ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

The Great European Witch Hunt: Less Known Facts About This Shocking Brutality of Mankind!!

Updated on June 8, 2020

Magic has always been around. From the wonder struck caveman who discovered fire for the first time, to the ‘Megia’ rituals performed by the Persian priests, magic has presented itself in many forms. In its earliest form, witchcraft was a set of rituals that sought to engage the energies of the natural world for better survival. As the perception of every religion included some king of spiritual aspect, witches and shamans were the mediums through which communication with this dimension was channelized.

Our world has seen countless acts of brutality. Be it cruelty by individual criminals or pandemics of brutality spanning across countries. The Great European Witch Hunt was one of them. Spanning around 300 years from 1450 AD to 1750 AD it sparked similar events almost all over the globe which ended by around 1800 AD. Till that year around 175,000 executions had taken place all over the world. There are so many details about the Witch Hunt that less people know of.

Here is a compilation of a few such intriguing facts:


1. According to the witch-hunters, God allowed the devil and his witches to commit evil in order to test the faithful and punish the wicked.
2. Eleanor Cobham, the Duchess of Gloucester, did public penance in 1441 for using magic in attempt to further her husband’s political ambitions. A century later she would have faced far worse punishment as a witch.
3. In most of Europe the punishment for witchcraft was to be burned at the stake, but the practice in England and Scotland and subsequently America was to hang those found guilty.
4. Someone who died under torture having resisted confessing to witchcraft, would have been showing a heroic level of endurance in order to defend his or her innocence.
5. King James VI of Scotland faced a serious threat to his rule from the Earl of Bothwell. The king secured his power partly by accusing the earl of being in league with witches.

The Salem trials

6. King James’s anti-witch tract, introduced many of the ideas of European witch-hunters into Britain. James advocated the ‘swimming’ of witches to test their guilt. The test was based on the belief that the water rejects the corrupted souls. The accused were thrown in water, with a acceptance that the innocent would sink whereas the guilty would float. The accused’s left hand would be tied to the right foot and vice versa before throwing into the water.
7. From 1450 AD to 1800 AD, times were so turbulent that a mass witch hunt could be sparked by practically any event that caused tension ad suspicion in a community.
8. Although the witches were thought to know the recipe themselves, the magic salve enabling the witch’s broomstick to fly was considered to be provided by the Devil.


9. Witch hunts in Germany were mostly sparked by bad hailstorms causing severe damage to crops. Such misfortunes were attributed to the malign action of the witches. Form the year 1561 AD to 1670 AD, more than 3000 people were killed in Germany after being tried as witches. Small villages with scanty population like just above 600, 50 people were burned at the stake and an additional 170 were waiting to be tried. People were so brutally tortured in these times that it lead to extremely huge number of confessions.


10. The notion that the witches flew to the Sabbat rooted from the belief that female flying spirits called the ‘wild hunt’ traveled through the night sky at certain times of the year.

In one of the most merciless killing spree of the time, The Archbishop Elector of Trier facilitated a hunt that slew around 375 people from around 20 villages. Two of these villages were left with just one woman each.

Countless legends and folklore emerged in these times as did so many ridiculous and absurd accusations. It took humanity more than 350 years to understand that hailstorms and famines were acts of nature and could not be produced by witchcraft. Slowly women flying on broomsticks became part of bedtime stories rather than judicial records. As ruthless as these years were, they bore some good for the times to come. Torture, which was earlier a common part of a judicial process, ended to be so.

Did you know that in the earliest developmental phases of religion, magic was its integral part?

See results
working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)