Witch hunt

1533 account of the execution of a witch charged with burning the town of Schiltach in 1531.

A witch hunt is a search for witches to capture. Witch hunts often involve moral panics or mass hysteria. They were much more common in the past than they are today. Many different groups participated in witch hunts, including Christians.

History

Witch hunts were most common in Europe from about 1480 AD to 1700 AD, during the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years' War. Tens of thousands of “witches” were executed during this period. Around the same time, there were many witch hunts in America, such as the Salem Witch Trials.

Witch hunts today

Today, there are fewer witch hunts. Most countries no longer have laws against witches.

Most witch hunts today happen in South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Societies where witch hunts happen have a strong belief in magic. In many cases, these are instances of lynching, and burning a person. Witch hunts are regularly reported from much of Sub-Saharan Africa, from Saudi Arabia and from Papua New Guinea.

The UNHCR say that such witch hunts usually are a massive violation of human rights. Most of the accused are women and children but can also be elderly people or marginalised groups of the community such as albinos and the HIV-infected. These victims are often considered burdens to the community. As as a result they are often driven out, starved to death, or killed violently, sometimes by their own families in acts of social cleansing. The causes of witch-hunts include poverty, epidemics, social crises and lack of education. The leader of the witch-hunt, often a prominent figure in the community or a "witch doctor", may also gain economic benefit by charging for an exorcism or by selling body parts of the murdered.

In metaphor

The term "witch hunt" is also used as a metaphor to describe a search for enemies in which people are accused without any real evidence. For example, during the Cold War, United States Senator Joseph McCarthy led a hunt for communists in American government and society. He accused many people, but eventually found no communist spies. McCarthyism is often called an example of a modern “witch hunt.”

Witch Hunt Media

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  Caius Furius Cressinus Accused of Sorcery, Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours, 1792

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  Burning witches, with others held in stocks, 14th century

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  The burning of a woman in Willisau, Switzerland, 1447

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  The Malleus Maleficarum (the 'Hammer of Witches'), published in 1487, accused women of destroying men by planting bitter herbs throughout the field.

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  Examination of a Witch in the 17th century (1853), by T. H. Matteson

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  The Malefizhaus of Bamberg, Germany, where suspected witches were held and interrogated. 1627 engraving.

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  An image of suspected witches being hanged in England, published in 1655

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  The Witch Trial by William Powell Frith (1848)

Further reading

• Behringer, Wolfgang. Witches and Witch Hunts: A Global History. Malden Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2004.
• Briggs, Robin. 'Many reasons why': witchcraft and the problem of multiple explanation, in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Studies in Culture and Belief, ed. Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Levack, Brian P. The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661-1662, The Journal of British Studies, Vol.20, No, 1. (Autumn, 1980), pp. 90–108.
• Levack, Brian P. The witch hunt in early modern Europe, Second Edition. London and New York: Longman, 1995.
• Macfarlane, Alan. Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A regional and Comparative Study. New York and Evanston: Harper & Row Publishers, 1970.
• Midlefort, Erick H.C. Witch Hunting in Southeastern Germany 1562-1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundation. California: Stanford University Press, 1972. ISBN 0804708053
• Oberman, H. A., J. D. Tracy, Thomas A. Brady (eds.), Handbook of European History, 1400-1600: Visions, Programs, Outcomes (1995) ISBN 9004097619
• Oldridge, Darren (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader (2002) ISBN 0415214920
• Poole, Robert. The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories (2002) ISBN 0719062047
• Purkiss, Diane. "A Holocaust of One's Own: The Myth of the Burning Times." Chapter in The Witch and History: Early Modern and Twentieth Century Representatives New York, NY: Routledge, 1996, pp. 7–29.
• Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World, Random House, 1996. ISBN 039453512X
• Thurston, Robert. The Witch Hunts: A History of the Witch Persecutions in Europe and North America. Pearson/Longman, 2007.
• Purkiss, Diane. The Bottom of the Garden, Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things. Chapter 3 Brith and Death: Fairies in Scottish Witch-trials New York, NY: New York University Press, 2000, pp. 85–115.
• West, Robert H. Reginald Scot and Renaissance Writings. Boston: Twayne Publishers,1984.
• Briggs, K.M. Pale Hecate’s Team, an Examination of the Beliefs on Witchcraft and Magic among Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and His Immediate Successors. New York: The Humanities Press, 1962.

Other websites

• The Stages of a Witch Trial — a series of articles by Jenny Gibbons.
• 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia entry on "Witchcraft"
• The Burning Times A Wiccan discusses what she considers the three myths of "The Burning Times"
• Jenny Gibbons (1998). [1] Archived 2013-04-23 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 21 November 2006.
• Crises: Witch hunt Archived 2005-06-12 at the Wayback Machine
• The Decline and End of Witch Trials in Europe by James Hannam
• Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project
• Cornish witch-trials Archived 2008-12-17 at the Wayback Machine
• Witch Trials Archived 2011-12-07 at the Wayback Machine
• Dame Alice le Kyteler, convicted of witchcraft in Kilkenny, Ireland, 1324 Archived 2009-08-07 at the Wayback Machine
• Elizabethan Superstitions in the Elizabethan Period by Linda Alchin