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92-633: (Redirected from Burning Times ) Burning times may refer to: In neopaganism, a term for the Witch trials in the Early Modern period The Burning Times , a 1990 documentary about the Early Modern European witchcraft trials Burning Times (album) , an album by Christy Moore "Burning Times", a song by Iced Earth from the album Something Wicked This Way Comes "Burning Times",

184-526: A Jewish convert to Christianity, Gregory ordered that all copies of the Jewish Talmud be confiscated. Following a public disputation between Christians and Jewish theologians , this culminated in a mass burning of some 12,000 handwritten Talmudic manuscripts on 12 June 1242, in Paris. Gregory was a supporter of the mendicant orders which he saw as an excellent means for counteracting by voluntary poverty

276-720: A brief outburst of witch panic that occurred in the New World when the practice was waning in Europe. In the 1690s, Winifred King Benham and her daughter Winifred were thrice tried for witchcraft in Wallingford, Connecticut , the last of such trials in New England . Even though they were found innocent, they were compelled to leave Wallingford and settle in Staten Island, New York . In 1706, Grace Sherwood of Virginia

368-581: A butterfly to him. Earlier works on witchcraft often placed a large number of stereotypical witch trials in southern France in the early fourteenth century. This is the result of Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon , who published Histoire de l'inquisition en France in 1829. He described a sudden outburst of mass witch trials ending in hundreds of executions, and the accused were portrayed as the stereotypical demonic witch. He purported to extensively quote in translation from inquisitorial records. His book proved influential. Joseph Hansen included large excerpts from

460-842: A chapel to Our Lady in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. Gregory IX endorsed the Northern Crusades and attempts to bring Orthodox Slavic peoples in Eastern Europe (particularly Pskov Republic and the Novgorod Republic ) under the Papacy 's fold. In 1232, Gregory IX asked the Livonian Brothers of the Sword to send troops to protect Finland , whose semi- pagan people were fighting against

552-542: A decline in living standards, and these averages remained high for nearly two centuries and averages across Northwestern Europe had done likewise. The convents were closed during the Protestant Reformation , which displaced many nuns. Many communities saw the proportion of unmarried women climb from less than 10% to 20% and in some cases as high as 30%, whom few communities knew how to accommodate economically. Miguel (2003) argues that witch killings may be

644-469: A disaster that had befallen the community, such as crop failure, war, or disease. For instance, Midelfort suggested that in southwestern Germany, war and famine destabilised local communities, resulting in the witch prosecutions of the 1620s. Behringer also suggests an increase in witch prosecutions due to socio-political destabilization, stressing the Little Ice Age's effects on food shortages, and

736-468: A fresh excommunication of the emperor in 1239 and to a prolonged war. Gregory denounced Frederick II as a heretic and summoned a council at Rome to give point to his anathema . Frederick responded by trying to capture or sink as many ships carrying prelates to the synod as he could. Eberhard II von Truchsees, Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg , in 1241 at the Council of Regensburg declared that Gregory IX

828-573: A manual for like-minded zealots. The Gutenberg printing press had only recently been invented along the Rhine River, and Kramer fully utilized it to shepherd his work into print and spread the ideas that had been developed by inquisitors and theologians in France into the Rhineland. The theological views espoused by Kramer were influential but remained contested. Nonetheless Malleus Maleficarum

920-414: A minority of the accused. Roughly 80% of those convicted were women, most of them over the age of 40. In some regions, convicted witches were burnt at the stake , the traditional punishment for religious heresy. Throughout the medieval era , mainstream Christian doctrine had denied the belief in the existence of witches and witchcraft, condemning it as a pagan superstition . Some have argued that

1012-414: A new development occurred when accusations of diabolism gradually became more common and more important in prosecutions, although they were still less common than trials for sorcery. Records of witch trials from this century also lacked extensive descriptions of meetings of witches. In 1329, with the papacy in nearby Avignon, the inquisitor of Carcassonne sentenced a Carmelite friar called Peter Recordi to

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1104-479: A number of trials which, while technically not witch trials, are suspected to have involved a belief in witches. In 1782, Anna Göldi was executed in Glarus , Switzerland . Officially she was executed for "poisoning" (her employer, who believed that she had practiced witchcraft on his daughter )—a ruling at the time widely denounced throughout Switzerland and Germany as judicial murder . Like Anna Göldi, Barbara Zdunk

