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Loath they are to confess without torture, which witnesseth
their guiltiness.
King James I of England (VI of Scotland), Daemonologie,
1597
Every old woman with a wrinkled face, a furrowed brow, a
hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or
a scolding tongue, having a rugged coat on her back, a skull-cap
on her head, a spindle in her hand, and a Dog or Cat by her side,
is not only suspected, but pronounced a witch.
John Gaule, Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and
Witchcraft, 1646
To the extent that they existed at all the so-called witches of
the Middle Ages were probably adherents of old religions. The rites
of Dionysus for example are reminiscent of the rites of supposed
witches. These rites took place at night, generally in locations
associated with fertility or the powers of the underworld. Worshippers
were mainly women, who bore torches and carried phallic images.
Dionysus himself was shaggy and horned, and represented by a goat,
an animal symbolising fertility. Rites included the drinking of
wine, ecstatic dancing, and animal sacrifice. Again, the worship
of the ancient European tripartite Goddess of the moon may have
been misinterpreted as a parody of the worship of the Christian
Trinity.
Mediterranean gods were dragooned by Christianity at an early
stage into the armies of Satan. Later the gods of the Celts and
the Teutons were also pressed into the ranks of Satan's hordes,
so that those who worshipped them could be condemned as Devil worshippers
as well. Church leaders promoted the persecution of such people,
claiming that they were powerful malignant agents of Satan. The
idea did not really stand up to reason. As Gibbon noted of those
who affirmed the reality of witchcraft:
They believed with the wildest inconsistency, that this preternatural
dominion of the air, of earth, and of hell was exercised, from
the vilest motives of malice or gain, by some wrinkled hags and
itinerant sorcerers who passed their obscure lives in penury and
contempt
Countless thousands of people whose only crime was to reject Christianity
were judicially killed in Europe over the course of several hundred
years. They owed their untimely deaths to men like Pope Gregory
IX who explicitly authorised the killing of witches in the thirteenth
century. In Germany a priest called Conrad discovered that torture
could elicit the most astonishing confessions. The more he tortured
people the more astonishing the confessions they were prepared to
make. They could be induced to implicate others, and when in turn
the people who had been implicated were tortured they confessed
as well. The obvious fact that almost anyone can be induced to confess
to almost anything under torture does not seem to have impinged
upon Conrad's Godly mind. His only explanation was that witchcraft
was rampant, and Christendom was in danger.
Pope Innocent VIII perceived the threat. His 'Witches Bull' Summis
desiderantes affectibus of 5th December1484 called for the utmost
severity against witches. He wrote that witches were hindering men
from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving. In these
and in other ways devils were interfering with peoples' sex lives.
(The powers of evil seem never to have lost a chance to involve
innocent Christians in sexual matters). To help with his struggle
against the powers of evil His Holiness commissioned two Dominican
inquisitors in North Germany to write the book, Malleus Maleficarum,
"Hammer of the Witches" . This book reinforced the fiction
that women who worshipped the goddess Diana were actually agents
of the Devil, providing a reason to extirpate the last vestiges
of rival gods. According to the authors "…although these
women imagine they are riding (as they think and say) with Diana
or Herodias, in truth they are riding with the devil, who calls
himself by some such heathen name…".
Malleus Maleficarum is an inquisitors' handbook, giving practical
instructions for the discovery, examination, torture, trial and
execution of witches. It was furnished to Inquisitors and judges
throughout Western Christendom, from its publication in 1486. It
was one of the earliest books to be printed, and had been reprinted
fourteen times already by 1520. It is full of sexual fantasy: witches
flying through the air to meet the Devil and copulate with him;
dismembered human sex organs living like chicks in birds' nests;
demons copulating with men, then changing gender to copulate with
sleeping women, and impregnating them with human sperm illicitly
acquired from their earlier male partner. The book was used to condemn
untold thousands to torture and death. According to the authors,
witchcraft was both heresy and high treason against God's majesty,
and so:
Any person, whatever his rank or position, upon such an accusation
may be put to the torture, and he who is found guilty, even if
he confess his crime, let him be racked, let him suffer all other
tortures prescribed by law in order that he may be punished in
proportion to his offences.
