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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: war, plague, scepticism and decline

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall 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.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Were midwives especially likely to be accused of witchcraft?

Key term

Was persecution driven from above or from below?

Numbers

Name three sceptical works that undermined the case for prosecution.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Were midwives especially likely to be accused of witchcraft?

    Model answer

    No, the idea of the midwife-witch comes from demonological literature rather than the trial records, and research has shown midwives were no more likely to be accused than other women.

  2. 2

    What effect did war have on witch persecution?

    Model answer

    Warfare brought plundering armies, taxation, refugees and dearth that intensified fear and blame, but it could also disrupt courts and halt trials outright, as the Swedish invasion did in Franconia.

  3. 3

    How did plague contribute to the search for hidden enemies?

    Model answer

    Recurrent epidemics with no medical explanation encouraged the belief that the disease was deliberately spread, as in the hunt for plague-smearers at Milan in 1630, and the same reasoning was applied to witches.

  4. 4

    Was persecution driven from above or from below?

    Model answer

    Both, and the distinction matters: villagers usually supplied the original accusations of harm, while learned judges and rulers supplied the demonological framework and the torture that turned single cases into mass panics.

  5. 5

    State the conclusion of Salazar's investigation.

    Model answer

    After examining the Basque panic he reported that he had found no proof whatever of real witchcraft and that the confessions were produced by the questioning itself, and the Spanish Inquisition adopted cautious rules in 1614.

  6. 6

    Name three sceptical works that undermined the case for prosecution.

    Model answer

    Weyer's attack on the credulity of judges in 1563, Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft of 1584, and Spee's Cautio Criminalis of 1631 exposing what torture actually produced.

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