1196-527: A process of eliminating the financial burdens of a family or society, via elimination of the older women that need to be fed, and an increase in unmarried women would enhance this process. Gregory IX He worked initially as a cardinal , and after becoming the successor of Honorius III , he fully inherited the traditions of Gregory VII and of his own cousin Innocent III , and zealously continued their policy of papal supremacy . Ugolino (Hugh)

1288-627: A significant proportion of them were held in France. Until 1330 the trials were linked to prominent figures in the church or politics, as victims or as accused suspects, and more than half took place in France, where it was the usual way of explaining royal deaths in the direct Capetian line . The papacy of John XXII was another engine for witchcraft accusations. There were also a significant number of trials in England and Germany. The charges were generally mild. Diabolism, believed to involve nocturnal orgies and traditionally linked to accusations of heresy,

1380-496: A small group meeting to practice witchcraft, while on the other hand, very great included respecting and admiring heretics. Kramer begins his work in opposition to the Canon Episcopi, but oddly, he does not cite Jacquier, and he may not have been aware of his work. Like most witch-phobic writers, Kramer had met strong resistance by those who opposed his heterodox view; this inspired him to write his work as both propaganda and

1472-571: A song by Inkubus Sukkubus from the album Wytches "The Burning Times", a song by Testament from the album Demonic Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Burning times . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burning_times&oldid=742220441 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

1564-429: A stronger central government, the witchcraft accusations began to decline. The witch trials that occurred there were symptomatic of a weak legal system and "witches were most likely to be tried and convicted in regions where magistrates departed from established legal statutes". During the early 18th century, the practice subsided. Jane Wenham was among the last subjects of a typical witch trial in England in 1712, but

1656-481: A universal explanation, for trials also took place in areas which were free from war, famine, or pestilence. Additionally, these theories—particularly Behringer's —have been labeled as oversimplified. Although there is evidence that the Little Ice Age and subsequent famine and disease was likely a contributing factor to increase in witch persecution, Durrant argues that one cannot make a direct link between these problems and witch persecutions in all contexts. Moreover,

1748-547: A witch through this book, the public outlook of witchcraft soon transformed from evil to demonic. It is unknown if a degree of alarm at the extreme superstition and witch-phobia expressed by Kramer in the Malleus Maleficarum may have been one of the numerous factors that helped prepare the ground for the Protestant Reformation . The period of the European witch trials with the most active phase and which saw

1840-752: Is also apparent from an episode of English history, that during the civil war in the early 1640s, witch-hunters emerged, the most notorious of whom was Matthew Hopkins from East Anglia and proclaimed himself the "Witchfinder General". Italy has had fewer witchcraft accusations, and even fewer cases where witch trials ended in execution. In 1542, the establishment of the Roman Catholic Inquisition effectively restrained secular courts under its influence from liberal application of torture and execution. The methodological Instructio, which served as an "appropriate" manual for witch hunting, cautioned against hasty convictions and careless executions of

1932-467: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Witch trials in the Early Modern period In the early modern period , from about 1400 to 1775, about 100,000 people were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe and British America . Between 40,000 and 60,000 were executed, almost all in Europe. The witch-hunts were particularly severe in parts of

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2024-517: Is unclear whether the three men were aware of each other's work. The coevolution of their shared view centres around "a common challenge: disbelief in the reality of demonic activity in the world." Nicholas Jacquier's lengthy and complex argument against the Canon Episcopi was written in Latin. It began as a tract in 1452 and was expanded into a fuller monograph in 1458. Many copies seem to have been made by hand (nine manuscript copies still exist), but it

2116-505: The 1234 Decretals , he invested the doctrine of perpetua servitus iudaeorum – perpetual servitude of the Jews – with the force of canonical law. According to this, the followers of the Talmud would have to remain in a condition of political servitude until Judgment Day . The doctrine then found its way into the doctrine of servitus camerae imperialis , or servitude immediately subject to

2208-652: The Cathars and the Waldensians . The Dominicans eventually evolved into the most zealous prosecutors of persons accused of witchcraft in the years leading up to the Reformation. Records were usually kept by the French inquisitors, but the majority of these records did not survive, and one historian who was working in 1880, Charles Molinier, refers to the surviving records as only scanty debris. Molinier notes that

