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Y312: Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th Centuries

The main reasons for the growth and decline in the persecution of witches: demonology, confessional strife and village tensions

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall 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.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Process

Explain the charity refused model of accusation.

Who and when

How did confessional strife encourage persecution?

Evaluation

What is the argument linking the mini Ice Age to the witch hunts?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What did the papal bull of 1484 do?

    Model answer

    Innocent VIII acknowledged that witchcraft was widespread in the German lands and confirmed the authority of the inquisitors sent to root it out, giving them the backing of Rome.

  2. 2

    Describe the Malleus Maleficarum.

    Model answer

    It was a demonological handbook of 1486, largely the work of Heinrich Kramer, which set out how to detect, interrogate and convict witches and insisted that women were especially prone to the crime.

  3. 3

    Why did printing matter to the growth of persecution?

    Model answer

    It carried a single learned model of witchcraft across Europe in repeated editions, so demonologies such as those of Bodin in 1580 and Del Rio around 1600 standardised what judges expected to find.

  4. 4

    Define the cumulative concept of witchcraft.

    Model answer

    It fused ordinary village belief in harmful magic with learned ideas of a pact with the Devil, sexual relations with him, night flight and the sabbat, turning witchcraft into organised apostasy.

  5. 5

    Why did treating witchcraft as crimen exceptum matter so much?

    Model answer

    Classing it as an exceptional crime allowed courts to suspend the usual safeguards, so torture, secret accusation and the testimony of children and accomplices became admissible and mass trials became possible.

  6. 6

    How did confessional strife encourage persecution?

    Model answer

    Catholic and Protestant states each tried to prove themselves the truly godly community, and each treated magic and unorthodox practice as evidence of the Devil's work in a contested and insecure population.

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