Talk:Witch hunt

Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch

Below are excerpts from a brilliant essay by historian Peter Linebaugh:

Silvia Federici's book, Caliban and the Witch, although describing a time and place remote from the lawless atrocities in Mesopotamia, being as it is a study of the witch-hunt, of medieval heretical movements, and of European mechanical and materialist philosophy from the 'Age of Reason,' nevertheless, it is essential for understanding either. At the same time, the paradox of the hideous pun of the Structural Adjustment Program and the Special Access Program as the SAP, or the grotesque contradiction found between chapter 39 of Magna Carta and order 39 of the Iraq occupation are explicated.

Nothing can so clearly help us understand the torture and the project of neo-liberalism as this, for Federici describes a foundational process creating the structural conditions for the existence of capitalism. This is the fundamental relationship of capitalist accumulation, or (as it is called in decades of technical literature) 'primitive accumulation.' This mystery perplexed (however coyly) Adam Smith. It was the 'original sin' of the political economists, and for Karl Marx it was written in "letters of blood and fire."

The birth of the proletariat required war against women (emphasis added). This was the witch-hunt when tens of thousands of women in Europe were tortured and burnt at the stake, in massive state-sponsored terror against the European peasantry destroying communal relations and communal property. It was coeval with the enclosures of the land, the destruction of popular culture, the genocide in the New World, and the start of the African slave trade. The 16th century price inflation, the 17th century crisis, the centralized state, the transition to capitalism, the Age of Reason ­ come to life, if the blood-curdling cries at the stake, the crackling of kindling as the faggots suddenly catch fire, the clanging of iron shackles of the imprisoned vagabonds, or the spine-shivering abstractions of the mechanical philosophies can indeed be called "life."

Federici explains why the age of plunder required the patriarchy of the wage. Gender became not only a biological condition or cultural reality but a determining specification of class relations. The devaluation of reproductive labor inevitably devalues its product, labor power. The burning of the witches and the vivisection of the body enforced a new sexual pact, the conjuratio of unpaid labor. It was essential to capitalist work-discipline. This is what Marx called the alienation of the body, what Max Weber called the reform of the body, what Norman O. Brown called the repression of the body, and what Foucault calls the discipline of the body. Yet, these social theorists of deep modernization overlooked the witch-hunt!

In the neo-liberal era of postmodern shadows the proletariat is written out of history, so the labors of the historian must recover even its existential substance. Thus, reproduction and the gender specification of the class relationship, is fully and historically argued.

The women of medieval Europe played a major role in the heretical movements; the women of medieval Europe found gender integration in the cooperative labors of the commons which, indeed, depended on them. A true women's movement in the popular culture was happily described by Chaucer which often urst out in peasant revolt. John Ball repeated "now is the time" and the serfs confidently announced "we'll have our will in the woods, the waters, and the meadows." Thomas Müntzer, the communist leader of the German Peasant's Revolt of 1525, said simply, "all the world needs a jolt." This initiated the vicious period when the body was transformed from a repository of knowledge, wisdom, magic, and power to a work-machine requiring both terror and philosophy. The body under the terror of Rationalism is vivisected under a new sexual pact, the conjuratio of unpaid labor. The maid, the prostitute, and the housewife became the exclusive labors of women, replacing the healer, the craftsperson, the heretic, the herbalist, the sage, the commoner, the old, the naturalist, the obeah woman, the single, the ill-reputed, the freely-spoken, the finder of lost property, the lusty or 'free woman,' the obeah, the midwife.

Land expropriations, the lengthening of social distance, the breakdown of collective relations, all the metaphysical underpinnings of social order, the class struggle reduced to the 'evil eye,' sexuality reduced to the functional production of labor power, contraception, abortion were outlawed by the Bull of Innocent VIII (1484), the obliteration of the enchanted world where the stars and the herbs were connected in correspondences that were friendly, if occult, where luck, the unknown, and accident impeded the progress of "scientific rationalization," anatomy, vivisection, destruction, expropriation, exploitation.

She writes "just as enclosures expropriated the peasantry from the communal land, so the witch-hunt expropriated women from their bodies, which were thus 'liberated' from any impediment preventing them to function as machines for the production of labor."

Were there any exceptions? Did the sons, brothers, uncles, fathers, did the men of the community come to the defense of the women? Sadly, shamefully, there is but a single exception to the otherwise universal answer: in 1609 when the Basque fishermen of St. Jean de Luz heard that the women were being stripped and stabbed for witches, they cut short their Atlantic cod campaign and sailed back home and taking clubs in hand they liberated a convoy of witches being carted to the stake.

What we learn is the systematic, protracted, and global practice of torture. It is systematic in the sense that in the past church and state conspired to exercise it while state theorists developed philosophy for it, such as Jean Bodin ("We must spread terror among some by punishing many"), René Descartes ("I am not this body"), and Thomas Hobbes ("for the laws of nature, as justice, equity, mercy, and, in sum, doing to others as we would be done to, of themselves, without the terror of some power to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural passions"). It was protracted in the sense that it was not shock therapy based on the blitzkrieg, or sudden 'structural adjustment plan,' but an intermittent campaign of approximately two centuries which ebbed or flowed with prices. It was coeval with the European Renaissance, high and low, north and south. Finally, it was global in the sense that the degradation of women accomplished by means of terror of the body belonged to the same epoch as the genocide of indigenous people in America and the commencement of the African slave trade. "It was here that the scientific use of torture was born, for blood and torture were necessary to 'breed an animal' capable of regular, homogeneous, and uniform behavior, indelibly marked with the memory of the new rules."

I'm too old to be bold, but if anyone wants to see it, I'll add Federici's analysis to the entry. Trachys (talk) 16:17, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

If that's an accurate description of Federici's work, then I have to say Federici's work is a politically motivated rewrite of history. The number of factual errors and distortions is simply breathtaking. --Taiwan boi (talk) 11:20, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

For example? Trachys (talk) 16:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Where to start?

• Witch hunts were not universally pogroms against women. Men were executed in 25% of all cases, and in some countries men were persecuted more than women. * Source?
• Find me any medieval peasant (or even member of the aristocracy), who demonstrably thought of the witch hunts in terms of 'the metaphysical underpinnings of social order', 'the alienation of the body', 'capitalist work-discipline', 'the conjuratio of unpaid labor', 'the class struggle', or 'the obliteration of the enchanted world' (the 'obliteration of the enchanted world' was, ironically, encouraged by the rationalists who opposed the witch hunts). It's complete nonsense to product sophisticated 20th century social philosophies onto medieval peasants who wouldn't have a clue what any of this was about. Witch hunts were the direct result of local pagan superstitions, encouraged by certain Church teachings and combined with social and economic pressures. * Where does the text suggest that contemporaries described the hunts in these ways? Federici is attempting to describe and explain the "social and economic pressures" that you refer to. The "to extinguish knowledge of birth control" argument isn't in itself very convincing, and the scapegoating theory explains nothing whatsoever.

• Only one instance of opposition to the witch hunts is cited, which is breathtakingly ignorant (see here). * None of the instances refered to at the link are of popular opposition to the hunts.
• There is no evidence that 'the witch-hunt expropriated women from their bodies, which were thus 'liberated' from any impediment preventing them to function as machines for the production of labor'. The witch hunts were about superstition, nothing more. * Great analysis, thanks.
• There was no 'systematic, protracted, and global practice of torture'. Torture was not universally used in witch hunt cases, and in fact outlawed in some countries and by certain laws. * You're serious?
• It was not 'coeval with the European Renaissance, high and low, north and south'. The distribution pattern of witch hunt trials is extraordinarily uneven, both chronologically and geographically. * Take a step back.
• This claim is pitifully inaccurate:

'The maid, the prostitute, and the housewife became the exclusive labors of women, replacing the healer, the craftsperson, the heretic, the herbalist, the sage, the commoner, the old, the naturalist, the obeah woman, the single, the ill-reputed, the freely-spoken, the finder of lost property, the lusty or 'free woman,' the obeah, the midwife.'

These allegedly 'replaced' roles were as available after the witch hunts as they were before and during the witch hunts. By the way, I note that 'the obeah' is mentioned twice, which shows that someone didn't proof read their work. * "as available"? Really??

• Women were very frequently accused by other women, and it was the midwives who often accused local women of being witches. Some midwives even became 'witch finders' for money. * Yes. Why? In response to what pressures?

How much more do you want? I can keep this up for pages. The whole essay is trash. It's post-modern lunacy imposed on a medieval world which knew nothing of any of this stuff. --Taiwan boi (talk) 10:34, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

That's quite enough. You apparently have a grasp of history, but you clearly have no idea how to explain/interpret it. Trachys (talk) 15:53, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

So that's one 'Really?', one 'Why?', one 'You're serious?', one request for a source and several nyah-nyah-nyahs. Not exactly a reply. To cover your questions:

• If you need a source for the gender statistics of the witch hunt trials, it's clear you've never caught sight of the primary sources, or even the reputable secondary sources. The gender statistics are well attested and cited by several reputable sources See Jenny Gibbons for example (Gibbons uses standard authorities such as Briggs and Levack), and more importantly Robin Briggs, and Steven Katz. Here's Briggs:

• 'Of nearly 1,300 witches whose cases went to the parlement of Paris on appeal, just over half were men'
• 'There are some extreme cases in peripheral regions of Europe, with men accounting for 90 percent of the accused in Iceland, 60 percent in Estonia and nearly 50 per cent in Finland'

Briggs makes the point that 25% of those executed were men. Here's Katz:

• 'over 99.9-plus percent of all women who lived during the three centuries of the witch craze were not harmed directly by the police arm of either the state or the church, though both had the power to do so had the elites that controlled them so desired'

