The Witch Craze

During the 15th and 16th centuries a craze swept across Europe, it was a craze as deadly for its tens of thousands of mostly female victims as was the plague bacillus to the population as a whole. It was not a new phenomenon, but this time it would reach the point of hysteria. It was the witch craze.

The term craze is a tendentious and provocative one, and some people prefer to use the term witch-hunt, for craze suggests that the persecution of witches was the result of some form of mental disorder, but then perhaps it was, for there is no doubt that it was primarily driven by a fear of women. This was not the only cause, as is the case with all social phenomena there were a combination of reasons: economic instability, a fear of the unknown, religious tensions, increased social paranoia. At such times someone or something has to be held to blame. During a period of history when the Devil was believed to be proactive on Earth and the war between Christ and AntiChrist was fought not in theological textbooks but everyday on every farm, in every workplace, and in every home, witchcraft was believed to be a real and prevalent menace.

The witch would invariably be a social outsider, an elderly widow, a single woman, a herbalist, an itinerant, a beggar. They would exercise their maleficia (malevolent magic) through touch, by an invisble but potent emanation from the eyes known as fascination, by prounouncing a malediction or curse meaning that the victim had been forespoken, they could also stick pins in images of their victims, bury a piece of their clothing, or write the name of the victim on a piece of paper and burn it. They could also harm a man by manipulating those parts of his being that were believed to hold his vital spirits, his hair, his excrement. Witches were thought to be responsible for failed crops, the death of farm animals, sickness and disease, and for still-born children. In time they would even be blamed for the weather, and male impotence.

Witchcraft, or magic, was widely practised and believed in during the middle ages. At a time when the medical profession seemed to hold few answers, and the use of narcotics and mind-altering agencies was high, people would regularly visit herbalists for a cure, sorceresses for a spell, and fortune-tellers for a prediction. This White Witchcraft was highly regarded and part and parcel of life particularly in the countryside. However, when times were hard, and when any area or village might be undergoing a local trauma, witchcraft would often be blamed. So the persecution of witches would often come in great waves of activity but then quickly die out. All this changed, however, with the increased activity of the Church. It was when witchcraft ceased merely to be malevolent and instead became diabolic, and associated with the work of the Devil, that local persecutions would become a continent wide, judicial, pogrom. So the witch persecutions that started around 1420 wouldn’t die out but instead increase in vehemence and ferocity for another 200 years.