2300-685: The Council of Basel (1431–1437) and some scholars have suggested a new anti-witchcraft doctrinal view may have spread among certain theologians and inquisitors in attendance at this council as the Valais trials were discussed. Not long after, a cluster of powerful opponents of the Canon Episcopi emerged: a Dominican inquisitor in Carcassonne named Jean Vinet, the Bishop of Avila Alfonso Tostado, and another Dominican Inquisitor named Nicholas Jacquier . It

2392-788: The Holy Roman Empire . There was much regional variation within the British Isles . In Ireland, for example, there were few trials. There are particularly important differences between the English and continental witch-hunting traditions. In England the use of torture was rare and the methods far more restrained. The country formally permitted it only when authorized by the monarch, and no more than 81 torture warrants were issued (for all offenses) throughout English history. The death toll in Scotland dwarfed that of England. It

2484-531: The Holy Roman Empire . Prosecutions for witchcraft reached a high point from 1560 to 1630, during the Counter-Reformation and the European wars of religion . Among the lower classes, accusations of witchcraft were usually made by neighbors, and women made formal accusations as much as men did. Magical healers or ' cunning folk ' were sometimes prosecuted for witchcraft, but seem to have made up

2576-483: The Roman Inquisition acknowledged its own trials had "found scarcely one trial conducted legally". In the middle of the 17th century, the difficulty in proving witchcraft according to the legal process contributed to Rothenburg (Germany) following advice to treat witchcraft cases with caution. Although the witch trials had begun to fade out across much of Europe by the mid-17th century, they continued on

2668-563: The University of Paris strike of 1229 , resolved differences between the unruly university scholars of Paris and the local authorities. His solution was in the manner of a true follower of Innocent III: he issued what in retrospect has been viewed as the magna carta of the university, assuming direct control by extending papal patronage: his bull allowed future suspension of lectures over a flexible range of provocations, from "monstrous injury or offense" to squabbles over "the right to assess

2760-487: The average age at first marriage had gradually risen by the late sixteenth century; the population had stabilized after a period of growth, and availability of jobs and land had lessened. In the last decades of the century, the age at marriage had climbed to averages of 25 for women and 27 for men in England and the Low Countries, as more people married later or remained unmarried due to lack of money or resources and

2852-784: The 1560s and the 1620s. Some trials went on to continue for years and would result in hundreds of executions of all sexes, ages and classes. These included the Trier witch trials (1581–1593), the Fulda witch trials (1603–1606), the Eichstätt witch trials (1613–1630), the Würzburg witch trials (1626–1631), and the Bamberg witch trials (1626–1631). In 1590 the North Berwick witch trials occurred in Scotland and were of particular note as

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2944-477: The 19th century, some scholars were agnostic, for instance, Jacob Grimm (1844) talked of "countless" victims and Charles Mackay (1841) named "thousands upon thousands". By contrast, a popular news report of 1832 cited a number of 3,192 victims "in Great Britain alone". In the early 20th century, some scholarly estimates on the number of executions still ranged in the hundreds of thousands. The estimate

3036-587: The Emperor's authority, promulgated by Frederick II . The Jews were thus suppressed from having direct influence over the political process and the life of Christian states into the 19th century and the rise of liberalism . In 1234, Gregory issued the papal bull Rachel suum videns calling for a new crusade to the Holy Land, leading to the Crusade of 1239 . In 1239, under the influence of Nicholas Donin ,

3128-654: The Holy Land, routed the papal army which Gregory IX had sent to invade Sicily, and made new overtures of peace to the pope. The war of 1228–1230 is known as the War of the Keys . Gregory IX and Frederick came to a truce, but when Frederick defeated the Lombard League in 1239, the possibility that he might dominate all of Italy, surrounding the Papal States , became a very real threat. A new outbreak of hostilities led to

3220-500: The Middle Ages, heresy became a heinous crime, warranting severe punishment, so when one was accused of being a witch they were thus labeled as a heretic. If accused of witchcraft, the accused was forced to confess, even if they were innocent, through brutal torture, just to in the end be killed for their crimes. In certain instances, the clergy became truly concerned about the souls they were executing. Therefore, they decided to burn