Legal technicalities could easily be accommodated. Roman Law had
prescribed burning alive for sorcerers, so this could easily be
extended to witches, either by redefining the words 'sorcerer' and
'witch', or by extracting confessions of sorcery through torture.
Confessions were guaranteed by the use of torture, and these confessions
confirmed the reality of witchcraft. The reality of witchcraft promoted
terror of witches. Terror generated accusations. Accusations called
for torture. And torture produced confessions and yet more accusations.
It was a vicious circle, a huge terrible wheel powered by the authority
of the Church. The questions asked were not whether offences had
been committed, but where and when the offences had been committed,
and who else had been involved. Guilt was assumed. It was merely
the details that needed filling in.
In 1524 alone, more than a thousand people were convicted and
burned in the district of Como. Between 1587 and 1593 the Archbishop
of Trier (Johann von Schoneburg) had 368 witches burned. Between
1623 and 1631 the Bishop of Würzburg (Philip Adolf von Ehrenberg)
burned more than 900, many of them children. 900 was not an unusual
score for a top inquisitor. Some inquisitors lost count. At Bamberg,
the bishop (Johann Georg II) had a famous witch-house built, complete
with cells and torture chambers. It contained common instruments
of torture: thumbscrews, leg vices, whipping stocks fitted with
iron spikes, scalding lime-baths, racks, strappados, and other devices.
The strappado was a hoist for lifting the accused into air by their
arms, which had been tied behind their back. Weights were sometimes
attached to their feet or testicles to make the pain unbearable.
In the ten years to 1633 the bishop burned more than 600 people.
Johannes Junius was one of the victims at Bamberg. He bribed a gaoler
to smuggle out to his daughter a letter dated 24th July 1624:
…and then came also - God in highest heaven have mercy
- the executioner, and put the thumb-screws on me, both hands
bound together, so that the blood ran out at the nails and everywhere,
so that for four weeks I could not use my hands, as you can see
from the writing… Thereafter they first stripped me, bound
my hands behind me, and drew me up in the [strappado]. Then I
thought heaven and earth were at an end; eight times did they
draw me up and let me fall again, so that I suffered terrible
agony…And so I made my confession…but it was all a lie.
[He records his confession. Later they wanted him to accuse others.
He named some names, but would not say more]. …So they gave
me to the executioner, told him to strip me, shave me all over,
and put me to the torture…Then I had to tell what crimes
I had committed…So I said that I was to kill my children,
but I had killed a horse instead. It did not help. I had also
taken a sacred wafer, and had desecrated it. When I had said this
they left me in peace…Good night, for your father Johannes
Junius will never see you more .
To deny that witches existed was 'plainly heretical' . No one
could point out that the Inquisitors were propounding nonsense and
expect to live. Roger Bacon had attributed witchcraft and sorcery
to either fraud or delusion (a fact that demonstrates that the conclusion
could be reached by a rational mind in the light of the contemporary
evidence) but Bacon was himself condemned as a heretic. Spanish
Inquisitors also seem to have attributed witchcraft to madness and
delusions, and so left the secular authorities to deal with it,
but such enlightened attitudes were rare. Throughout western Christendom
witches were burned by the church or hanged by the state.The prevailing
view was that God himself would intervene to save anyone falsely
accused, but God consistently failed to live up to expectations.
Friedrich von Spee saw the process at close quarters as confessor
at Würzburg. He mused that the authors of Malleus Maleficarum
were themselves responsible for introducing witches to Germany through
their 'ingenious and subtly apportioned tortures' . Though von Spee
found only innocence among the victims, and acknowledged that anyone
would confess under torture, he nevertheless continued to see them
burned at the stake without protest . He later published an exposé,
Cautio Criminalis, in 1631 and had the good fortune to die of the
plague before the Inquisition could get to him. In his book he exposed
the techniques used, and enumerated the abuses. As he pointed out
the inquisitors' arguments could never fail. If the witch had led
an evil life she was obviously guilty, but if she had led a good
life this was equally damning, since witches were known to deceive
by appearing especially virtuous. When she was put in prison a similar
double-edged argument was applied. If she showed fear when she heard
others being tortured then she was obviously guilty. If she did
not then this too was proof of guilt, since witches were known to
mimic the innocent and present a bold facade. Anyone who gave assistance
to the accused or protested about the procedure was labelled a supporter
of witchcraft so that everyone kept silent for fear of the consequences.
