OCR A-Level History A H505
Y101: Alfred and the Making of England 871–1016Unit group 1
Y102: Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest 1035–1107Unit group 1
Y103: England 1199–1272Unit group 1
Y104: England 1377–1455Unit group 1
Y105: England 1445–1509: Lancastrians, Yorkists and Henry VIIUnit group 1
Y106: England 1485–1558: The Early TudorsUnit group 1
Y107: England 1547–1603: The Later TudorsUnit group 1
Y108: The Early Stuarts and the Origins of the Civil War 1603–1660Unit group 1
Y109: The Making of Georgian Britain 1678–c.1760Unit group 1
Y110: From Pitt to Peel 1783–1853Unit group 1
Y111: Liberals, Conservatives and the Rise of Labour 1846–1918Unit group 1
Y112: Britain 1900–1951Unit group 1
Y113: Britain 1930–1997Unit group 1
Y201: The Rise of Islam c.550–750Unit group 2
Y202: Charlemagne 768–814Unit group 2
Y203: The Crusades and the Crusader States 1095–1192Unit group 2
Y204: Genghis Khan and the Explosion From the Steppes c.1167–1405Unit group 2
Y205: Exploration, Encounters and Empire 1445–1570Unit group 2
Y206: Spain 1469–1556Unit group 2
Y207: The German Reformation and the Rule of Charles v 1500–1559Unit group 2
Y208: Philip II 1556–1598Unit group 2
Y209: African Kingdoms c.1400–c.1800: Four Case StudiesUnit group 2
Y210: Russia 1645–1741Unit group 2
Y211: The Rise and Decline of the Mughal Empire in India 1526–1739Unit group 2
Y212: The American Revolution 1740–1796Unit group 2
Y213: The French Revolution and the Rule of Napoleon 1774–1815Unit group 2
Y214: France 1814–1870Unit group 2
Y215: Italy and Unification 1789–1896Unit group 2
Y216: The USA in the 19th Century: Westward Expansion and Civil War 1803–c.1890Unit group 2
Y217: Japan 1853–1937Unit group 2
Y218: International Relations 1890–1941Unit group 2
Y219: Russia 1894–1941Unit group 2
Y220: Italy 1896–1943Unit group 2
Y221: Democracy and Dictatorships in Germany 1919–1963Unit group 2
Y222: The Cold War in Asia 1945–1993Unit group 2
Y223: The Cold War in Europe 1941–1995Unit group 2
Y224: Apartheid and Reconciliation: South African Politics 1948–1999Unit group 2
Y301: The Early Anglo-Saxons c.400–800Unit group 3
Y302: The Viking Age c.790–1066Unit group 3
Y303: English Government and the Church 1066–1216Unit group 3
Y304: The Church and Medieval Heresy c.1100–1437Unit group 3
Y305: The Renaissance c.1400–c.1600Unit group 3
Y306: Rebellion and Disorder Under the Tudors 1485–1603Unit group 3
Y307: Tudor Foreign Policy 1485–1603Unit group 3
Y308: The Catholic Reformation 1492–1610Unit group 3
Y309: The Ascendancy of the Ottoman Empire 1453–1606Unit group 3
Y310: The Development of the Nation State: France 1498–1610Unit group 3
Y311: The Origins and Growth of the British Empire 1558–1783Unit group 3
Y312: Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th CenturiesUnit group 3
Y313: The Ascendancy of France 1610–1715Unit group 3
Y314: The Challenge of German Nationalism 1789–1919Unit group 3
Y315: The Changing Nature of Warfare 1792–1945Unit group 3
Y316: Britain and Ireland 1791–1921Unit group 3
Y317: China and Its Rulers 1839–1989Unit group 3
Y318: Russia and Its Rulers 1855–1964Unit group 3
Y319: Civil Rights in the USA 1865–1992Unit group 3
Y320: From Colonialism to Independence: The British Empire 1857–1965Unit group 3
Y321: The Middle East 1908–2011: Ottomans to Arab SpringUnit group 3
Y312: Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th Centuries
- 14 subtopics
- 40 things to know
- Unit group 3
- Thematic study and interpretations, one unit of twenty-one
What Y312: Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th Centuries covers
Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th Centuries is unit Y312 of OCR History A, one of the twenty-one options in unit group 3, the thematic study and historical interpretations; a student sits one of them. Its four key topics and three depth studies are popular culture, the main reasons for the growth and decline in the persecution of witches, the persecuted, responses of the authorities to witchcraft, the Witchcraze in Southern Germany c.1590–1630, Hopkins and the witch hunt of 1645–1647, the Salem witch trials. 398 recall questions across 14 subtopics.
