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

The persecuted: town and country, religion, gender, age and status

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall 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.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Describe the typical age profile of the accused.

Key term

What was the usual social position of the accused?

Key term

Were witch accusations an urban or a rural phenomenon?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Were witch accusations an urban or a rural phenomenon?

    Model answer

    Accusations typically arose from village quarrels in the countryside, but the largest and most lethal panics happened where an urban or princely court with torture took those accusations up.

  2. 2

    Give an example of a town that resisted the pressure to prosecute.

    Model answer

    Rothenburg ob der Tauber, where the council treated accusations with suspicion, punished false accusers and executed almost nobody despite lying in the worst-affected region.

  3. 3

    Did Catholic or Protestant states persecute more heavily?

    Model answer

    Neither denomination was consistently worse, and the decisive factors were legal procedure and the strength of central review rather than the confession of the ruler.

  4. 4

    State the proportion of the accused who were women.

    Model answer

    Around three-quarters to four-fifths across Europe as a whole, though the proportion varied greatly between regions.

  5. 5

    Give three explanations for the predominance of women among the accused.

    Model answer

    Demonology explicitly held women to be weaker and more susceptible to the Devil, women's work in healing, childbirth, food and dairying made them plausible causes of household misfortune, and poor women depended most on the neighbourly exchange that quarrels destroyed.

  6. 6

    Name regions where most of the accused were men.

    Model answer

    Iceland, Estonia, Russia, Finland and Normandy, where witchcraft was associated with male sorcerers, shepherds and users of written charms.

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