During the trial itself the replies given by the victim were not
even recorded, so that even if she had a perfect defence it could
be ignored. The torture came in two stages, only the second of which
was referred to as torture. If the victim confessed during the first
stage she was therefore said to have confessed without being tortured.
If she grimaced while being tortured the torturers said she was
laughing. If she passed out they said that she was asleep or bewitched.
If she died under torture, they said that the devil had broken her
neck. There was no way out. Confessing led to death. Refusing to
confess also lead to death.
Almost any activity could count as witchcraft, if the perpetrator
was unpopular or an outsider. Old women were burned alive for keeping
pets. Young boys were burned alive for reciting doggerel which was
reputed to have the power to raise the Devil. Anyone could be burned
alive for turning themselves into animals. To deny the efficacy
of witchcraft, or even to be seen to be less than zealous in their
detection and punishment invited danger. Johann Weyer, in book on
magic, De Praestigiis Daemonum, in 1563 had argued that cases of
witchcraft had natural explanations and that self-confessed (genuinely
self-confessed) witches were merely suffering from mental disorders.
He was himself charged with witchcraft. Dietrich Flade, a secular
judge at Trier, was insufficiently enthusiastic as a witch-hunter
for the tastes of his local bishop. When he tried to control the
local witch mania, he was himself charged with witchcraft. Various
people were induced to perjure themselves, including a woman who
was herself already condemned to be burned alive (her inducement
was that she should be strangled before being burned). Flade's fate
was sealed. He confessed under torture that he had turned mud into
living slugs to damage local crops, and was executed at Trier in
1589.
There was no question of anything approaching a fair trial. All
elements of natural justice were abandoned. The accused was regarded
as guilty from the outset, being referred to as the witch or wizard
rather than the accused. By statute the accused were not permitted
to know the identity of their accusers (Malleus Maleficarum III,
q 2) . Hearsay evidence was accepted by the court (III, q 6). The
evidence of known perjurers was accepted, as long as they were acting
out of zeal for the faith (III, q 4). The earlier conviction of
other members of the family of the accused, or even suspicions of
witchcraft on their part, counted as evidence (III, q 6). This led
to the persecution of whole families. Eight members of a single
family were executed for witchcraft within the space of the eighteen
months to June 1630. The accused was stripped, shaved all over,
and searched intimately, on the grounds that they might conceal
some magical charm "even in the most secret parts of their
bodies which must not be named" (III, q 15, the text here assumes
that the accused would be a woman). Torture was to be applied "often
and frequently" (III, q 14). The accused had no right to legal
counsel and if the judge allowed counsel to defend them they could
not chose their own (III, q 10). If defence counsel was appointed
they had no right to see critical evidence (such as the names of
witnesses), and they ran the risk of incurring a charge themselves
of defending heresy (III, q 10).
Sometimes brute force was supplemented by deceit. The authors
advised ploys to elicit what the witch-hunters wanted to hear. They
suggested ways of deceiving a woman about the sentence she would
get if she confessed. Inquisitors could assure her that they would
not condemn her to death if only she would confess (III, q 14),
but this was a trick, for she would still be killed one way or another.
She could be lead into believing that she would be given a lesser
penance if she implicated others. When she confessed she could be
sentenced to life imprisonment on a diet of bread and water, on
which she might be able to survive for a few months. Another option
was to sentence her to imprisonment for a while before having her
burned (so she got the lesser punishment as well as, not instead
of, the greater punishment). A third option was to disclaim the
duty of passing sentence and have a deputy sentence her to death
instead (III, q14).