Where it is assessed
Unit group 3
Thematic study and historical interpretations, one unit of twenty-one.
Check the OCR specification ↗The 14 subtopics
Each one has its own page.
- Popular culture: popular and elite culture, their definitionsRecall questions on popular and elite culture, their definitions, participation in popular culture and the withdrawal of the elite, the significance of ritual, the role of pageants and the festivals of misrule.Open →
- Popular culture: public humiliation, role of magic in society and social controlRecall questions on public humiliation, moral regulation, the role of magic in society, religious change, political change, economic change and social control.Open →
- The main reasons for the growth and decline in the persecution of witches: demonology, confessional strife and village tensionsRecall questions on the papal bull of 1484, the Malleus Maleficarum, printing, the cumulative concept and crimen exceptum, confessional strife, the mini Ice Age and weather trials, and charity refused and village divisions.Open →
- The main reasons for the growth and decline in the persecution of witches: war, plague, scepticism and declineRecall questions on midwives, war and plague, persecution from above or below, Salazar’s findings, sceptical writers, new ideas of nature and medicine, the English statutes and the numbers tried and executed.Open →
- The persecuted: geography of the Witchcraze in EuropeRecall questions on the geography of the Witchcraze in Europe and North America.Open →
- The persecuted: town and country, religion, gender, age and statusRecall questions on urban and rural accusations, towns that resisted, Catholic and Protestant persecution, the proportion of women accused and its explanations, regions of male witches, age, children, social position and occupations.Open →
- Responses of the authorities to witchcraft: Legal developmentsRecall questions on legal developments including the Inquisitorial system of criminal procedure and campaigns against medieval superstition.Open →
- Responses of the authorities to witchcraft: English methods, the Inquisitions and the end of prosecutionRecall questions on burning in England, swimming and pricking, the Spanish and Roman Inquisitions, the Reformation and protective ritual, appellate courts, confessions, the Act of 1736 and the legacy for legal procedure.Open →
- Depth study: The Witchcraze in Southern Germany c.1590–1630 — the great hunts and their prince-bishopsRecall questions on the fragmented political map, the territories of the largest hunts, Ellwangen, Würzburg, Bamberg and the Junius case, the Trier hunt and its opponents, and the religious divide in the region.Open →
- Depth study: The Witchcraze in Southern Germany c.1590–1630 — belief, crisis, the course of the hunts and their checkingRecall questions on popular belief, economic pressure and weather, the Thirty Years War, the fee system, the speed of the hunts, children, the most powerful contemporary attack on the trials, their checking from above and explanations of their intensity.Open →
- Depth study: Hopkins and the witch hunt of 1645–1647 — the hunt, Hopkins’s methods and why it happenedRecall questions on Matthew Hopkins, the start and spread of the hunt, numbers accused and executed, Chelmsford, the clergyman executed in Suffolk, the methods of Hopkins and Stearne, familiars and the conditions that made 1645 possible.Open →
- Depth study: Hopkins and the witch hunt of 1645–1647 — context, critics and the end of the huntRecall questions on the collapse of the church courts, religious and economic pressures, how the witchfinders were paid, contemporary criticism and Hopkins’s reply, the judges’ questions, his end and historians’ explanations.Open →
- Depth study: The Salem witch trials — the crisis of 1692 and the accusationsRecall questions on the setting of Salem, the political and legal crisis, the colony’s charter, religious anxiety, Samuel Parris, frontier war, the first accusations, Tituba’s confession, the spread of accusation and spectral evidence.Open →
- Depth study: The Salem witch trials — executions, interpretations and the end of the trialsRecall questions on the numbers imprisoned and dead, George Burroughs, the incentive to confess, the Salem Possessed and ergot interpretations, gender and property, the end of the trials, later acknowledgement and lasting impact.Open →
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
Explain the charity refused model of accusation.
Describe the typical age profile of the accused.
What was the usual social position of the accused?
Why did the existence of a strong appellate court matter more than the ruler's religion?
What role did frontier warfare play?
How did gender and property feature in the accusations?
If English witches were hanged, why were some women burned in England?
What happened to those who opposed the Trier trials?
Why was 1645 to 1647 the moment such a hunt became possible?
Who was the most effective contemporary critic of Hopkins?
How did Massachusetts eventually acknowledge the injustice?
What distinguished elite culture from popular culture?
Give three features of rural popular culture.