3312-710: The Novgorod Republic in the Finnish-Novgorodian wars ; however, there is no known information if any ever arrived to assist. At the coronation of Frederick II in Rome, 22 November 1220, the emperor made a vow to embark for the Holy Land in August 1221. Gregory IX began his pontificate by suspending the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II , for dilatoriness in carrying out the promised Sixth Crusade . Frederick II appealed to

3404-454: The Pope declared witchcraft to be crimen exceptum and thereby removed all legal limits on the application of torture in cases where evidence was difficult to find. In Italy, an accused witch was deprived of sleep for periods up to forty hours. This technique was also used in England, but without a limitation on time. Sexual humiliation was used, such as forced sitting on red-hot stools with

3496-452: The accused witches alive in order to "save them". Various acts of torture were used against accused witches to coerce confessions and cause them to provide names of alleged co-conspirators. Most historians agree that the majority of those persecuted in these witch trials were innocent of any involvement in Devil worship. The torture of witches began to increase in frequency after 1468, when

3588-572: The accused. In contrast with other parts of Europe, trials by the Venetian Holy Office never saw conviction for the crime of malevolent witchcraft, or "maleficio". Because the notion of diabolical cults was not credible to either popular culture or Catholic inquisitorial theology, mass accusations and belief in Witches' Sabbath never took root in areas under such inquisitorial influence. The number of people tried for witchcraft between

3680-450: The aim was to introduce due process and objective investigation into the beliefs of those accused to the often erratic and unjust persecution of heresy on the part of local ecclesiastical and secular jurisdictions. Gregory was a remarkably skillful and learned lawyer. He caused to be prepared Nova Compilatio decretalium , which was promulgated in numerous copies in 1234 (first printed at Mainz in 1473). This New Compilation of Decretals

3772-502: The alleged records in Histoire de l'inquisition were highly dubious and possible forgeries. Kieckhefer notes that a 1855 publication of a summary inventory from inquisitorial records from Carcassonne did not match with Lamothe-Langon's work at all. Besides, the language and stereotypes in the supposed records were anachronistic. Lamothe-Langon also had a track record in forging several genealogies about his ancestry and his political motive

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3864-459: The ancient Jewish tradition of mystical interpretation of the Bible. The Fränkel witchtrial was one of the first convictions obtained without the use of spectral evidence or confession obtained through torture. Fränkel was sentenced to life imprisonment and spent twenty-four years in solitary confinement in the tower of Schwabach. In France, scholars have found that with increased fiscal capacity and

3956-864: The autonomous territories of the Catholic prince-bishops in Southern Germany were infamous in all of the Western world , and the contemporary writer Herman Löher described how they affected the population within them: The Roman Catholic subjects, farmers, winegrowers, and artisans in the episcopal lands are the most terrified people on earth, since the false witch trials affect the German episcopal lands incomparably more than France, Spain, Italy or Protestants. The mass witch trials took place in Southern Catholic Germany in waves between

4048-408: The book, though Lamothe-Langon's sources could not be found at the end of the nineteenth century. Through reuse by other writers, Lamothe-Langon's work established the view that witch hunts suddenly began in the late Middle Ages and implied a link with Catharism . Academics continued to rely on Lamothe-Langon as a source until Norman Cohn and Richard Kieckhefer showed independently in the 1970s that

4140-434: The claim that the accused woman would not perform sexual acts with the devil. In most cases, those who endured the torture without confessing were released. The use of torture has been identified as a key factor in converting the trial of one accused witch into a wider social panic , as those being tortured were more likely to accuse a wide array of other local individuals of also being witches. The scholarly consensus on

4232-557: The clergy practiced crafts such as necromancy, the practice of communicating with the dead. However, witchcraft was still assumed as inherently demonic, so backlash to witches was inevitable due to the collective negative image. In 1233, a papal bull by Gregory IX established a new branch of the inquisition in Toulouse , France, to be led by the Dominicans . It was intended to prosecute Christian groups considered heretical, such as

4324-425: The dungeon for life. The sentence refers to ... multas et diversas daemonum conjurationes et invocationes ... and it frequently uses the same Latin synonym as a word for witchcraft, sortilegia —found on the title page of Nicolas Rémy 's work from 1595 , where it is claimed that 900 persons were executed for sortilegii crimen . He was accused of using love magic to seduce women and of invoking Satan and sacrificing