• I didn't say the text suggests 'that contemporaries described the hunts in these ways'. I asked for evidence that they thought about them in these ways. This is a reasonable request, since it is asserted by Federici that they did think about them in these ways. So where's the evidence?
• You say 'Federici is attempting to describe and explain' the social and economic pressures to which I refer, but that isn't the case at all. I see the witch hunts as an unconscious result of certain social and economic pressures, whereas Federici sees the witch hunts as a calculated and orchestrated response to social and economic pressures (and her social and economic pressures are largely made up out of her own head, whereas mine are historical). The fact is that standard recognized historians on this subject have a basic agreement on how the social and economic pressures unconsciously produced the witch hunts. I have yet to see any of them take Federici's views seriously, or even cite them. She's simply not recognized in the field, and rightly so as a radical feminist Marxist post-modernist (or 'raving narcissist' in other words).
• You claimed none of the examples of opposition in the link I gave were of 'popular opposition' to the witch hunts. This proves you didn't really read the list, since a number of them were. But of course, Federici did not confine her claim to 'popular opposition'. She claimed that there was only one instance of 'sons, brothers, uncles, fathers' and 'the men of the community' coming to 'the defense of the women', which is completely false. Let's hear Deborah Willis (Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England:

• 'in some cases, it appears that the husband as "head of household" came forward to make statements on behalf of his wife'

Specific men who protested against the witch hunts and specifically against the inhumane treatment of women include Cornelius Agrippa (1518-1520), Johannes Weyer (1563), Johann Matthaus Meyfart (1583), Cornelius Loos (1592), Samuel Harsnett (1599), Friedrich von Spee (1631), Thomas Ady (1656), and Robert Calef (1693-1700), and Sir John Powell (1711), to name a few. The fact that Federici mentions none of this information is demonstrative either of ignorance or bias.

• Yes I am serious. Torture was not universally used in witch hunt cases, and in fact outlawed in some countries and by certain laws. In addition, in the vast majority of cases those accused of witchcraft were not executed on the grounds that they were a witch. They were tried and executed by secular courts on the grounds that they had broken secular law. The typical charge was not witchcraft (which secular laws did not prosecute), but maleficium, damage to property or personal injury. The charge would assert that maleficium had taken place by means of witchcraft, but it was the maleficium which was the crime being prosecuted, not witchcraft. If the judge or jury believed that maleficium could not be proved, the accused was discharged without penalty. This is commonly overlooked in lightweight and populist treatments of the relevant history.
• I said the distribution pattern of witch hunt trials is extraordinarily uneven, both chronologically and geographically. This is demonstrable (again, see Briggs, Levack, Willis, Katz, etc). You said 'Take a step back', which doesn't actually address what I wrote. If you're trying to make a point, make it clearer and cite your sources.
• Yes, these allegedly 'replaced' roles were as available after the witch hunts as they were before and during the witch hunts. The fact that your only response to this was 'Really?' demonstrates to me that you weren't aware of this, and have no data with which to argue the point.
• I'm glad you acknowledged that women were very frequently accused by other women, and it was the midwives who often accused local women of being witches, and that some midwives even became 'witch finders' for money. You ask 'Why? In response to what pressures?', and the answer is 'For many reasons, no pressures, and often simply out of personal spite or for monetary gain'. No one forced them to do this, and there was no pressure on them to do it at all. The fact is that many women simply took personal advantage of the witch hunts to settle personal grudges or get some quick cash. Unfortunately, midwives (who continued to flourish throughout the entire witch hunt era), were formost among those who sold their fellow women for monetary gain. Contrary to Federici, midwives had less chance of being charged. Purkiss:

• 'being a licensed midwife actually decreased a woman's chances of being charged'
• 'midwives were more likely to be found helping witch-hunters'

Willis:

• 'It is really crucial to understand that misogyny in this sense was not reserved to men alone, but could be just as intense among women'
• 'conflicts [that] normally opposed one woman to another, with men liable to become involved only at a later stage as ancillaries to the original dispute'
• 'most informal accusations were made by women against other women'
• 'women did testify in large numbers against other women, making up 43 per cent of witnesses in these cases on average, and predominating in 30 per cent of them'
• 'the proportion of women witnesses rose from around 38 per cent in the last years of Queen Elizabeth to 53 per cent after the Restoration'
• 'women were active in building up reputations by gossip, deploying counter-magic and accusing suspects'

Also contrary to Federici is the fact that the vast majority of women during this era were free from harm by the witch hunts. Katz:

• 'over 99.9-plus percent of all women who lived during the three centuries of the witch craze were not harmed directly by the police arm of either the state or the church, though both had the power to do so had the elites that controlled them so desired'

This fact alone contradicts utterly the idea that the witch hunts were some kind of capitalist anti-female campaign or 'class struggle'.

It's clear you not only have no grasp of the relevant history, you also have no grasp of the relevant sources, no grasp of the relevant authorities, and certainly no grasp of standard historiographical methodology. --Taiwan boi (talk) 16:02, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Alas that you have identified Federici's 'isms!' Wikipedia readers are surely grateful for your vigilence in protecting historiography from the narcissisms of Marxists and feminists. Trachys (talk) 08:34, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

In response to what you wrote, no I am not saying that 'witch-hunts had no impact whatsoever on the lives of women, and that even if they did, women themselves readily approved'. I have said absolutely nothing like that. And yes, it's a good thing that someone checked up on Federici and her 'isms'. Politically motivated historical revisionism (as radical Marxist feminist 'history' always is), has no place in this article. Correctly documented and authoritative sources do. Note that I have provided overwhelming documentation from reliable sources for my argument. You have been unable to provide any good reason for including Federici's wild ideas. --Taiwan boi (talk) 08:45, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Just a few of points that need to be made here:

1. Taiwan boi is factually correct with his statements.
2. Labels and -isms are not relevant to the discussion. A feminist historian is a historian who focuses on women's history. A marxist historian is one who tests history against structures defined by Marx. 'Radical' is just a pejorative tacked on. There are many approaches to history, each with their own benefits, and any particular work should stand or fall based on its actual merit, rather than pigeon-holing and name-calling.
3. Please don't insert your own comments into another editor's comments. It makes it very difficult to follow the conversation, and will just be annoying to the person whose mouth you are effectively putting words into.
4. Lets keep this friendly.

Thanks, Fuzzypeg★ 05:31, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Fuzzypeg. I'd like to make a couple of points however. One is that 'isms' are indeed relevant. A feminist historian's view of history is by definition going to be affected by the fact that they are focusing on women's history, and what they consider to be issues in women's history. Selective treatment of the data is inevitable, and a certain bias will result. A Marxist historian commences their historical investigation by assuming the truth of certain Marxist structures, which are then used to interpret history. Selective treatment of the data is inevitable, and a certain bias will result. Both of these are interpretative treatments of history, which is why they depart from standard historiographical method and why their treatments of history generally differ significantly from standard historical scholarship. The term 'radical' is not always a pejorative, and indeed in the very article on Silvia Federici in Wikipedia she is described as 'a scholar, teacher, and activist from the radical Feminist Marxist tradition'. --Taiwan boi (talk) 05:45, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Saudi Arabia

there executing (or have exectuded recently) an illeterate women for wich craft, think we should have a section for modern day witch hunts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.230.64.225 (talk) 14:52, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Germany

As the new post under Germany is intresting, it fails in many aspects to fall under the heading of southwestern Germany. In response to the post I have listed Diane Purkiss who dsiputes the importance of midwives. BlantonC 01:06, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Green wood

There's no talk about green wood (moss wood) --Cyberman 08:33, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The reason why added my contribution about southwestern Germany is due to the lack of discussion on wikipedia concerning the topic. In many ways I know it lacks information in areas including writings, pesant opinion , religious beliefs....However my intention was to provide the number of actual executions from 1561-1684. Also I wanted to provide some of the most important scholarly debated theories on why the witch-hunts occured. I used Midelfort for most of my data and found his book on witch-hunting to be very well constructed. This is only a very brief post on a very wide subject.BlantonC 19:39, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

"The witchhunts were part of a larger puritanical culture which was very religiously and socially intolerant."

True in the Salem witchhunts. Largely true in England, I think. Not sure whether this is true in other European countries.

I believe it was. The Catholic Church pretty much ruled religious life throughout Europe at the time. --Dmerrill

Um, I didn't pay enough attention in History lessons, but weren't the puritans anti-catholic? -- DrBob

Yes, but the term puritanical doesn't just mean the Puritans anymore! [later] removed the word since obviously it could lead to misunderstanding, and the sentence stands without it quite well. --Dmerrill

torture was an absolute norm in judicial procedures until quite recently in the entire world. It still is in big chunks of the world. This needs to reflect that. Indeed, our most horrific descriptions of torture are usually NOT witchcraft trials, but proceedings against those accused of treason. The execution of witches was usually also more pleasant (if any execution can be called so) than the execution of traitors (drawing and quartering was not used for witches commonly; the 'drawing' part means extracting the entrails while the victim is still alive and roasting them. Quartering was usually done after death, but they didn't always wait for death before starting.). --MichaelTinkler

I have only one authoratative book, but I added a quote from it in support of witch torture being particularly horrible. If you have another source, please educate me. --Dmerrill

Michael is substantially correct, and particularly so in regard to treason: a good example would be Guy Fawkes, where the torturers had a field day. Fawkes was drawn and quartered whilst still alive. NB: But torture was largely removed from the English judicial process following habeas corpus and legislation introduced during the reign of Henry II which effectively ended the process of trial by ordeal. sjc

DM - try E.F. Peters; he is a first rate scholar who has several books on torture; his short book on the Inquisition is the best thing of its kind. SJC - "largely removed" - for usual criminal cases, sure, but willingness to construe 'treason' broadly (esp. by the Tudors) meant that it was still quite regular (viz., Catholic recusancy, breakaway Protestant groups, etc.). --MichaelTinkler

Thanks Michael, I will check it out. I read a *lot*.