Not all accused were executed for a first offence, but as was
the case for other heresies, repetition of the supposed offence
virtually guaranteed death. A mere suspicion of inconstancy was
sufficient grounds for an ecclesiastical judge to ensure that the
suspect was put to death (II, q 6, Ch. 16). There was no need to
record the sentence in writing (III q 18). There was no appeal,
however badly the accused had been treated (II, q 1, Ch.16). Temporal
Lords were forbidden to interfere (II, q 1, Ch.16), though the civil
authorities were obliged to carry out the sentence of the ecclesiastical
court (II, q 1, Ch. 16). Canon law required an ecclesiastical judge
to try the case, but a secular one to carry out a sentence of death
(III). Customary Indulgences were granted to those who came to watch
the death sentence being carried out (III, q 29 ff. ).
In an anti-Semitic society it was natural that imaginary witches'
should adopt Jewish terminology. Thus their meetings, or meeting
places, were referred to as synagogues in the twelfth century. Later,
they would come to be called sabbats, thus identifying the Jewish
holy day with Satan's holy day. Again, in a feudal society it was
natural that that Satan should adopt feudal practices, and sure
enough Satan not only required a written contract from his adherents,
but also required them to pay homage, like any other vassal to a
new feudal Lord.
Since babies who died before baptism were condemned to Hell, it
followed that Satan would have an interest in procuring the deaths
of new-born infants. Midwives who delivered a stillborn baby were
thus suspect. According to evidence given to the authors of Malleus
Maleficarum "No one does the Catholic faith more harm than
midwives" . It was a rare midwife who never lost a baby, and
many paid the price as satanic murderers. Midwives at Cologne were
almost extirpated between 1627 and 1630 .
There seems to have been no limit to the credulity of Churchmen
in their pursuit of Satan's servants. In 1550 a woman was sentenced
in Basle to burn as a witch for having kept "a live female
gnome". In 1583 at Vienna a 16 year old girl suffered stomach
cramps. Over a period of eight weeks a team of Jesuits succeeded
in exorcising 12,652 demons from her body. They discovered that
her grandmother had kept these demons in glass jars disguised as
flies. Granny confessed under torture. Yes, she was a witch and
yes, she had engaged in sex with the Devil. As they watched granny
being dragged off to the stake, the Jesuits must have congratulated
themselves on another Godly job well done. In 1586 the Archbishop
of Trèves had 118 women and two men burned for making incantations
that lengthened the winter. Old women of 90, young girls of 6, all
were agents of the Devil, and all deserved death and damnation.
As late as 1722 an insane old woman was burned in Scotland for having
turned her lame daughter into a pony and then ridden her to a witches'
sabbat.
A long succession of popes, confirmed the existence of witches
and their sexual proclivities. In theory at least, heretics were
burned only if unrepentant or on a second conviction, but from the
fifteenth century this concession was denied to those accused of
witchcraft. Despite the dice being so heavily loaded, churchmen
frequently found it necessary to fabricate evidence to support their
claims. They were implicated for example in fabrications as at Laudun
(1630) and Louviers (1647). In France a leading Christian philosopher,
Jean Bodin, published an influential work in the late sixteenth
century which confirmed the existence of witches . He leant his
weight to the belief that those who deny the existence of witchcraft
must be witches themselves. No penalty could be too harsh. Even
slow burning was insufficient penalty. He confirmed that judges
who do not convict witches to the stake should themselves be put
to death. No one accused should ever be acquitted unless the falsity
of the accusation was "more obvious than the sun". He
had judged many witches himself and condemned them to death. He
approved of torture. His own practice was to concentrate on young
children and delicate women. The fact that respected Christian philosophers
like Bodin were absolutely certain that witchcraft was a reality
silenced all but the most foolhardy sceptics.
Roman Catholics were not the only Christians to kill people on
charges of witchcraft. Malleus Maleficarum was so respected that
it was used by Protestant authorities as well as Catholic ones.
It lay on the bench of every judge and magistrate, authoritative
and irrefutable. Protestants rivalled Catholics in their zeal as
witch finders. Being accused of heresy himself, Luther was initially
opposed to burning heretics, but still argued that witches should
be burned, even if they had done no harm to anyone. He himself had
four witches roasted at Wittenburg. Calvin was also a keen advocate
of killing witches, since "the bible teaches us that there
are witches and that they must be slain". Indeed Calvinism
excelled all other Protestant sects in its zeal against witchcraft,
and witches were systematically hunted wherever Calvinism flourished.