4416-425: The expansion and increased popularity of the Malleus Maleficarum . Given the book was published nearly thirty times between the years 1487 and 1669 across Europe, it easily provided Europe's literate citizens with a more concrete, solidified depiction of a witch. Kramer creates an idea of a new medieval witch, that being an evil woman, which far outstretches to the modern day. Through the spread of Kramer's depiction of

4508-788: The fringes of Europe and in the American Colonies. In the Nordic countries, the late 17th century saw the peak of the trials in a number of areas: the Torsåker witch trials of Sweden (1674), where 71 people were executed for witchcraft in a single day, the peak of witch hunting in Swedish Finland, and the Salzburg witch trials in Austria (where 139 people were executed from 1675 to 1690). The 1692 Salem witch trials were

4600-487: The guilty party was ordered to attend the parish church, wearing a white sheet and carrying a wand, and swear to lead a reformed life. The Old Testament 's book of Exodus (22:18) states, "Thou shalt not permit a sorceress to live". Many faced capital punishment for witchcraft, either by burning at the stake, hanging, or beheading. Similarly, in New England, people convicted of witchcraft were hanged. Meanwhile, in

4692-602: The hanging of ten of the eleven who were tried. The witch-panic phenomenon reached the more remote parts of Europe as well as North America later in the 17th century, among them being the Salzburg witch trials , the Swedish Torsåker witch trials and, in 1692, the Salem witch trials in Colonial New England . There had never been a lack of skepticism regarding the trials. In 1635, the authorities of

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4784-513: The health of a young woman. The case against the supposed witch was dismissed upon the failure of the alleged victim, who had sworn out a warrant against him, to appear for the trial. However, some of his other accusers were convicted on criminal charges for their part in the matter, and various libel actions were brought. In 1895, Bridget Cleary was beaten and burned to death by her husband in Ireland because he suspected that fairies had taken

4876-403: The inquisitors themselves describe their attempts to carefully safeguard their records, especially when they were moving from town to town. The inquisitors were widely hated and they would be ambushed on the road, but their records were more often the target than the inquisitors themselves [ plus désireux encore de ravir les papiers que porte le juge que de le faire périr lui-même ] ( better to take

4968-745: The killings of Anna Klemens in Denmark (1800), Krystyna Ceynowa in Poland (1836), and Dummy, the Witch of Sible Hedingham in England (1863). In France, there was sporadic violence and there was even murder in the 1830s, with one woman reportedly burnt in a village square in Nord . In the 1830s, a prosecution for witchcraft was commenced against a man in Fentress County, Tennessee, either named Joseph or William Stout, based upon his alleged influence over

5060-438: The king, James VI , became involved himself. James had developed a fear that witches planned to kill him after he suffered from storms while traveling to Denmark in order to claim his bride, Anne , earlier that year. Returning to Scotland, the king heard of trials that were occurring in North Berwick , and ordered the suspects to be brought to him—he subsequently believed that a nobleman, Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell ,

5152-441: The larger witchcraft trials which were to come in later centuries is deciding how much can be extrapolated from what remains. There was no concept of demonic witchcraft during the fourteenth century; only at a later time did a unified concept combine the ideas of noxious magic, a pact with the Devil and an assembly of witches for Satanic worship into one category of crime. Witch trials were infrequent compared to later centuries and

5244-438: The largest number of fatalities seems to have occurred between 1560 and 1630. The period between 1560 and 1670 saw more than 40,000 deaths. Authors have debated whether witch trials were more intense in Catholic or Protestant regions; however, the intensity had not so much to do with Catholicism or Protestantism as both regions experienced a varied intensity of witchcraft persecutions. In Catholic Spain and Portugal for example,

5336-488: The love of luxury and splendour which was possessing many ecclesiastics. He was a friend of Saint Dominic as well as Clare of Assisi . On 17 January 1235, he approved the Order of Our Lady of Mercy for the redemption of captives. He appointed ten cardinals and canonized Saints Elisabeth of Hungary , Dominic , Anthony of Padua , and Francis of Assisi , of whom he had been a personal friend and early patron. He transformed