I'm curious about the alleged Soviet archives and what they could have revealed about the McCarthy investigation. Can anyone corroborate this or give some more information? It would probably belong on the UnAmerican Activities Commission page. --Dmerrill

The fact that there were witches? Communists under the bed? Well, yet another nail in the coffin of Alger Hiss's innocence, for one. The mere proof (often denied) that the CPUSA was funded from Moscow (I love he suitcases full of cash story from Harvey Klehr).

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By the way, I used the header 'Early Modern Europe' because the witchhunts are identified with the Renaissance and Modern periods, not with the middle ages. --MichaelTinkler

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Is it really a good idea to quote from Cathen for this piece? Not that I don't appreciate the Encyclopaedia, but it is biased, and I'm chary of editing it to show more recent scholarship (i.e. from this century) as we can hardly then say its "from the Catholic Encyclopaedia" then, can we? --Egoinos

I'm surprised that this

about the Salem witch trials?

Is the only ref. to the Salem witchunts and trials of 1692

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The Scope of the Cath En quote is extremely unclear

As a satisfied user and reader of this page (google witchhunts 1st find), I would like to state a complaint regarding the 'Catholic Encyc.' quotation. This material was fascinating and useful to me, but it was very difficult to comprehend 'who' wrote each headed section (Catholic Encyc. or Wikipedia). I experienced particularly strong 'voice dislocation' feelings considering the scientific statement 'witchcraft is mythological' and the utterly remarkable 'The question of the reality of witchcraft is one upon which it is not easy to pass a confident judgment.' (This last is deeply enlightening for me: that any learned person could write such a thing circa 1911!). In the end, I had to use the wiki history to determine the scope of the quotation. From an examination of the wiki history, it seems the first three headed sections are quotations "from the Catholic Encyclopaedia". My complaint is simply that the scope of the quotation is extremely unclear, given only the 'end bracket' "from the Catholic Encyclopaedia". It would be better (but ugly) to create a larger heading "From the Cath En"; or italicize the entire quotation, or ident it, or sub-page it, or something similar. Perhaps there are general wikipedia conventions for large quotations and working practices for indicating multiple voices. There should be. --MartinH.

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Was trial by drowning a part of witchhunt ? I could not see any references for it in this page. Jay 08:28, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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I find it close to incomprehensible that wikipedia could use the Catholic encyclopedia as a basis for this article. I'm being bold and removing the content from the 1913 CE. It is a very informative reference but clearly hopelessly POV (choice quote: "In the face of Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers and theologians the abstract possibility of a pact with the Devil and of a diabolical interference in human affairs can hardly be denied [...]"). All anyone has done to the CE text since at least June 2002 was correcting links (eg "carnal intercourse" -> "sexual intercourse"), with the exception of one edit which made the text under the heading "Early Church" more neutral. The CE text contains many unfounded and unreferenced assumptions and claims, making it a bad starting point for a wikipedia article. It is however useful as a reference source. I'm adding a link to the CE text at the bottom of the article, and the wikified text is given here:

===Early Church===
The attitude of the early Church was probably influenced by criminal law of the Roman Empire as well as by Jewish tradition. The law of the Twelve Tables already assumes the reality of magical powers, and frequent references in Horace to Canidia showed great cultural hostility to the sorceresses held to possess such powers. Under the Empire, in the third century CE, the punishment of burning alive was enacted by the Empire against witches who caused another person's death through their enchantments. Ecclesiastical law followed a similar but milder course.

Canon 6 of the Council of Elvira (306), refused the holy Viaticum to those who had killed a man per maleficium (by a spell) because such a crime could not be effected "without idolatry"; which probably means without the aid of the Devil, devil-worship and idolatry being then convertible terms. Similarly, canon 24 of the Council of Ancyra (314) imposes five years of penance upon those who consult magicians, and the offence is called a "custom of the heathen". This legislation represented the mind of the Church for many centuries. Furthermore certain early Irish canons in the far West treated sorcery as a crime to be visited with excommunication until adequate penance had been performed.

In the first thirteen hundred years of the Christian era we find no trace of widespread denunciation and persecution of supposed sorceresses which characterized the witch hunts of a later age. A few individual prosecutions for witchcraft occurred, and in some of these torture (permitted by the Roman civil law) apparently took place. Pope Nicholas I (866 CE) prohibited the use of torture, and a similar decree may be found in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. In spite of these prohibitions, torture was used. It must be noted that common civil "trials" of the day were "ordeals" that would likely be considered torture in the current day. For example, the ordeal of cold water, but as the sinking of the victim was regarded as a proof of her innocence, we may reasonably believe that the verdicts so arrived at were generally verdicts of acquittal.

Nonetheless, the general desire of the clergy to check fanaticism is well illustrated by the Council of Paderborn (785). Although it rules that sorcerers are to be reduced to serfdom and made over to the service of the Church, The following decree was also made: "Whosoever, blinded by the devil and infected with pagan errors, holds another person for a witch that eats human flesh, and therefore burns her, eats her flesh, or gives it to others to eat, shall be punished with death". Furthermore, on many different occasions clergy in positions of authority did their best to disabuse the people of their belief in witchcraft. This for instance is the purpose of the book, "Contra insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis" (Against the foolish belief of the common sort concerning hail and thunder), written by Saint Agobard (d. 841), Archbishop of Lyons (P.L., CIV, 147).

Still more to the point is the section of the work, "De ecclesiasticis disciplinis" ascribed to Regino of Prüm (A.D. 906). In section 364 is states "This also is not to be passed over that 'certain abandoned women, turning aside to follow Satan, being seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and openly profess that in the dead of night they ride upon certain beasts along with the pagan goddess Diana and a countless horde of women and that in these silent hours they fly over vast tracts of country and obey her as their mistress, while on other nights they are summoned to pay her homage.'"

The work further states that if it were only the women themselves were deluded it would be a matter of little consequence, but unfortunately an innumera multitudo (immense number of people) believe these things to be true and believing them depart from the true Faith, so that they essentially embrace Paganism by believing in witches. And in this account the work states "it is the duty of priests earnestly to instruct the people that these things are absolutely untrue and that such imaginings are planted in the minds of misbelieving folk, not by a Divine spirit, but by the spirit of evil". It would be far too sweeping a conclusion to infer that the Catholic Church by this work proclaimed complete disbelief in witchcraft, but the passage at least proves that a more critical spirit prevailed among the clergy.

Middle Ages

The "Decretum" of Burchard, Bishop of Worms (about 1020), and especially its 19th book, often known separately as the "Corrector", is another work of great importance. Burchard, or the teachers from whom he has compiled his treatise, still believes in some forms of witchcraft - in magical potions, for instance, which may produce impotence or abortion. But he altogether rejects the possibility of many of the marvellous powers with which witches were popularly credited. Such, for example, were the nocturnal riding through the air, the changing of a person's disposition from love to hate, the control of thunder, rain, and sunshine, the transformation of a man into an animal, the intercourse of incubi and succubi with human beings. Not only the attempt to practise such things but the very belief in their possibility is treated by him as a sin for which the confessor must require his penitent to do a serious assigned penance. Gregory VII in 1080 wrote to King Harold of Denmark forbidding witches to be put to death upon presumption of their having caused storms or failure of crops or pestilence. Neither were these the only examples of an effort to stem the tide of unjust suspicion to which these poor creatures were exposed.

On the other hand, after the middle of the 13th century, the then recently-constituted Papal Inquisition began to concern itself with charges of witchcraft. Alexander IV, indeed, ruled (1258) that the inquisitors should limit their intervention to those cases in which there was some manifeste haeresim saparent (clear presumption of heretical belief), but heretical tendencies were very readily inferred from almost any sort of magical practices. Neither is this altogether surprising when we remember how freely the Cathari parodied Catholic ritual in their consolamentum and other rites, and how easily the Manichaean dualism of their system might be interpreted as a homage to the powers of darkness. It was at any rate at Toulouse, the hot-bed of Catharan infection, that we meet in 1275 the earliest example of a witch burned to death after judicial sentence of an inquisitor, who was in this case a certain Hugues de Baniol. The woman, probably half crazy, "confessed" to having brought forth a monster after intercourse with an evil spirit and to having nourished it with babies' flesh which she procured in her nocturnal expeditions. The possibility of such sexual intercourse between human beings and demons was unfortunately accepted by some of the great schoolmen, even, for example, by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure.

Nevertheless within the Church itself there was always a strong common-sense reaction against this theorizing, a reaction which more especially manifested itself in the confession manuals of the close of the 15th century. These were largely compiled by men who were in actual contact with the people, and who realized the harm effected by the extravagance of these superstitious beliefs. Stephen Lanzkranna, for instance, treated the belief in women who rode about at night, hobgoblins, were-wolves, and "other such heathen nonsensical impostures", as one of the greatest of sins. Moreover this common-sense influence was a powerful one. Speaking of the synods held in Bavaria, so unfriendly a witness as Riezler (Hexenprozesse in Bayern, p. 32) declares that "among the official representatives of the Church this healthier tendency remained the prevalent one down to the threshold of the witch-trial epidemic, that is until far on in the 16th century". Even as late as the Salzburg Provincial Synod of 1569, we find indication of a strong tendency to prevent as far as possible the imposition of the death penalty in cases of reputed witchcraft, by insisting that these things were diabolical illusions. Still there can be no doubt that during the 14th century certain papal constitutions of John XXII and Benedict XII did very much to stimulate the prosecution by the inquisitors of witches and others engaged in magical practices, especially in the south of France. In a witch trial on a large scale carried on at Toulouse in 1334, out of sixty-three persons accused of offences of this kind, eight were handed over to the secular arm to be burned and the rest were imprisoned either for life or for a long term of years. Two of the condemned, both elderly women, after repeated application of torture, confessed that they had assisted at witches' sabbaths, had there worshipped the Devil, had been guilty of indecencies with him and with the other persons present, and had eaten the flesh of infants whom they had carried off by night from their nurses. In 1324 Petronilla de Midia was burnt at Kilkenny in Ireland at the instance of Richard, Bishop of Ossory; but analogous cases in the British Isles seem to have been very rare. During this period the secular courts proceeded against witchcraft with equal or even greater severity than the ecclesiastical tribunals, and here also torture was employed and burning at the stake. Fire was the punishment juridically appointed for this offence in the secular codes known as the "Sachsenspiegel" (1225) and the "Schwabenspiegel" (1275). Indeed during the 13th and 14th centuries no prosecutions for witchcraft are known to have been undertaken in Germany by the papal inquisitors. About the year 1400 we find wholesale witch-prosecutions being carried out at Bern in Switzerland by Peter de Gruyères, who was unquestionably a secular judge, and other campaigns - for example in the Valais (1428-1434) when 200 witches were put to death, or at Briancon in 1437 when over 150 suffered, some of them by drowning - were carried on by the secular courts. The victims of the inquisitors, e.g. at Heidelberg in 1447; or in Savoy in 1462, do not seem to have been quite so numerous. In France at this period the crime of witchcraft was frequently designated as "Vauderie" through some confusion seemingly with the followers of the heretic, Peter Waldes. But this confusion between sorcery and a particular form of heresy was unfortunately bound to bring a still larger number of persons under the jealous scrutiny of the inquisitors.