Calvin himself was active in proceedings . He personally laid information
against sorcerers, and in 1545 was involved in actions against witches
suspected of spreading the plague. Some of the men were sentenced
to have their flesh torn off with pincers, and women to have their
right hands cut off before being burnt at the stake. Calvinists
exported witch-hunting to the Puritan American colonies culminating
in the famous Salem episode of 1689-93.
In continental Europe the burning of witches continued well into
the eighteenth century. In 1749 a nun came under suspicion at Würzburg.
Other nuns testified that they had seen her adopt the form of a
pig and climb over the convent walls. In that form she drank the
convent's best wine. In the form of a hare she would milk the convent's
cows dry, and in the form of a cat she would prowl around the convent
annoying the sisters. She was also in the habit of flying off to
London in the evenings to perform as an actress at Drury Lane. For
these crimes she was burned alive in the local market place.
For various reasons the use of torture was restricted in certain
areas, and in those areas the witch terror never approached the
heights of those areas where torture was applied freely. Examples
are the Jura, Spain, and England. In the Jura the authorities restricted
the use of torture, paid little attention to the accusations of
children, and required accusations to be made openly . In Spain
the Inquisition concentrated on heretics and apostates, and (perhaps
surprisingly) generally discouraged witch-hunting. In England, witchcraft
was regarded as a civil crime rather than an ecclesiastical one
. It was for this reason that convicted witches were hanged rather
than burned, as they were on the continent and in Scotland. And
it was also for this reason that far fewer people lost their lives
in England than in continental Europe, where the Church exercised
unrestrained power. Again, when German bishops stopped applying
torture so liberally after the von Spee's exposé, the incidence
of witchcraft there miraculously subsided.
Even in England prosecutions were heavily one-sided. As on the
continent of Europe, the accused were asked loaded questions, for
example not whether they had consorted with the Devil, but how they
had come to consort with the Devil. The only hope was that the secular
judge was an educated rationalist, who might expose the accusers
as fraudulent. Standard tests for a witch included the old ordeal
by water, now called 'swimming', and advocated by James VI of Scotland
in his book about witchcraft Demonologie, published in 1597. The
theory was that water, as the instrument of baptism, would reject
those who had renounced their baptism: the water would reject them,
just as they had rejected it. The term swimming is perhaps misleading,
since hardly anyone then learned to swim, and in any case the victims
had their right thumb tied to their left foot, and their left thumb
to their right foot. They were then cast into open water. If they
floated they had been rejected by the water on behalf of God, and
were thus proved guilty. If they sank then they were innocent, but
their innocence was often not apparent until they had drowned. Another
method was to weigh the accused against a large bible. Heavy people
were pronounced innocent, light ones found guilty. Scottish witches
tended to confess to behaviour very similar to that expected on
the continent (diabolical pacts, feudal homage, orgies), but English
ones practised a peculiarly English type of witchcraft (keeping
familiars and participating in bizarre activities like sailing in
sieves).
English witches started behaving like other European witches as
soon as King James VI of Scotland became James I of England, and
introduced continental ideas. His Demonologie had affirmed the reality
of witches and had attacked sceptics like Weyer. Soon after his
accession to the English throne in 1604 the existing English witchcraft
act was reviewed. Twelve bishops sat on the Committee to which the
bill was referred on its second reading in the House of Lords. In
the same year, with the bishops' help, the old English Act was replaced
by a new British Act introducing into English law continental themes
like the diabolical pact and devil worship . The Devil and his followers
duly amended their behaviour to conform to expectations, making
pacts and organising formal sessions of devil worship.