5428-415: The most dubious professional fortune tellers and mediums), and punishment was light. In Austria, Maria Theresa outlawed witch-burning and torture in 1768. The last capital trial, that of Maria Pauer occurred in 1750 in Salzburg, which was then outside the Austrian domain. In the late 18th century the practice of witchcraft had ceased to be considered a criminal offense throughout Europe, but there are

5520-545: The new heterodox view was the Malleus Maleficarum , published in 1487 by clergyman and German inquisitor Heinrich Kramer, accompanied by Jacobus Sprenger. Malleus Maleficarum is split up into three different sections, each individual section addressing an aspect of witches and their culture. The following sections were magic, a witches origin, and appropriate punishment. The appropriate punishment section divides offenses into three different levels, ranging from slight, great, and very great. Slight could be something as simple as

5612-429: The number of executions. Attempts at estimating the total number of executions for witchcraft have a history going back to the end of the period of witch-hunts in the 18th century. A scholarly consensus only emerges in the second half of the 20th century, and historical estimates vary wildly depending on the method used. Early estimates tend to be highly exaggerated, as they were still part of rhetorical arguments against

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5704-433: The numbers of witch trials were few because the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions preferred to focus on the crime of public heresy rather than the crime of witchcraft, whereas Protestant Scotland had a much larger number of witchcraft trials. In contrast, the witch trials in the Protestant Netherlands stopped earlier and they were among the least numerous in Europe, while the large-scale mass witch trials which took place in

5796-402: The papers the judge carries than to make the judge himself perish ). The records seem to have often been targeted by the accused or their friends and family, wishing to thereby sabotage the proceedings or failing that, to spare their reputations and the reputations of their descendants. This would be all the more true for those who were accused of practicing witchcraft. Difficulty in understanding

5888-456: The peaks of witchcraft persecutions overlap with hunger crises that occurred in 1570 and 1580, the latter lasting a decade. Problematically for these theories, it has been highlighted that, in that region, the witch hunts declined during the 1630s, at a time when the communities living there were facing increased disaster as a result of plague, famine, economic collapse, and the Thirty Years' War . Furthermore, this scenario would clearly not offer

5980-427: The persecution of witches rather than purely historical scholarship. Notably, a figure of nine million victims was given by Gottfried Christian Voigt in 1784 in an argument criticizing Voltaire 's estimate of "several hundred thousand" as too low. Voigt's number has shown remarkably resilient as an influential popular myth , surviving well into the 20th century, especially in feminist and neo-pagan literature . In

6072-503: The phenomenon of witches to expand, solidifying the fear that witches are a danger that could be within anyone, anywhere. A variety of different punishments were employed for those found guilty of witchcraft, including imprisonment, flogging, fines, or exile. Non-capital punishment, especially for a first offence, was most common in England. Prior to 1542, Church courts dealt with most cases in England and most sanctions were directed more to penance and atonement than harsh punishments. Often

6164-411: The rank of Cardinal Bishop of Ostia e Velletri . He became Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals in 1218 or 1219. Upon the special request of Saint Francis, in 1220, Pope Honorius III appointed him Cardinal Protector of the order of the Franciscans . As Cardinal Bishop of Ostia , he cultivated a wide range of acquaintances, among them the Queen of England , Isabella of Angoulême . Gregory IX

6256-518: The real Bridget and replaced her with a witch. The killing of people who were suspected of performing malevolent sorcery against their neighbors continued into the 20th and 21st centuries. In 1997, two Russian farmers killed a woman and injured five members of her family because they believed that the woman and her relatives had used folk magic against them. It has been reported that between 2005 and 2011, more than 3,000 people were killed for allegedly being witches by lynch mobs in Tanzania. Witchcraft

6348-494: The rents of lodgings". In October 1232, after an investigation by legates, Gregory proclaimed a crusade against the Stedinger to be preached in northern Germany. In June 1233, he granted a plenary indulgence to those who took part. In 1233 Gregory IX established the Papal Inquisition to regularize the prosecution of heresy . The Papal Inquisition was intended to bring order to the haphazard episcopal inquisitions which had been established by Lucius III in 1184. Gregory's aim