It will be readily understood from the foregoing that the importance attached by many older writers to the Bull, Summis desiderantes affectibus, of Pope Innocent VIII (1484), as though this papal document were responsible for the witch mania of the two succeeding centuries, is altogether illusory. Not only had an active campaign against most forms of sorcery already been going on for a long period, but in the matter of procedure, of punishments, of judges, etc., Innocent's Bull enacted nothing new. Its direct purport was simply to ratify the powers already conferred upon Henry Institoris and James Sprenger, inquisitors, to deal with persons of every class and with every form of crime (for example, with witchcraft as well as heresy), and it called upon the Bishop of Strasburg to lend the inquisitors all possible support.

Indirectly, however, by specifying the evil practices charged against the witches - for example their intercourse with incubi and succubi, their interference with the parturition of women and animals, the damage they did to cattle and the fruits of the earth, their power and malice in the infliction of pain and disease, the hindrance caused to men in their conjugal relations, and the witches' repudiation of the faith of their baptism - the pope must no doubt be considered to affirm the reality of these alleged phenomena. But "it is perfectly obvious that the Bull pronounces no dogmatic decision"; neither does the form suggest that the pope wishes to bind anyone to believe more about the reality of witchcraft than is involved in the utterances of Holy Scripture. Probably the most disastrous episode was the publication a year or two later, by the same inquisitors, of the book "Malleus Maleficarum" (the hammer of witches). This work is divided into three parts, the first two of which deal with the reality of witchcraft as established by the Bible, etc., as well as its nature and horrors and the manner of dealing with it, while the third lays down practical rules for procedure whether the trial be conducted in an ecclesiastical or a secular court. There can be no doubt that the book, owing to its reproduction by the printing press, exercised great influence. It contained, indeed, nothing that was new.

The "Formicaris" of John Nider, which had been written nearly fifty years earlier, exhibits just as intimate a knowledge of the supposed phenomena of sorcery. But the "Malleus" professed (in part fraudulently) to have been approved by the University of Cologne, and it was sensational in the stigma it attached to witchcraft as a worse crime than heresy and in its notable animus against the female sex. The subject at once began to attract attention even in the world of letters. Ulrich Molitoris a year or two later published a work, "De Lamiis", which, though disagreeing with the more extravagant of the representations made in the "Malleus", did not question the existence of witches. Other divines and popular preachers joined in the discussion, and, though many voices were raised on the side of common sense, the publicity thus given to these matters inflamed the popular imagination. Certainly the immediate effects of Innocent VIII's Bull have been greatly exaggerated. Institoris started a witch campaign at Innsbruck in 1485, but here his procedure was severely criticised and resisted by the Bishop of Brixen. So far as the papal inquisitors were concerned, the Bull, especially in Germany, heralded the close rather than the commencement of their activity. The witch-trials of the 16th and 17th centuries were for the most part in secular hands.

The Reformation

One fact which is absolutely certain is that, so far as Luther, Calvin, and their followers were concerned, the popular belief in the power of the Devil as exercised through witchcraft and other magic practices was developed beyond all measure. Naturally Luther did not appeal to the papal Bull. He looked only to the Bible, and it was in virtue of the Biblical command that he advocated the extermination of witches. But no portion of Janssen's History is more unanswerable than the fourth and fifth chapters of the last volume (vol. XVI of the English edition) in which he attributes a large, if not the greater, share of the responsibility for the witch mania to the Reformers.

The penal code known as the Carolina (1532) decreed that sorcery throughout the German empire should be treated as a criminal offence, and if it purported to inflict injury upon any person the witch was to be burnt at the stake. In 1572 Augustus of Saxony imposed the penalty of burning for witchcraft of every kind, including simple fortunetelling. On the whole, greater activity in hunting down witches was shown in the Protestant districts of Germany than in the Catholic provinces. In Osnabrück, in 1583, 121 persons were burned in three months. At Wolfenbüttel in 1593 as many as ten witches were often burned in one day. It was not until 1563 that any effective resistance to the persecution began to be offered. This came first from a Protestant of Cleues, John Weyer, and other protests were shortly afterwards published in the same sense by Ewich and Witekind. On the other hand, Jean Bodin, a French Protestant lawyer, replied to Weyer in 1580 with much asperity, and in 1589 the Catholic Bishop Binsfeld and Father Delrio, a Jesuit, wrote on the same side, though Delrio wished to mitigate the severity of the witch trials and denounced the excessive use of torture. Bodin's book was answered amongst others by the Englishman Reginald Scott in his Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), but this answer was ordered to be burned by James I, who replied to it in his Daemonologie.

Perhaps the most effective protest on the side of humanity and enlightenment was offered by the Jesuit Friedrich von Spee, who in 1631 published his Cautio criminalis and who fought against the craze by every means in his power. This cruel persecution seems to have extended to all parts of the world. In the 16th century there were cases in which witches were condemned by lay tribunals and burned in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome. Pope Gregory XV, however, in his Constitution, "omnipotentis" (1623), recommended a milder procedure, and in 1657 an Instruction of the Inquisition brought effective remonstrances to bear upon the cruelty shown in these prosecutions.

England and Scotland, of course, were by no means exempt from the same epidemic of cruelty, though witches were not usually burned. As to the number of executions in Great Britain it seems impossible to form any safe estimate. One statement declares that 30,000, another that 3000, were hanged in England during the rule of the Parliament. Stearne the witchfinder boasted that he personally knew of 200 executions. Howell, writing in 1648, says that within the compass of two years near upon 300 witches were arraigned, and the major part executed, in Essex and Suffolk only. In Scotland there is the same lack of statistics. A careful article by Legge in the "Scottish Review" (Oct., 1891) estimates that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries "3400 persons perished". For a small population such as that of Scotland, this number is enormous, but many authorities, though confessedly only guessing, have given a much higher estimate. Even America was not exempt from this plague. The well-known Cotton Mather, in his "Wonders of the Invisible World" (1693), gives an account of 19 executions of witches in New England, where one poor creature was pressed to death. New England was the site of the Salem witch trials in 1692.

In modern times, considerable attention has been given to the subject by Hexham and others. At the end of the 17th century the persecution almost everywhere began to slacken, and early in the 18th it practically ceased. Torture was abolished in Prussia in 1754, in Bavaria in 1807, in Hanover in 1822. The last trial for witchcraft in Germany was in 1749 at Würzburg, but in Switzerland a girl was executed for this offence in the Protestant Canton of Glarus in 1783. There seems to be no evidence to support the allegation sometimes made that women suspected of witchcraft were formally tried and put to death in Mexico late in the 19th century.

The question of the reality of witchcraft is one upon which it is not easy to pass a confident judgment. In the face of Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers and theologians the abstract possibility of a pact with the Devil and of a diabolical interference in human affairs can hardly be denied, but no one can read the literature of the subject without realizing the awful cruelties to which this belief and without being convinced that in 99 cases out of 100 the allegations rest upon nothing better than pure delusion. The most bewildering circumstance is the fact that in a large number of witch prosecutions the confessions of the victims, often involving all kinds of satanistic horrors, have been made spontaneously and apparently without threat or fear of torture. Also the full admission of guilt seems constantly to have been confirmed on the scaffold when the poor suffered had nothing to gain or lose by the confession. One can only record the fact as a psychological problem, and point out that the same tendency seems to manifest itself in other similar cases. The most remarkable instance, perhaps, is one mentioned by St. Agobard in the 9th century. A certain Grimaldus, Duke of Beneventum, was accused, in the panic engendered by a plague that was destroying all the cattle, of sending men out with poisoned dust to spread infection among the flocks and herds. These men, when arrested and questioned, persisted, says Agobard, in affirming their guilt, though the absurdity was patent.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

<end>

---

More references please

There are so many contradicting opionions on this subject that I don't know what to believe. This article is just one of many opinions for me unless it provides more references to back up its claims. Thanks in advance.Andries 09:07, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

A good place to start would be citations to support this statement:

"Recent research on the matter calls into question the very existence of alleged 'pagan survivals' and 'backlash against herbalists'."

What recent research?

