History Of Witchcraft In Europe

Witchcraft In Europe

Witchcraft was at a neutral stage, with little amounts of witch hunts occurring throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But during the sixteenth and seventeenth century, problems started to arise, creating much more witch hunts in Europe than ever before. Europe had reached its peak during the Renaissance times. Catholicism was the catalyst for the Renaissance era witch hunts. Witchcraft, as brutal as it sounded, most likely was not as extreme as the cases were sought out to be. One hundred thousand people were accused of witchcraft while fifty thousand people were executed and tried as guilty for the crime in Europe (Strayer, 658). Out of these thousands of people, eighty percent of the convicted were women

The witch, known as an incarnation of a human who betrayed their beliefs for something evil, was thought to be able to participate in witchcraft not with the Devil, but with their minds (Briggs). Instead of making pacts with the Devil, they were able to come up with their corrupt thoughts through their minds. Their rituals would be extremely horrible. They would hold cannibalistic and sexual rituals to show their honestly to the Devil (Briggs). The rituals and the people involved were seen obscene and horrifying. They would perform unnatural occurrences, such as performing sexual scenes with the Devil, demons, and other people that were there participating. Even though you could be accused for witchcraft, some reasons stood out more than

Practitioners were the ones who used their time to learn charms (Strayer, 659). They used their charms to either heal a friend in need or hurt an enemy. Practitioners were the most dangerous out of all witches because they were maleficent and nobody knew who would get hurt next. The second type of witches were called Teutonic Sorcerers (Strayer, 659).These witches would use herbs, sieves, figures of wax, dough, or lime in their work. Their main role was to heal people who were sick or had an injury. Yet, if their patients died while they were trying to cure them, they were now seen as evil and guilty. Teutonic Sorcerers were looked down upon because they did not pray to God when someone was sick, but used herbs to heal them instead. Many people were scared of going to these witches because they did not know if they would be harmed or cursed during their healing process. The punishments for these poor witches were quite