6440-507: The scholarly proposal that some ideas concerning witchcraft were taking hold in the region around western Switzerland during the 1430s, recasting the practice of witchcraft as an alliance between a person and the devil that would undermine and threaten the Christian foundation of society. The Perrissona Gappit case tried in Switzerland in 1465 is noted for the thoroughness of the surviving record. The skeptical Canon Episcopi retained many supporters, and still seems to have been supported by

6532-438: The sovereigns of Europe complaining of his treatment. The suspension was followed by excommunication and threats of deposition, as deeper rifts appeared. Frederick II went to the Holy Land and in fact managed to take possession of Jerusalem . Gregory IX distrusted the emperor, since Rainald, the imperial Governor of Spoleto, had invaded the Pontifical States during the emperor's absence. In June 1229, Frederick II returned from

6624-614: The subsequent use of witches as scapegoats for consequences of climatic changes. The Little Ice Age, lasting from about 1300 to 1850, is characterized by temperatures and precipitation levels lower than the 1901–1960 average. Historians such as Wolfgang Behringer, Emily Oster, and Hartmut Lehmann argue that these cooling temperatures brought about crop failure, war, and disease, and that witches were subsequently blamed for this turmoil. Historical temperature indexes and witch trial data indicate that, generally, as temperature decreased during this period, witch trials increased. Additionally,

6716-623: The theological faculty at the University of Paris in their decree from 1398. It was never officially repudiated by a majority of bishops within the papal lands, nor even by the Council of Trent , which immediately preceded the peak of the trials. But in 1428, the Valais witch trials , lasting six to eight years, started in the French-speaking lower Valais and eventually spread to German-speaking regions. This time period also coincided with

6808-479: The total number of executions for witchcraft ranges from 40,000 to 60,000 (not including unofficial lynchings of accused witches, which went unrecorded but are nevertheless believed to have been somewhat rare in the Early Modern period ). It would also have been the case that various individuals would have died as a result of the unsanitary conditions of their imprisonment, but again this is not recorded within

6900-538: The work of the Dominican Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century helped lay the groundwork for a shift in Christian doctrine, by which certain Christian theologians eventually began to accept the possibility of collaboration with devil(s), resulting in a person obtaining certain real supernatural powers. Christians as a whole were not of the belief that magic in its entirety is demonic, for members of

6992-399: The years of 1500–1700 (by region) include: Holy Roman Empire: 50,000 Poland: 15,000 Switzerland: 9,000 French Speaking Europe: 10,000 Spanish and Italian peninsulas: 10,000 Scandinavia: 4,000. Various suggestions have been made that the witch trials emerged as a response to socio-political turmoil in the Early Modern world. One form of this is that the prosecution of witches was a reaction to

7084-436: Was "that man of perdition, whom they call Antichrist, who in his extravagant boasting says, 'I am God, I cannot err'." He argued that the Pope was the "little horn" of Daniel 7:8: A little horn has grown up with eyes and mouth speaking great things, which is reducing three of these kingdoms – i.e. Sicily, Italy, and Germany – to subserviency, is persecuting the people of Christ and the saints of God with intolerable opposition,

7176-467: Was a very rare charge in the witch trials. After 1334 the political dimension of witchcraft accusations disappeared, while the charges remained mild. The large majority of trials until 1375 were in France and Germany. The number of witch trials rose after 1375, when many municipal courts adopted inquisitorial procedure and penalties for false accusations were abolished. Prominent centres of witch prosecutions were France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. In Italy

7268-412: Was a witch, and after the latter fled in fear of his life he was outlawed as a traitor. The king subsequently set up royal commissions to hunt down witches in his realm, recommending torture in dealing with suspects, and in 1597 wrote a book about the menace witches posed to society entitled Daemonologie . The Pendle witch trials of 1612 are some of the most prominent in English history, resulting in

7360-436: Was believed that witnessing the invisible force of witchcraft was impossible: "half proofes are to be allowed, and are good causes of suspicion". The sole identifier of a witch was the Devil's mark. A scar, given to a witch by the devil, that could be anywhere on the body. However, in order to find this scar, it had to be through thorough examination. This lack of a recognizable feature led to flexibility. This flexibility enabled

7452-574: Was born in Anagni . The date of his birth varies in sources between c.  1145 and 1170. He is said to have been "in his nineties, if not nearly one hundred years old" at his death. He received his education at the Universities of Paris and Bologna. He was created Cardinal-Deacon of the church of Sant'Eustachio by his cousin Innocent III in December 1198. In 1206 he was promoted to