Burning times

Can somebody please merge or rewrite burning times? Thanks in advance. Andries 09:07, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I merged and edited it. Unfortunatley, someone deleted it without explanation, but I already fixed it. Slugokramer 23:40, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Myths refuted

At the following website I found a good summary:http://www.religioustolerance.org/wic_burn.htm

• The total number of victims was probably between 50,000 and 100,000 -- not 9 million as many believe.
• Although alleged witches were burned alive or hung over a five century interval -- from the 14th to the 18th century -- the vast majority were tried from 1550 to 1650.
• Some of the victims worshiped Pagan deities, and thus could be considered to be indirectly linked to today's Neopagans. However most apparently did not.
• Some of the victims were midwives and native healers; however most were not.
• Most of the victims were tried executed by local, community courts, not by the Church.
• A substantial minority of victims -- about 25% -- were male.
• Many countries in Europe largely escaped the burning times: Ireland executed only four "Witches;" Russia only ten. The craze affected mostly Switzerland, Germany and France.
• Eastern Orthodox countries had few Witch trials. "In parts of the Orthodox East, at least, witch hunts such as those experienced in other parts of Europe were unknown...."The Orthodox Church is strongly critical of sorcerers (among whom it includes palmists, fortune tellers and astrologers), but has not generally seen the remedy in accusations, trials and secular penalties, but rather in confession and repentance, and exorcism if necessary...."
• Most of the deaths seem to have taken place in Western Europe in the times and areas where Protestant - Roman Catholic conflict -- and thus social turmoil -- was at its maximum.

If the "Inquisition" and the "Catholic Church" are mentioned why not in perspective? The great majority of trials and executions were carried out by local secular governments in Europe. The fact is, with the exception of German areas, rarely in Catholic areas were there witches trials.

IIRC, Spanish Inquisition had very few witch-trials with diverse outcome, and the most important (the so-called Zugarramundi trial) ended up resulting, sometime into the 1620's, in a general and definitive statement that witches where 'poor souls', which ended any witchcraft derived persecution. Interested parties can read Kamen's book on Inquisition and Caro Baroja's works (my sources from memory) --Wllacer 10:37, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also, because of the liberalization of the guilds, competition put many midwifes at odds with each other, many of whom accused the competition of witchcraft, knowing full well what the local authorities would do. In fact, a large number of accusers were woman. 20-25% of all executed were men. Local people and local governments were eager to grab the spoils (i.e. property) of the rich. Since women generally outlived men, they were often victims, meaning accusations were not directed against women as such. Another fact involves the inflation of numbers of witchcraft trials in Europe. Among others, the Nazis had a special research team working on the subject in order to discredit the Catholic Church and even Jews. The Nazis also invented the idea that ths was a "war" against (Aryan) woman. As opposed to Michael Moore's theory of paranoia in the the Colonies (USA), no witches were burned at the stake in all of North America (or in Catholic colonial South America by Europeans). There was only one trial with consequences in all of North America, in Salem. On the contrary, paranoia was widespread in German principalities, with local governments carrying out brutal campaigns in a series of witch trials.

If a man or women was brought to trial, her chances of surviving the ordeal was much greater if the court was the Catholic Inquisition or Protestant, than before a local secular court, which rarely showed compassion. WhyerdWhyerd 19:47, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would like to see the midwife reference removed from this article, 20 years ago it was popular historical belief that midwives were targeted but more recent research has proven that if anything they were under represented proportionaly out of witch hunt victems. The antiquated beleif that the entirly female domain of child birthing caused fear in the established male powers that be (or should that be were?)but it turns out that midwies actualy played a useful role in society (fancy that) and were unlikly to be acused of even white witch craft. I agree that the spanish inquesition played a truely minor role in witch hunting for several reasons:

• The Inquesition was self financing and therefor had a vested interest in accusing the realativly wealthy (jewish conversados) but little to gain by trying the mostly poor victems of witch hunts.
• Despite being a draconian and cruel institution the spanish inquesition saw its self as abiding by a high standard of legal profesionalism, many of the practices used in witch hunts elsewere relief in witch craft as being a crimen exeptum and used that as a justification to lower legal standards e.g. admitin the testimony of women, childeren, convicted criminals, and interested parties. In short they had now problem with the torturing aspect but had some legal principles.

--Gordon

"Deprogramming as witchhunt" to be removed?

I would like to see the section "Deprogramming as a witchhunt" removed. First of all, I fail to see what information it has relevant to the article. There are no references, or source for information. The issues of deprogramming are already covered elsewhere on the wikipedia. The article already states the metaphorical use of the word "witch-hunt". Do we need a section for every metaphorical use of the word anyone ever uses? Samrolken 12:30, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think there should be one section on the metaphorical use of "witch hunt" to describe what the applier of the term perceives as, or claims to perceive as, a hysteria-driven persecution like the literal witch-hunts. It can there be noted that Senator McCarthy's campaign to root out Communism in the 1950's was widely considered a witch-hunt (a connection strengthened by Arthur Miller's The Crucible), and that the day-care-abuse/Satanic panic of the 1980s was also widely considered a witch-hunt, especially as many of the allegations were in fact of Satanic/ritual activity. We can then note that anyone can claim anything to be a witch-hunt, with or without supporting evidence, and that some claim deprogramming to have been one of those witch-hunts, and link to deprogramming where both sides can have their say. -- Antaeus Feldspar 20:33, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I second this. The references to all the possible uses of the term "witch hunt" is very "un-encyclopedic." It just seems like an additional (and unnecessary) area for various people with axes to grind. Marcrios 22:18, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

an interesting phenomenon is occuring within wikipedia, most visible in the 'witchhunt' talk page. the attempt to rewrite the meaning of the term 'witchhunt' to give it a sense of 'common understanding' that it describes 'moral hysteria', and then, errors in the execution of legal matters. I have noticed a subscriber going about and planting 'witchhunt' phrases in many texts on wikipedia. Their work concentrates on the Kenja Communication Group, and there they begin using the phrase. But it has been injected by them into many pages where injustice and error has been made. They are linking up historical injustices with thier predicament by secreting this phrase into various sections with relevance. they seem to want to expand the meaning of 'witchhunt' to include "accusations of pedophilia". they are fast tracking the 'uptake' of thier idea by publishing it on this site, and will then be downloading and tendering it to various proffesionals and academics as fact, further intensifying the meaning. The following link has been secreted as well. http://www.misuseofchildmolestationcharges.info/Web_Links-req-viewlink-cid-2.phtml this is described as an independant report but the author is a known member of the group, Kenja Communication. She has frequented the groups social activities, and worked for the group in thier previous court cases.

this is a new and unforseen development within wikipedia, and I think we should be concerned that such a large scale misrepresentation can be engineered on this site.

at its most innocent, this amounts to a fraud. But it is also verging on criminal activity as the perpertators are knowingly interfering with facts to later recall them as 'evidence', to support thier claims.

they hope there will seem to be a universal agreement that the term 'witchhunt' includes thier predicament.

the same subscriber seems to be asking for Mr Ken Dyers, the leader of the group, to be excluded from the 'list of indicted religous and spiritual leaders' by innocuously suggesting he shouldn't be grouped in with 'murderers and rapists'. However, this trivialises the 22 charges of aggravated sexuall molestation which Mr Dyers is charged with.

something is not quite right with all of this.Legalist 10:49, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you are talking about but witch-hunt also has that meaning:

1 : a searching out for persecution of persons accused of witchcraft

2 : the searching out and deliberate harassment of those (as political opponents) with unpopular views

(from Merriam-Webster online) --Sugaar 11:59, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems they want to include 'allegations of sexuall harrasment' by young girls as a contemporary 'witchhunt' scenario. presumably, this would make the young girls seem to be part of a bigger community 'witchhunt', with the attendant 'moral hysteria' and legal injustice. However, it seems as though there is no hysteria or injustice. just a run of the mill sexual harrasment case. The 'witchhunt' thing looks like a beat up, to create a 'historially viable sense of injustice'. They are removing the meaning from religous and political spheres, and attaching it to sexual harrasment cases, where they are personally involved. There is little objectivity. To me, this smacks of a clever little PR campaign.Legalist 04:47, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't interpret this as an attempt to change the English language so much as an attempt to sway people's opinions regarding that group. "Witch-hunt" is a term with strong connotations, and as such shouldn't appear in Wikipedia articles except when quoting the opinions of reputable sources (or of course when talking about actual literal witch hunts). The Wikipedia policy which most directly covers this is "Neutral point of view". Fuzzypeg☻ 07:23, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Obviously allegations of sexual harassment are not considered witch hunts by almost anyone but regular criminal cases. Maybe some particular case can have that connotation, I can't say for sure, but it's obvious that whoever is promoting that is trying to POV the article.

I agree with Fuzzypeg that, apart of the historical/anthropological meaning, and a few also historical and well documented cases such as McCarthyism, the term is likely to be POV and should be very well documented for each case.

Contemporary conflicts should not fall in this cathegory, unless you are quoting someone's claims of being victim of a withc hunt, what is NPOV.

In any case the article should only deal with its main historical/anthropological literal meaning and mention, as a section, the possible other uses the term may have. I find fully justified the inclusion of McCarthyism and Geroge Orwell's first usage of it (though it should be edited as Orwell explictly talks of witch hunt against Troskists by Stalinists, not of general political persecutions).

The other cases may justify a mention of witch hunt allegations in their respective articles but it can't become a list of current affairs that allegedly are witch hunts. If that's tolerated, I could for instance add some much more clear cases, like the political trials of radical Basque nationalists and other people, groups and companies compromised with Basque culture since 1998, that has been repeatedly denounced as witch hunt. But I realize perfectly it adds nothing to this article and, if needed mention, must be in the correponding articles.

