Page 89 - All About History - Issue 08-14

Witch-hunting

Who Were the

Witch-hunters?

The Witch-Finder General England
Matthew Hopkins, the self-
titled ‘Witch-Finder General’,
was an English witch-hunter
who was active from 1644-
1647, during which time
he was responsible for the
execution of 300 convicted
witches. He introduced
many witch tests that could
be considered farcical if
it weren’t for their dire
consequences. His work was sanctioned by Parliament,
but he quickly gained a bad reputation for his
India, 2011
Superstition and belief methods. After his death, he became the bogeyman
in witchcraft is still held
Prince-Bishop of Wurzburg Germany
in many parts of the of his own vile story. His real legacy, however, was his
developing world. In India, book The Discovery of Witches, which gained traction
three people in their sixties
were attacked and killed by in the colonies of late 17th-century America, especially
a lynch mob for allegedly in a small community called Salem.
practising black magic.
With blue-bloods and the
Pope behind him, Philipp
Adolf von Ehrenberg was
a powerful man in what is
now southern Germany. A
staunch anti-Protestant, his
zeal for the eradication of
witchcraft was matched only
by his pursuit of the Catholic
reclamation of Bavaria.
With that in hand by the
end of the 1620s, his focus turned to witches within
his jurisdiction. No one was safe: his mass trials saw
Saudi Arabia,
Present day everyone from peasants to nobles dragged before the
Sorcery is treated with as court and tried, if not convicted. In the eight years of
draconian a punishment
as blasphemy by the his reign, over 900 people were burned at the stake,
Saudi authorities. Those
convicted of practising including devout priests, his own nephew and even
witchcraft (usually women) children as young as three years old accused of
are invariably beheaded.
fornicating with demons.
of. This changed in the 12th century when the “ Pagan Roman law looked to witchcraft as
Roman Catholic Inquisition was formed, initially
to tackle secular faiths that had split off from the a source of many of the civilisation’s ills,
church and threatened the power in Rome. The particularly epidemics and bad harvests”
early 14th century saw the Inquisition expand its
remit and occasionally deal with users of magic
where a sect had adopted witchcraft as a part of investigate witchcraft in Germany. They were burden of its evils on women. It was widely read
its doctrine, such as the Cathars of France – whom Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, who were but within a few years the Catholic Church had
Rome decried as a church of Satan. quick to yoke a new invention, the printing press, distanced itself from this book, primarily because
By the late Middle Ages, it had become and publish what would become an infamous it had become popular with the secular faiths
increasingly perilous to openly practise anything and influential tome on dealing with witchcraft it sought to exterminate. But with the dawn
but the Catholic faith. Shortly following a Papal and witches: the Malleus Maleficarum – ‘Hammer of Protestant Reformation, the book and its ilk
bill issued by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484 that Against Witches’. This treatise sought to reinforce became the linchpin for the witch-hunting boom,
explicitly condemned devil-worshipers who had the existence of witchcraft, educate officials in as the Protestant Church endorsed these tomes
slain infants, two inquisitors were authorised to finding and prosecuting them and to lay the precisely because they were outlawed by Rome.
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