7544-503: Was elevated to the papacy in the papal election of 1227. He took the name "Gregory" because he formally assumed the papal office at the monastery of Saint Gregory ad Septem Solia. That same year, in one of his earliest acts as pope, he expanded the Inquisition powers already assigned to Konrad von Marburg to encompass the investigation of heresy throughout the whole of Germany. Gregory's bull Parens scientiarum of 1231, after

7636-577: Was executed in 1811 in Prussia , not technically for witchcraft, but for arson. In Poland, the Doruchów witch trials occurred in 1783, and two additional women were executed for sorcery. They were tried by a legal court, but with dubious legitimacy. Despite the official ending of the trials for witchcraft, there would still be occasional and unofficial witch-hunts and killings of those who were accused of practicing witchcraft in parts of Europe, such as

7728-425: Was not printed until 1561. Jacquier describes a number of trials he personally witnessed, including one of a man named Guillaume Edelin , against whom the main charge seems to have been that he had preached a sermon in support of the Canon Episcopi claiming that witchcraft was merely an illusion. Edelin eventually recanted this view, most likely under torture. The most important and influential book which promoted

7820-472: Was officially a crime in Papua New Guinea from 1971 until 2013. Peculiar standards applied to witchcraft allowing certain types of evidence "that are now ways relating Fact, and done many Years before". There was no possibility to offer alibi as a defense because witchcraft did not require the presence of the accused at the scene. Witnesses were called to testify to motives and effects because it

7912-459: Was only reliably placed below 100,000 in scholarship of the 1970s. There were many regional differences in the manner in which the witch trials occurred. The trials themselves emerged sporadically, flaring up in some areas but neighbouring areas remaining largely unaffected. In general, there seems to have been less witch-phobia in Spain and the papal lands of Italy in comparison to France and

8004-533: Was pardoned after her conviction and set free. The last execution for witchcraft in England took place in 1716, when Mary Hicks and her daughter Elizabeth were hanged. Janet Horne was executed for witchcraft in Scotland in 1727. The Witchcraft Act 1735 ( 9 Geo. 2 . c. 5) put an end to the traditional form of witchcraft as a legal offense in Britain. Those accused under the new act were restricted to those that pretended to be able to conjure spirits (generally being

8096-609: Was printed 13 times between 1486 and 1520, and — following a 50-year pause that coincided with the height of the Protestant reformations — it was printed again another 16 times (1574–1669) in the decades following the important Council of Trent which had remained silent with regard to Kramer's theological views. It inspired many similar works, such as an influential work by Jean Bodin , and was cited as late as 1692 by Increase Mather , then president of Harvard College. The increased demonization of witches blossomed in relation with

8188-466: Was shown by his polemics against censorship. By the time that historians rejected his work, it was already firmly entrenched in the popular image of witchcraft. Witch trials were still uncommon in the 15th century when the concept of diabolical witchcraft began to emerge. The study of four chronicles concerning events in Valais , the Bernese Alps and the nearby region of Dauphiné has supported

8280-557: Was the culmination of a long process of systematising the mass of pronouncements that had accumulated since the Early Middle Ages , a process that had been under way since the first half of the 12th century and had come to fruition in the Decretum , compiled and edited by the papally commissioned legist Gratian and published in 1140. The supplement completed the work, which provided the foundation for papal legal theory. In

8372-409: Was to bring order and legality to the process of dealing with heresy, since there had been tendencies by mobs of townspeople to burn alleged heretics without much of a trial. In 1231 Pope Gregory IX appointed a number of Papal Inquisitors ( Inquisitores haereticae pravitatis ), mostly Dominicans and Franciscans , for the various regions of France, Italy and parts of Germany. Contrary to popular belief,

8464-467: Was tried by ducking and jailed for allegedly being a witch. Rationalist historians in the 18th century came to the opinion that the use of torture had resulted in erroneous testimony. In 1712, Rabbi Hirsch Fränkel was convicted of witchcraft after completion of an inquisition by the Theological & Legal Faculties at the University of Aldorf. Rabbi Fränkel was a self-avowed Kabbalist, a follower

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