As I think there's clear consensus, I'm removing the dubious subsection. --Sugaar 08:32, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

section removed which connects 'witchhunts' to current dilema faced by Australian Cult. Article purporting to be independant has been published by associate of the Cult.Legalist 00:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't realise everyone was talking about me... I put the links to the Report in because I thought it sounded relevant and independent, etc ... if you have any proof that is not independent I am happy to accept that.

however I would like to raise the question of bias... if it can be said that i was biased in adding that reference, how do i know you are not biased in saying that i am biased? i am sorry if thats a little confusing but i hope you can see what i mean...

if i find an independent report that says something is a witch hunt (leaving aside the issue of whether it should be on this page, and i have to agree the connection seems tenuous), on what authority does Legalist say that it's not a witch hunt etc, and that its being used to sway opionions etc, when perhaps its the truth? just because something seems unusual, does not mean it can't happen...

i also have to object to being called a 'fraud' and 'criminal' for trying to contribute to Wikipedia by making it logical, unbiased, etc... axe to grind, Legalist? that's pretty extreme language for a community-edited resource...

MBarry 05:16, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Ick

Why are there two external links sections, one coming in the middle of the page? Either this is a battlefield in the aftermath of an edit war, or the victim of an unhappy merge (or at least these are the explanations I can envision). I am hesitant to plunge in and start "fixing" things for fear of stepping on toes (or being turned into a newt...never mind the likelihood of successful recovery). Can anyone help me figure out what went wrong here? Jwrosenzweig 17:49, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

I personally dont see why there is the with daycare there - is it really needed? I think the article could do without it but since someone put it there for a reason I will leave it there.--Banana.girl 08:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)Bananagirl

Yeah...

The Democrats were heathen to call the rightful judgement of Bill Clinton such. Such was heathen and not at all what anyone who does not worship the Side of Slavery would believe.

That was in the political section. I did a triple-take before I realized what it was actually saying. Nixed. --Thetoastman 00:00, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Sociology

I removed the following section. I tried to improve it, but could not make enough sense of it. My concerns are that none of it is sourced, the phrase yet none of these have ever been considered "witchcraft". seems so absolute that it can't be correct, and the "Folkways"... sentence is also vague and unsourced. Also should it be in Sociology section?

It is often written that many accused witches were women who were practitioners of herbalism, natural healing or midwifery, yet none of these have ever been considered "witchcraft". Midwifery, folk healing and herblore were common features of rural areas into the twentieth century. "Folkways" are not necessarily "witchcraft".

Ashmoo 00:36, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Verifiability of the article in general

I think this article needs a major overall. The subject of witch-hunts provokes different reactions is different people, and their are a lot of different beliefs as to what actually happened during the European witch-hunts. As such, I think we need to start strictly insisting on sources. Even respected scholars disagree on the causes and extent of the witch hunts, so I think we need to include the names of the scholars with the cites. Ashmoo 04:20, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Disambaguation Page

Hello. I'm a Wikipedian concerned with the gaming Warhammer 40,000 part of Wikipedia.

There is an article titled "Witch Hunters" that is part of this. I am unable to make a disambaguation page myself, I feel that the Witch Hunters page should not stand alone for Warhammer 40,000 or rightly ought to revert here (as the Witch Hunters I am concerned with are purely fictional, as this is not).

Thanks. Colonel Marksman 21:04, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

You should add a line on top of that article reading: This article deals with the concept of Witch Hunters in the context of the Warhammer game series. For classical witch hunters see Witch-hunt --Sugaar 12:02, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Evidence: Jenny Gibbons' quote

I'm not sure what the quote is intended to demonstrate, however I wanted to point out that some of Gibbons' claims have been argued against rather well by Max Dashu: Another view of the witch hunts - a response to Jenny Gibbons. As it stands, I'm not quite sure what the quote is meant to demonstrate, which indicates this should be worded in the article. Lenience from the Church? I think Dashu had something to say about this. Unfortunately I've got to rush off, so I can't refresh myself on this right now... Fuzzypeg☻ 06:06, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Though Max Dashu makes some fine points (if they are factually accurate), on a first glance I've found some worrying symptoms. E.g. she claims "How 'lenient' the methods of the Roman Inquisition had been can be gauged from a document attempting to reform witch trial procedure as late as 1623". Doesn't she know the Roman Inquisition was founded in 1588? Or " Lea can be excused for including the Lamothe-Langon fabrications" but these fabrications were included mainly and insistently by Joseph Hansen (I don't know if Lea makes a mention on them, but Gibbons clearly speaks of Hansen). Or "The assumption that "trial records addressed the full range of trials " is seriously flawed. In country after country, specialists note that trial records only began to be kept after a certain time -- before that, there is little or nothing. " but Gibbons talks of something else: "trial records addressed the full range of trials, not just the most lurid and sensational ones". She doesn't argue for having a complete list of records, but for an indiscriminate track of records. Apparent ignorance (if not some unfortunate mistakes) and blatant straw men clearly do not recommend Max Dashu's analysis as being "rather well argued". Daizus 21:34, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

And here is Jenny Gibbons' response: http://chass.colostate-pueblo.edu/natrel/pom/old/POM10a4.html Daizus 22:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Right. Dashu names the Roman Inquisition but seems to intend the earlier inquisitions as well. A minor slip of the tongue I guess, and doesn't detract from her point... When she mentions Lea's inclusion of the Lamothe-Langon fabrications her point is that Lea and Hansen don't rely on these fabrications alone, and included other solid evidence of early inquisitorial hunts in Italy, France and Rhineland. I haven't read either Lea or Hansen, but perhaps she focusses on Lea because (as you say) he was less insistent on the fabrications and had a greater balance of factual evidence? Who knows? I don't understand why this statement would strike you as suspicious. And Dashu's argument that there were many trials well before Gibbons' estimates begin seems reasonable, as do her other points.

The one instance of Dashu's "ignorance" you've mentioned, talking about the Roman Inquisition when she probably means Catholic inquisitions in general, strikes me as being no more than a slip of the tongue, since the rest of her writing indicates a detailed knowledge of the history and literature she writes about. I haven't noticed any "straw men", and I'd be keen for you to point them out...

I don't know all this history back to front, so I can't pass final judgement on anything, but I note that Gibbons seems to misunderstand or misrepresent Dashu on a couple of points in her response. Dashu doesn't say that the authors of trial records are 'liars', for instance; her point is that the whole diabolical witch stereotype within which the trials operated was a fantasy. This was actually a minor point that Dashu was making, and Gibbons' disproportionately sized (and not particularly relevant) response to this makes me wish she had devoted more space to addressing Dashu's more major concerns. Elsewhere Gibbons writes off Dashu's gender discussion as boiling down to 'witch hunting is woman hunting', an unfair oversimplification.

I am struck by the fact that Dashu was able to respond quickly to Gibbons' initial article, producing a highly coherent argument drawing on a large amount of literature; Gibbons' response to Dashu on the other hand largely just restates her original position. On balance none of this makes Dashu look ignorant!

These articles have been removed from their old site now, so for convenience I provide the following archive links:

• Gibbons' article
• Dashu's response to Gibbons
• Gibbons' response to Dashu

Cheers, Fuzzypeg☻ 04:01, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Double negative

This may sound like nit-picking, but it really needs clarifying. The sentence, "Today it is not believed that most of the accused never regarded themselves as witches", contains a double negative that is either unintentional (as I believe) or extremely confusing. Can someone determine whether most of these accused did or did not regard themselves as witches, and emend the sentence accordingly. Thanks --King Hildebrand 10:10, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. Most of the accused didn't consider themselves to be witches. Thanks! Fuzzypeg☻ 06:56, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Number of deaths due to religious persecution

I added a fact tag to it is estimated some 3 000 000 people has been killed because of heresy in the Medieval and Early Modern Europe. What's the source of this claim? Gugganij 20:34, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the whole paragraph (copied below) should be removed, despite some interesting additions recently made by User:Sadakat.

1. This is not an article about heresy or the inquisitions.
2. The "estimate" of 3 000 000 is simply wrong, for example: the current estimated death toll of the most infamous of the inquisitions, the Spanish Inquisition, is between 3 000 and 5 000.
3. Where are the references, anyway?

The number of witch hunt victims may well be dwarfed by the toll of those accused of or executed for heresy. It is impossible to make definitive statements about this, however, since an unknown number of court records have been destroyed and many thousands of others remain under lock and key in the Vatican. It has been asserted that as many as 3 000 000 people were killed for heresy during the medieval and early modern periods, though the judicial executions actually verifiable by documents or reliable contemporary accounts are in the order of the low thousands. It should always be remembered that the crime of heresy was created by the papal inquisition, which was always more concerned to hold its flock together than to annihilate it - and though it became a political tool useful to religious zealots of all hues, the general aim remained to coerce sinners towards repentance rather than to kill them. The significance of heresy in European history was vast, nevertheless, and the intolerant policies of the continent's established churches, both Protestant and Catholic, was a major cause of emigration to America during the 17th and 18th centuries.

--Leinad ¬ »saudações! 16:47, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm writing to take issue with the two items under "Deaths." Issue I-- the last paragraph reads,

"Assuming 40,000 executions over 250 years in Europe, which had a population of approximately 150 million at the time with a life expectancy of ca. 40 years, we get roughly one execution for witchcraft per 25,000 deaths, ranking about 3.5 times higher as cause of death than death by capital punishment (for any offense) in the USA in the late 20th century,[14] or roughly 5 times lower than death by capital punishment in the People's Republic of China.[15]"

The population figures quoted for this analysis appear to be in considerable conflict with those cited in the article "Medieval demography," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography That article currently states that the peak population of Europe before the Black Death was estimated at between 70 and 100 million people, and that these levels were not seen again for several centuries.

Next, I think the above paragraph sounds somewhat NPOV, as the criticism of China (and I am no fan of China's human rights record) seems out of place.

