The height of the witch frenzy was marked by the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum (“Hammer of Witches”). Legal Basis for Witch Trials Historians have identified a number of crucial legal developments that led to the panic surrounding— and subsequent trials of— witches in Early Modern Europe. One was the idea of “heretical fact,” put[…]
Natural events and pandemics contributed to the hysteria surrounding the witch trials of the 16th through 18th centuries. Introduction The witch trials in the early modern period were a series of witch hunts between the 15th and 18th centuries, when across early modern Europe, and to some extent in the European colonies in North America,[…]
Phips became governor of Massachusetts, arriving in Boston from England in May 1692, with the witch-hunt well under way. Imagine that a man comes to the highest office in the land with absolutely no political experience. As a young man, he had arrived in the big city to make his fortune and became one of[…]
Images of witches and witchcraft offer a glimpse into the fears and superstitions of the past. Many an innocent child, since the release of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, has tromped and sung along to the munchkins’ jubilant “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead”, as the legs of Wicked Witch of the East shrivelled[…]
Witch trials most often targeted a persecuted minority: women. Introduction “Witch hunt” – it’s a refrain used to deride everything from impeachment inquiries and sexual assault investigations to allegations of corruption. When powerful men cry witch, they’re generally not talking about green-faced women wearing pointy hats. They are, presumably, referring to the Salem witch trials,[…]
Witch hunts in the New World began in Virginia, though Virginia’s alleged witches were imprisoned rather than executed. When I decided to write Poison in the Colony, a historical novel about the Jamestown colony, I was up against a problem. It was 2014 and young readers had made their desires clear: if a book didn’t contain[…]
How Romans overcame their fear of witches by finding them funny. Introduction For centuries, when people thought of witches, they were evil or possessed by evil demons: think of the Salem witch trials or the 16th and 17th-century woodcuts depicting sinister women conjuring demons or flying on broomsticks. These were the sort of women who morphed in[…]