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Tonight, in a new, two-part series on Channel 5, historian and broadcaster
Suzannah Lipscomb explores one of the darkest periods in Europe’s
history. Here, writing for History Extra, Lipscomb dispels some of the
myths surrounding witches, and explains why so much of what we believe
about them is untrue…
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Witches are everywhere. In fairytales, fantasy and satire, they appear time and again as
a versatile synonym for evil and transgression. But, in the late 16th and early 17th
centuries, men and women of both high and low status believed in witches’ ubiquity in a
far more disturbing way. Lord chief justice Anderson noted in 1602: “The land is full of
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witches… they abound in all places” – not as a symbol or figure of fun, but as a deadly
threat to life, livelihood and divine order.
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The large-scale persecution, prosecution and execution of witches in these centuries was
an extraordinary phenomenon. It is also an episode of European history that has
spawned many myths and much inaccuracy. Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code is one of the
purveyors of such erroneous hype, stating: “The church burned at the stake an
astounding 5 million women”, which would be astounding if true. The actual numbers are
far lower, but still striking: between 1482 and 1782, around 100,000 people across
Europe were accused of witchcraft, and some 40–50,000 were executed.
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Neither were witches (with the exception of some targeted by the Spanish Inquisition)
generally persecuted by the church. Although belief in witches was orthodox doctrine,
following Exodus 22.18, the 16th and 17th-century witch trials were the result of
witchcraft becoming a crime under law, and witches were prosecuted by the state. In
England, witchcraft became a crime in 1542, a statute renewed in 1562 and 1604. As
such, most witches across Europe received the usual penalty for murder – hanging
(though in Scotland and under the Spanish Inquisition witches were burned).
Nor were all witches women – men could be witches too. Across Europe, 70–80 per cent
of people accused of witchcraft were female – though the proportions of female witches
were higher in certain areas: the bishopric of Basel; the county of Namur (modern
Belgium); Hungary; Poland; and Essex, England. But one in five witches were male
across Europe, and in some places, males predominated – in Moscow, male witches
outnumbered women 7:3; in Normandy 3:1.
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Nevertheless, because women were believed to be morally and spiritually weaker than
men, they were thought to be particularly vulnerable to diabolic persuasion. Most of
those accused were also poor and elderly; many were widows, and menopausal and postmenopausal women are disproportionally represented among them.
In my two-part series, Witch Hunt: A Century of Murder, we seek to investigate
witchcraft prosecution in the British Isles. Although witchcraft trials happened in every
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county in the country, the best evidence survives from three major witch crazes in the
British Isles – in 1590s Edinburgh; 1612 Lancashire; and 1640s Essex and East Anglia,
and we focus on those.
Above all, we have tried to consider the perspective of the victims – that is, those who
were accused of witchcraft. We consider the circumstances in which alleged witches were
accused, and the power of both neighbourhood accusation and elite sanction (James VI
and I’s book on the subject of witchcraft, Daemonologie, published in 1597, is a case in
point). We examine the way that torture – though illegal in England – was employed in
late 16th-century Scotland and during the upheaval of the Civil War. We explore the role
of the witchfinder, but also the willing collaboration of ordinary people in ridding the land
of witches. And we look at what someone accused of witchcraft experienced as their fate.
It is a sad, sorry and often harrowing tale – but it is one that needs to be heard.
Witch Hunt: A Century of Murder, a two-part series written and presented
by Dr Suzannah Lipscomb, airs on Tuesday 13 October at 9pm on Channel
5. The series is directed by Chris Holt.
Suzannah Lipscomb is senior lecturer and head of the faculty of history at
New College of the Humanities, London. You can follow Lipscomb on
Twitter @sixteenthCgirl or visit her website suzannahlipscomb.com.
Would you have been accused of witchcraft? Take our quiz to find out!
Article Type: | Feature | BBC History Magazine |
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