Under the earlier Elizabethan statute a witch had had to be accused
of doing harm to deserve death, now anyone accused even of keeping
an imp was liable to the death penalty. Imps generally took the
form of ordinary animals. A common way of establishing that someone
was a witch was to isolate them in a room. Any animal that came
into the room established their guilt - anything from a fly to a
pet cat. This animal visitor was clearly the witch's familiar, come
to suckle. In earlier times people had been able to break a witch's
spell by the application of a little counter magic (for example
by scratching the suspected witch and drawing blood). Now, the Church
disapproved of such techniques, on the grounds that they also depended
upon diabolical magic. Now the only acceptable way to break a witch's
spell was to kill her - it was usually 'her'. Instead of receiving
a scratch on the face, she was now likely to receive a noose around
the neck.
One authority has estimated that as many as 70,000 people were
put to death under the 1604 statute . As we have seen, the new translation
of the bible issued in James's reign, the Authorised Version (also
known as the King James' Bible) used the word witch more frequently
than earlier versions, providing biblical authority for killing
people. In 1612, a year after James's new bible was published, eight
people were hanged as witches in Pendle, Lancashire. They were the
first in England to be accused of continental type witchcraft. Their
real crimes seem to have been that they were poor and unpopular.
They included a mentally subnormal youth and an eighty year old
woman. The story that led to their conviction had been fabricated,
and was widely known to have been fabricated, but those responsible
for it were never brought to court to answer for their perjury.
Many ordinary people already doubted the reality of witchcraft,
but the Church and the learned professions that it controlled were
agreed that it was a reality. As Robert Burton noted in 1621 "Many
deny witches at all, or, if there be any, they can do no harm, but
on the contrary are most lawyers, divines, physicians, philosophers."
King James, came to doubt the reality of witchcraft. In 1616 nine
women were found guilty of witchcraft by Leicestershire Summer Sessions,
on the evidence of a thirteen year old boy . All of the women were
executed. Afterwards the King himself examined the boy and deduced
that his evidence was false. Nine women had been killed for no good
reason. A few years later another case, that of William Perry, 'The
Boy of Bilston' increased the King's scepticism. At the Staffordshire
Assizes on 26th July 1621 the boy admitted that he had fabricated
accusations of witchcraft. He had been trained by a Roman Catholic
priest to simulate the symptoms of being bewitched . This was not
an isolated case: as on the continent a number of Catholic priests
had been discovered training children to feign such symptoms either
to demonstrate their own powers of exorcism, or else to provide
evidence with which to accuse their enemies .
James now turned detective. He developed rationalist experiments
to test the victims of witchcraft. For example, he adopted a technique
that had been used successfully in the Boy of Bilston Case. A supposedly
possessed person often reacted badly when a familiar biblical verse
was recited. But when it was recited in Greek, without the bewitched
having been told what it was, there was no reaction. Everyone knew
that demons understood Greek so the implication was that the bewitched
person was acting. In the light of the evidence James now attributed
the workings of devils and witches to falsehoods and delusions,
and in the latter part of his reign witch-hunting declined. It would
now be the domain of extremists: Puritans on one wing, Papists on
the other.
Puritans were soon in power under Cromwell's Commonwealth, and
witch-hunting was underway once again. Torture was illegal in England,
but torture was thought of as purely physical. Witch-finders discovered
that sleep deprivation worked just as well as physical torture,
and no-one considered this to constitute unreasonable duress. Teams
of helpers kept the accused awake continuously for a few days and
nights, and thus obtained confessions just as convenient, detailed,
incriminating and contrived as continental torturers. This became
a favourite technique of Calvinists like Matthew Hopkins, known
as England's Witchfinder General, who was responsible for an unknown
number of deaths, certainly hundreds, probably thousands. When other
techniques failed, witch-hunters like Hopkins were prepared to use
fraud to obtain the evidence they required - for example using a
specially made blunt needle which retracted into a wooden handle
like a stage dagger, and which could thus be used to discover witches'
marks wherever required. The needle would leave neither puncture
hole nor blood, and neither would the victim feel pain, although
innocent onlookers thought they could see the needle sinking into
the victim's flesh. England was comparatively restrained, but it
was still possible as late as 1716 to hang a little girl, along
with her mother, for having sold their souls to the Devil and for
having caused their neighbours to vomit pins .
