Church illustration of a witch’s sabbat
What was a “witch”?
“A witch,” according Chief Justice Coke of England, “was a person who hath conference with the Devil to consult with him or to do some act.”
Witches were thought to be individuals who could mysteriously injure other people or animals.
Belief in witches began long before Christianity. For centuries, talks had circulated about old women who made night time travels on greased broomsticks to sabbats, or assemblies of witches,.
In the popular imagination, witches had definite characteristics. The vast majority were married women or widows between 50 and 70 years of age, crippled, with pockmarked skin. They often practices midwifery or folk medicine, and most had sharp tongues and were quick to scold.
This definition by the highest legal authority of England demonstrates that educated was well as ignorant people believed in witches.
by causing a person to become blind or impotent, for instance, or by preventing a cow from giving milk.
Church illustration of a witch’s sabbat

6. How would they get a ‘witch’ to confess?
“the third degree” – saying that comes from this time
Torture developed from the inquistion
Three degrees of torture – the 3rd meant to kill you
Thumb screws, leg screws, the iron maiden
No compassion allowed – don’t look into their eyes – casting a spell on you
“witches” told their torturers what they wanted to hear so it would end
Death by fire – only when body reduced to ashes would her power be destroyed
Trial by water – developed by the English. Either way would die.

7. What Caused the increase in witch hunts?

8. What Caused the Increase in Witch Hunts?
The religious reformers who broke from the Catholic Church during the Reformation held extreme notions about the devil’s powers.
The insecurity created by the religious wars contributed to the growth of the belief in witches.
Picture of Satan’s Court from the 1200s

9. Cause: The Consequences of the Reformation
Some scholars see witch hunts as a consequences of the Reformation: rulers proved their piety and religious commitment either by fighting religious wars (between Catholics and Protestants) or by cracking down on persons considered social delinquents.
Witch hunt was weakest where Catholicism was strong: Spain, Italy, Portugal. Where Catholicism was the weakest is where the witch hunts prevailed: Germany, France, Switzerland

10. Cause: Demographic Changes
During the 1500s and 1600s people began to marry later and there was an increase in the number of women who did not marry at all, women who were not under a man’s supervision became highly suspicious.
Demographic changes are changes in the population.

11. Cause: Socioeconomic Factors
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there was severe inflation, periodic famines due to poor harvests, wars- causing a great increase in the numbers of beggars and homeless people.
The growth of commercial capitalism began to undermine medieval communal values of reciprocity and replace them with a new individualistic ethic based on private property and profit.
All of these developments created an atmosphere of fear and instability in which the poor were seen as threats, as agents of the devil. Some scholars believe that these fears caused people to accuse others of witchcraft.

12. Why were women targeted?

13. Women and Witchcraft
the broad feelings of misogyny (meaning hatred for women) in Western religion,
the long-held belief that women were more susceptible to the devil
the belief that women were sexually insatiable
As the most important capital crime (meaning a crime punishable by death), witchcraft has considerable significance in women’s history.
The great European witch scare reveals something about contemporary views of women.
Many scholars have argued that it was the women who seemed most independent from patriarchal norms -- especially elderly ones living outside the parameters of the patriarchal family -- who were most vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft.
"The woman who was labeled a witch wanted things for herself or her household from her neighbors, but she had little to offer in return to those who were not much better off than she. Increasingly resented as an economic burden, she was also perceived by her neighbors to be the locus of a dangerous envy and verbal violence.
Overall, approximately 75 to 80 percent of those accused and convicted of witchcraft in early modern Europe were female.

14. Why did the craze end?

15. Why did the Craze End?
Witch hunting declined only in the 18th century, when the Enlightenment began- this was a movement that stressed logic and science as a means of understanding the world. The Enlightenment, beginning in the late 1680s, suggested that there was no real evidence that alleged witches caused real harm, and taught that the use of torture to force confessions was inhumane. Once the educated ruling class started to doubt witches, the craze began to end.

16. Witch Hunt Simulation
Go to /hunt/index.html
Complete the simulation and answer the questions on the handout.