Issue II--The number of deaths given for Spain appear to conflict with those in the Spanish Inquisition article, which estimated total deaths for the Inquisition at between 3,000 and 5,000, although it is not stated how many of these people were killed as witches. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_inquisition Nonetheless, it seems highly improbable that 50 or fewer people were executed in Spain during a period where thousands were executed elsewhere in Europe. Thanks and have a good day,

      --ThaneofFife  —Preceding unsigned comment added by ThaneofFife (talk • contribs) 21:49, 18 September 2007 (UTC) 

re: modern witch hunts

I think these are important; they definitely should be included, including the religious deprogramming part. It shows how the idea of a witch hunt evolved over time... once the hysteria and persecution was mainly about the use of magic, sorcery or whatever. Today it's obvious that this hysteria can be generated by child molestation claims as well as religious or political beliefs... Can we extend it to have more sections about political witch hunts, etc? Also will see what I can do about the mediaeval section as i have some good material... MBarry 04:59, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

If you have detailed information on metaphorical "witch hunts" such as McCarthyism or religious deprogramming you might also consider including it in the appropriate articles. In a situation like this, as long as these tangential subjects are clearly mentioned in this article, it is normal to give only minimal information here and leave more detailed information for their main articles. The idea is to give the reader a good summary without overburdening them with details they may not be looking for, but allow them to expand on any detail they wish by following a link.

What I would like to see explored more in this article is the repeated accusations of malevolent occult activity that have been levelled at various groups across two millennia. Remarkably similar accusations (sexual depravity, poisoning, eating babies, attacking men's fertility, etc.) were raised against the Bacchic revellers in Rome (see Max Dashu's Secret History of the Witches, chapter "Early Roman Persecutions"), and against lepers and Jews in the middle ages (see Carlo Ginzburg's Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath). These themes are incredibly persistent and have in modern times reappeared with Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria. Fuzzypeg☻ 21:59, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

In the article there are currently some rather odd statements about the accused who, according to soviet records, turned out to in fact be communists. One sentence mentions "communist infiltrators". What does this mean? The article seems to be implying that in the case of these confirmed communists the prejudice was justified. How come? Were these "communists" spies and saboteurs for the USSR? Traitors to their country? I might be wrong, but that would seem rather far-fetched to me. If this is the case it needs clarifying.

Now if a citizen believes in communism as a better political system, they should be allowed to hold that belief and even promote it to others. That's one of the fundamental rights that's supposed to be protected within a democracy, and one of the fundamentals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Each person should be able to hold their own political beliefs and not be persecuted for them.

The problem with McCarthyism is not that it ruined so many non-Communists, but that it made a mockery of Democratic freedoms and civil rights, and victimised people for crimes of conscience. Even if all the people it ruined had turned out to be Communist sympathisers, that would not have excused it one bit. Fuzzypeg☻ 02:42, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Fully agree with you, Fuzzypeg. The paragraph is actually pro-witch-hunt or otherwise POV anti-communist and must be rewritten. --Sugaar 08:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Where is the mention of the atrocities committed in North America? Specific mention? This seems like it should be mentioned here. poopsix 08:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

re: mathew hopkins

Just a small correction: East Anglia is a region not a county of England (it roughly comprises the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire)130.237.175.198 12:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Community ban of the Joan of Arc vandal

This article has been targeted in recent weeks by CC80, a sockpuppet of the Joan of Arc vandal. This and similar articles may be targeted again by other sockpuppets of the same person.

A vandal who has damaged Wikipedia's Catholicism, Christianity, cross-dressing, and homosexuality articles for over two years has been identified and community banned. This person will probably attempt to continue disruption on sockpuppet accounts. Please be alert for suspicious activity. Due to the complexity of this unusual case, the best place to report additional suspicious activity is probably to my user talk page because I was the primary investigating administrator. Durova^Charge! 17:17, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

merge?

a lot of material is duplicated between this article and witch trial. The articles should be merged, or their respective scopes delineated more cleanly. dab (𒁳) 11:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Neopaganism and Wicca

I've put a "citation needed" after the bold comment below under this section:

The term "the burning times" was a term used by the Wiccan Gerald Gardner in 1954[34] as a reference to the European and North American witch trials. Gardner claimed Wicca was an ancient religion; the "burning times" were its period of greatest persecution, and a major reason for the secrecy maintained within the religion ever since.

Given that Gardner essentially created the Wiccan religion only last century, it seems unlikely he would claim it to be ancient -- more likely that he had revived elements of an 'Old Religion'.--Adzze 11:15, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

see Gardnerian Wicca, Witchcraft Today (the 1954 reference). Yes, he claimed to have discovered surviving remnants of an ancient religious tradition. dab (𒁳) 11:28, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, the claim that Gardner "created" the Wiccan religion is by no means proven, and some, such as me, would claim there is compelling evidence to the contrary. See, for example, New Forest coven for more info. It is indeed known (and admitted by Gardner) that he augmented their fragmentary rituals with other material, but "created" is another matter. Fuzzypeg☻ 23:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

this is completely beside the point in this article. Gardner may or may not have met a few old women who thought they were witches, but he established "Wicca", a current that had not existed before, New Forest coven or no New Forest coven. This is amply discussed on the articles linked. We are here just mentioning Gardner for being the person who coined the term "the Burning Times". dab (𒁳) 09:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Indeed beside the point of the article. However if something comes up on a discussion page that seems clearly wrong, I will try to correct it. This is after all the discussion forum for a scholarly project (the encyclopedia), and all conversations should be tempered by care and honest inquiry. So on that basis, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that "a few old women who thought they were witches" (oh, and they weren't all women) were incapable of creating a "current". Do you have some information I don't, as to how the practices of these hypothesised pioneers differed from that of modern Wiccans? Is it any less true to say that all modern Wiccans are just a bunch of "old women who think they're witches"? You're normally more courteous than this, and a pleasure to work with, giving cogent arguments rather than resorting to sarcasm. Fuzzypeg☻ 00:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

You are of course more than welcome to provide contrary scholarly evidence to that cited in Wicca. --Adzze 03:07, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

why are we having this discussion? You objected to a slightly awkward formulation in the article, we have corrected it, case closed. I have no interest in debating the origins of Wicca, and I am in no dispute with you over the content of Wicca, Gardnerian Wicca or Dorothy Clutterbuck; if I should feel the urge to change anything in these articles, I will address the issue on their respective talkpages. dab (𒁳) 13:16, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Please re-read my above comment: "Indeed it is beside the point of the article". My point is not to discuss the history of Wicca, but to indicate that I feel mildly insulted at being told my comments are unwelcome, in such a sarcastic manner. Instead of being conciliatory, you now say you have no idea what I'm on about, while Adzze, by stating the obvious, hints that my presence in this conversation is unwelcome. Now do you understand why we're having this discussion? I'll leave it at that, but if you want to apologise, please do so on my talk page, so we don't drag this out any further. Fuzzypeg☻ 20:23, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Do not put words into my mouth, FuzzyPeg; I meant exactly what I said, no more, no less ("assume good faith"). And dab, my previous entry was directed to FP, not you.--Adzze 22:28, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

no problem, I apologize for the sarcasm, and I cannot see any factual disagreement here. dab (𒁳) 09:50, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I. P. Culianu

I've contributed in the article with information I've read from a transcript of the "Hiram Thomas" conference Culianu kept at Chicago University on 5th and 8th of May 1986, "The Witch and the Trickstress in Dire Straits". Fuzzypeg asked me to source this. I am not sure how to do it. Here's the thing:

I don't know if there's any publication just with the text of the first part of the conference (with the subtitle: "I. The Witch: who did the hunting and who put an end to it?"). I've read it not in English but in Romanian, in a translation from English made by Cornelia Popescu, included in two volumes: 1) a Romanian volume of studies edited by Sorin and Mona Antohi - "Jocurile Minţii" published at Polirom in 2002, pp. 191-219 and 2) in the Romanian edition of "Éros et Magie à la Renaissance. 1484" - "Eros şi Magie în Renaştere. 1484" published also at Polirom in 2003. The Romanian edition was coordinated by Tereza Culianu-Petrescu, his sister. The text of the conference is not presented neither in the Italian (1987) nor in the English edition (1987). As Culianu himself records in the foreword of the English edition: since 1982 (when he prepared the French edition) his opinions on witch-hunt had changed, he communicated them at Chicago in May 1986 but it was impossible for him to finish the manuscript for the 1987 editions and he wished that text to be included as a separate chapter. In the Romanian edition I have the text is included as Annex XII, pp. 348-369. The text is said to be retrieved from Culianu family's archive. Daizus 09:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that some of these details are also stated by Jenny Gibbons, so we can use her as the reference for those. We can include references to publications in foreign languages such as Romanian, but if English sources exist for the same ideas we should where possible include these instead, so our readers can easily follow the research.

I'm trying to figure out how the citation should look:

Culianu, I. P. "The Witch and the Trickstress in Dire Straits"; conference held at Chicago University 1986-05-05, transcribed in Template:Ro icon Antohi, Sorin & Antohi, Mona (eds.), Popescu, Cornelia (transl.) (2002). Jocurile Minţii. Polirom:???Publishing house???; pp. 191-219.

Does that look right? I don't think we need to include both Romanian sources for the same information. Fuzzypeg☻ 02:51, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Though AFAIK Polirom only addresses Romanian market, I think "Publishing House" is a clarifying addition for the English reader. Searching on Google on "Polirom Publishing House" gives the site of this publishing house plus many other valid references to it. Also the conference was in two parts, I'll add the subtitle for part 1, too.

As for Jenny Gibbons, yes, their view is similar. However, before I added Culianu there was an unjustified emphasis on Switzerland (and from what I've read even Gibbons doesn't place this emphasis), and Culianu furthermore strengthens the image of a wider area of the major witchcraze focus in Reformation Europe, roughly from northern Italy to Low countries, following the Rhine valley. Also there was a {cn} tag for England and Spain's rare trials, and I found in Culianu the position, the justification and also shreds of evidence. If anyone can find in Gibbons or in some other reference furthermore support for a map of trials density or why the map looks as it looks, I will not attempt to push this reference over others which state the same thing. Daizus 05:52, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

20:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)20:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)~~ ~~ 81.151.137.115 20:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC) ~~ 20:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)~ 20:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)~

Do not split to early modern

There is a tag in the article to discuss the split of the early modern witchtrials to another article. I can not find it here in the talk page. I can not find the text "early modern w" when I search here. So instead I put my 2 cents in this separate section.