Name three punishments designed to humiliate an offender in public.
How did confessional strife encourage persecution?
Were midwives especially likely to be accused of witchcraft?
Was persecution driven from above or from below?
Contrast the scale of persecution in England and Scotland.
Name two Scottish periods of intense witch-hunting.
Why did inquisitorial procedure make torture almost inevitable in witchcraft cases?
Name three instruments or methods of judicial torture used in witchcraft cases.
Name the territories responsible for the largest German hunts of this period.
What forms did popular belief take in the region?
Which economic pressures preceded the great Franconian hunts?
State how many people were accused and how many were executed.
What difference did the collapse of the church courts make?
How did Samuel Parris contribute to the crisis?
How did urban popular culture differ from rural?
Which institutions carried out moral regulation?
What is the argument linking the mini Ice Age to the witch hunts?
Name three sceptical works that undermined the case for prosecution.
Were witch accusations an urban or a rural phenomenon?
State what searchers and prickers were looking for.
What happened at Ellwangen between 1611 and 1618?
How did the weather feature directly in accusations?
What happened at the Chelmsford assize of July 1645?
How did the religious climate of the 1640s shape the hunt?
At what point did the pattern of accusation break down?
How did the trials end?
Take Y312: Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th Centuries further
The same content, four other ways.
Commonly confused
Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.
Charivari vs Cumulative concept of witchcraft
Charivari: the noisy public shaming of those who broke the community's rules of marriage and conduct. Cumulative concept of witchcraft: the fusion of harmful magic with the pact, the sabbat and flight into a single crime.
Swimming the witch vs Watching
Swimming the witch: the ordeal of casting a suspect into water to see whether she floated. Watching: the deprivation of sleep used to obtain a confession.
Familiar vs Carolina
Familiar: the animal spirit believed to serve an English witch and to suckle from her body. Carolina: the imperial criminal code of 1532 which regulated the use of torture and evidence.
Questions from this topic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 1
Define popular culture as historians use the term for this period.
Model answer
It is the shared culture of the great majority who were not part of the educated elite, transmitted largely by speech, custom and performance rather than by books.
- 2
What distinguished elite culture from popular culture?
Model answer
Elite culture was literate, learned in Latin and the classics, acquired through formal education and increasingly practised in private among people of similar rank.
- 3
Explain what is meant by the withdrawal of the elite.
Model answer
It is the argument that before about 1500 the elite shared in the festivals, tales and games of everyone else, and that by about 1800 they had abandoned them as vulgar and superstitious, leaving popular culture to the poor.
- 4
Give three features of rural popular culture.
Model answer
The festive calendar of the farming year such as harvest home, parish gatherings including church ales and saints' days, and the alehouse as the centre of village sociability.
- 5
How did urban popular culture differ from rural?
Model answer
Towns added craft guilds, civic processions and drama, a denser market in cheap print such as ballads and chapbooks, and a much larger and more mobile population of servants and apprentices.
- 6
Why did ritual matter so much in this society?
Model answer
Ritual marked the passage of the year and of life, from baptism and churching to weddings and wakes, and it publicly confirmed who belonged to the community and on what terms.
What is inside Levo
Six ways to work the same material.
Y312: Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th Centuries revision questions
- What does Y312: Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th Centuries cover in OCR A-Level History A?
- 14 subtopics: popular culture: popular and elite culture, their definitions, popular culture: public humiliation, role of magic in society and social control, the main reasons for the growth and decline in the persecution of witches: demonology, confessional strife and village tensions, the main reasons for the growth and decline in the persecution of witches: war, plague, scepticism and decline, the persecuted: geography of the witchcraze in europe, the persecuted: town and country, religion, gender, age and status, responses of the authorities to witchcraft: legal developments, responses of the authorities to witchcraft: english methods, the inquisitions and the end of prosecution, depth study: the witchcraze in southern germany c.1590–1630 — the great hunts and their prince-bishops, depth study: the witchcraze in southern germany c.1590–1630 — belief, crisis, the course of the hunts and their checking, depth study: hopkins and the witch hunt of 1645–1647 — the hunt, hopkins’s methods and why it happened, depth study: hopkins and the witch hunt of 1645–1647 — context, critics and the end of the hunt, depth study: the salem witch trials — the crisis of 1692 and the accusations and depth study: the salem witch trials — executions, interpretations and the end of the trials. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.
- How is Y312: Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th Centuries organised?
- By the OCR H505 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.
Every question in Y312: Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th Centuries, on a schedule.
Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.
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