King James's 1604 Act was replaced by a new one in 1736 which
was directed at those pretending to possess magical powers. But
belief in the reality of witchcraft continued in mainstream Christian
denominations. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodists in the
eighteenth century, was a keen advocate of witch hunting. He wrote
in support of it after even Roman Catholics were starting to be
embarrassed by the subject . He saw that denial of witchcraft amounted
to denial of bible. If there were no witches then the bible was
in error . And if the bible was in error then the whole of Christianity
was mistaken. It was therefore necessary to fight against rationalists,
who were now in the majority. As an authority on the history of
witch beliefs says:
It is probable that the Methodist movement gave an impetus to
mob violence against witches in the latter part of the eighteenth
century and helped witch-beliefs to survive so late into the following
century…John Wesley himself - almost alone in his day amongst
men of his high intellectual and cultural level - repeatedly and
emphatically affirmed his belief in the stern reality of witchcraft
.
As a general pattern witchcraft prosecutions dried up earliest
in areas where the Church's influence was weakest. The last official
executions took place in Holland in 1610, in America in 1692, and
in Scotland in 1727. In France the last execution took place in
1745, and prosecutions ceased altogether after a series of impostures
were exposed. The last official executions took place in Germany
in 1775, in Switzerland in 1782, and in Poland in 1793. It is apparently
not known when they ceased in areas under Church control like Italy
and Spain, but it cannot have been earlier than the nineteenth century.
The last official executions in England took place in 1716. The
judiciary were already sceptical. Proceedings were conducted according
to the law, but some judges were clearly unsympathetic to witchcraft
prosecutions. When, at her trial in 1712, Jane Wenham was accused
of having flown through the air, Mr Justice Powell is reputed to
have pointed out that there was no law against flying. Witchcraft
was longer being taken seriously in educated circles, and even though
the jury convicted Jane Wenham and sentenced her to death, the judge
succeeded in getting the sentence repealed. The last witchcraft
trial in England took place in 1717.
Although in most countries witch-trials stopped in the eighteenth
Century, true believers continued to kill imagined witches in remote
areas well into the nineteenth century - in Britain as in the rest
of Europe. Wales, which seems to have been relatively free from
the witch terrors in earlier times, became one of the last strongholds
of witch beliefs after the spread of Methodism there. Another stronghold
of witch belief was the South Western peninsular (Cornwall, Devon,
Somerset) where Methodism was also popular. Legal records in England
show the continued popularity of drowning witches in the nineteenth
century . The Times reported such a case as late as 24th September
1863.
Many Christians still believe in witchcraft and feel that it needs
to be held in check. Churches still maintain exorcists to keep up
the fight against Satan's army. Some look back with affection to
the times when witches could be dealt with properly. At Pendle,
where eight people had been hanged as witches in 1612, representatives
of many denominations, including Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists,
and Baptists, decided in the 1980's that far from needing to feel
regret, they still needed to protect themselves from the agents
of Satan. They planned to erect a huge cross on Pendle Hill to help
keep the forces of darkness in check. But the forces of darkness
foiled their attempt, for the Ribble Valley Borough Council declined
to give planning permission.
Reverberations of witch hunting continued into the twentieth century.
In England a Mrs Helen Duncan was charged with witchcraft in 1944,
under the 1736 Act, and imprisoned. The 1736 Act was repealed in
England in 1951, and replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act, though
Christian bodies were demanding the re-introduction of witchcraft
laws as late as 1963. Other countries still have witchcraft statutes
in force. In 1986 a Frenchwoman was charged in South Africa, for
having threatened to turn two policewomen into frogs . The occasional
unofficial killing of witches also persisted in Europe into recent
times. There was an attempted murder of a poor elderly spinster
suspected of witchcraft in Germany as late as 1976 .
Witchcraft is now something of a joke, except to traditionalist
Christians. Exactly how many people lost their lives because of
Christian teachings about witchcraft is not known. Church records
have been mysteriously 'lost' - this is one reason why it is impossible
to say when the last witch executions took place in particularly
religious countries. From surviving civic records it is apparent
that hundreds were sometimes killed in a single town on a single
day. Taking the whole of Europe, an estimate of 2,000,000 victims
is not unrealistic, and may be an underestimate.
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