The early modern witch hunts is the main story. It makes no sense to split it off from this article. DanielDemaret 07:01, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

If there's no discussion explaining the proposed split then I'll remove the tag. Fuzzypeg☻ 21:14, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Male chauvinism?

I removed the following section from the article:

Expression of Male Chauvinism

In various places and contexts, men have used the term "Witch" against women who were seen as assertive or threatening. For example, German soldiers in the Second World War bestowed the nickname Night Witches (Nachthexen in German, Ночные Ведьмы in Russian) on the all-woman unit of the Soviet Air Force which staged raids on their camps (the name was later taken on with the pride by the women concerned themselves). In several of his speeches, Slobodan Milosevic used the term "witches" in reference to members of the Women in Black movement who opposed his rule and his nationalistic policies.

Firstly, this is in an inappropriate article. This article is about witch hunts, not about euphemistic use of the term "witch". Look in Witch (disambiguation) to find a more appropriate place. Secondly, it is expressed with a very sexist bias, implying that it is only ever men who employ the term (wrong), and that it is always an expression of male chauvinism (highly debatable). Pejorative does not necessarily equate to chauvinist! Cheers, Fuzzypeg☻ 02:58, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Mary Hicks

The link to the 'last executed witch' Mary Hicks links to some modern day professor. :nods: I'd write up a stub, but I don't think 'Last executed witch' really cuts it, so I'll just raise the isue and leave it to someone more knowledgable. And also I think the 'witch' is more notable then the person it currently links to. Kurek 15:19, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I've unlinked it, rather than changing the link name, since I'm not sure whether an article is warranted for her. If someone feels it is, they can relink it to whatever they call her article (Mary Hicks (accused witch) or something like that). Fuzzypeg☻ 21:55, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

"Satanic Ritual Abuse" section

If the article contains a section on McCarthyism, it must have a section about claimed satanic ritual abuse (SRA) of children in day care centers in California in the 1980s and 1990s. The harm done by labeling others evil in the SRA craze was considerable. The SRA craze was exported to Europe and Australia.

David Frankfurter, professor of religious studies and history at the University of New Hampshire, wrote the 2006 book Evil Incarnate.

Book Description from Amazon Books: [1]

“ In the 1980s, America was gripped by widespread panics about Satanic cults. Conspiracy theories abounded about groups who were allegedly abusing children in day-care centers, impregnating girls for infant sacrifice, brainwashing adults, and even controlling the highest levels of government. As historian of religions David Frankfurter listened to these sinister theories, it occurred to him how strikingly similar they were to those that swept parts of the early Christian world, early modern Europe, and postcolonial Africa. He began to investigate the social and psychological patterns that give rise to these myths. Thus was born Evil Incarnate, a riveting analysis of the mythology of evil conspiracy. [...].Thus, he maintains, panics over modern-day infant sacrifice are really not so different from rumors about early Christians engaging in infant feasts during the second and third centuries in Rome. ”

—Cesar Tort 23:39, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Torsaker Witch Trials

For some reason, in the links section, the Torsaker Witch Trials keeps getting put there. This is the second time I've removed the copy, who's conthinuing to deliberately put it in there? Jjmckool 18:45, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Sources

I'm not going to engage in a discussion about this, since I'm sure there are a lot of Wiccan activists around here; but I don't think Wiccans and generally people who spell "magic" with "k" should count as reliable sources for scholarly issues. In the case of Jenny Gibbons, she seems to summarize scholarly literature, which is good, and yet it would be preferable to have a summary of scholarly literature written by a scholar and not by a neo-pagan author. --91.148.159.4 12:28, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

If you're not interested in engaging in discussion, you might consider publishing on your own personal webpage rather than at Wikipedia. I trust however that you actually do wish to engage in discussion and friendly collaborative editing, or you wouldn't have said anything. Please, if you have any such summaries at hand, add the info to the article. Too many people complaining about what we don't have, not enough people actually adding information. Any constructive editing is most welcome. Thank-you kindly, Fuzzypeg☻ 02:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

King Filimer

I reverted the removal of a small section about King Filimer and the haliurunnae. The reason for its removal was supposedly that the date was wrong and Filimer was mythical. The date did indeed seem to be out by 50 years or so, so I corrected that, but I'd like to see evidence that a) King Filimer was not a real personage and b) that this story is not significant whether it deals with real personages or not. It's a very early account of witchcraft-like beliefs and expulsion for witchcraft that has been cited by Nigel Pennick in A History of Pagan Europe and Max Dashu in The Secret History of the Witches. Whether or not it deals with real personages it records popular conceptions of sorcery from sometime between the supposed date of the events in the 2nd century (c. 150 AD?) and the date they were recorded, c. 570 AD. Seems interesting and notable to me; if it needs to be presented slightly differently, then please change it, but I'd like a better explanation before removing it outright. Fuzzypeg☻ 02:26, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I had missed your comment. Jordanes places Filimer in the mythical past, the fifth king after Berig's exodus from Scandza. I believe that Scandza was real if vague geography of Scandinavia somewhere, but Berig and Filimer were not real. These kings were probably inventions of Cassiodorus, copied by Jordanes into the Getica. Anyway, the work puts these guys way before the Trojan War, so "200 AD" is more than a millenium off.

It is not clear what the passage says about 6th century beliefs. It might reflect a belief that the Huns were the offspring of witches that had copulated with ghosts. If such a thing is a first and not a derivation of classical mythology that would be interesting for this article. However, miscegenation with strange creatures is not unheard of in Greek mythology. /Pieter Kuiper 11:10, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Pieter. I've tried to correct that section based on the information you've supplied; I haven't removed that info outright but would be open to discussion regarding its removal. If anyone wants to keep that material in the article, please speak up. I find the story intriguing since it seems to tie in with various other witchcraft-related folklore regarding banishment of witches/fairies/unwashed children, their mating with demons and the inception of a race of semi-humans. But that's my own original research, so not a good reason to keep the info; the only other reason for keeping it is that it has been mentioned by other authors in relation to witchcraft, and it fits into an area of history for which documentation surrounding witchcraft beliefs is otherwise sparse. Fuzzypeg☻ 22:36, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Protests

I would like to add the following names to the section which lists 'contemporary protesters against witch trials and against use of torture'. I have provided some explanatory information for each one, which doesn't have to be included.

• 643: The Edictum Rothari, the law code for Lombardy in Italy (‘Let nobody presume to kill a foreign serving maid or female slave as a witch, for it is not possible, nor ought to be believed by Christian minds')
• 672-754: Boniface of Mainz consistently denied the existence of witches, saying that to believe in them was unChristian
• 775-790: The First Synod of Saint Patrick declared that those who believed in witches are to be anathematized
• 785: Canon 6 of the Christian Council of Paderborn in Germany outlawed the belief in witches
• 9th century: French abbot Agobard of Lyons denied that any person could obtain or wield the power to fly, change shape, or cause bad weather, and argued that such claims were imagination and myth
• 906: In his work ‘A Warning To Bishops’, Abbot Regino of Prüm dismisses the popular beliefs in witches and witchcraft as complete fiction
• 936: Pope Leo VII wrote to Archbishop Gerhard of Lorch requiring him to instruct local authorities not to execute those accused of witchcraft
• 10th century: The Canon Episcopi denied the existence of witches, and considered the belief in witches to be heresy (it did not require any punishment of witches)
• 1020: Burchard, Bishop of Worms argued that witches had no power to fly, change people’s dispositions, control the weather, or transform themselves or anyone else, and denied the existence of incubi and succubi. He ruled that a belief in such things was a sin, and required priests to impose a strict penance on those who confessed to believing them.
• 1080: Gregory VII: Wrote to King Harold of Denmark advising that those accused of supernaturally causing bad weather or epidemics should not be sentenced to death
• 11th century: Colomon, the Christian king of Hungary, passed a law declaring ‘Concerning witches, no such things exist, therefore no more investigations are to be held’ (’De strigis vero quae non sunt, nulla amplius quaestio fiat’)
• 1498: Although not denying the existence of witches, Ulrich Molitoris (an attorney in Constance), wrote ‘Dialogus de lamiis et pythonibus mulieribus’, in which he deplored the methods of persecution and punishment inflicted on those accused of witchcraft
• Late 15th century: Antonino, Archbishop of Florence condemned the popular belief in witches, insisting that the powers attributed to them were impossible, and such beliefs were foolish.
• 1514: Alciatus, a civil legal official, was asked by a local prelate to assess the case of a number of women brought to trial for witchcraft. Expressing his belief that they were more in need of medicine than punishment, Alciatus advised against punishment and suggested they be treated kindly.
• 1518-1520: As legal counsel to the city of Metz (Germany), French born Cornelius Agrippa sucessfully defended a local peasant woman from accusations of witchcraft
• 1540: Antonio Venegas de Figueroa, Bishop of Pamplona, sent a circular to the priests in his diocese, explaining that witchcraft was a false belief. He recommended medical treatment for those accused of witchcraft, and blamed the ignorance of the people for their confusion of witchcraft with medical conditions.
• 1580: Frenchman Michel Eyquem de Montaigne objected to the persecution of witches, and expressed his scepticism that reports of witchcraft were ever true
• 1583: Protestant Johann Matthaus Meyfart condemns the inhuman treatment of those accused or convicted of witchcraft
• 1599: English Archbishop Samuel Harsnett condemned not only those who practiced fraudulent exorcisms, but also the very belief in witches and demons.
• 1656: Englishman Thomas Ady published the first of three devastating works attacking beliefs in witches and witchcraft. He opposed the witch hunts vigorously.
• 1669: John Wagstaffe published ‘The Question of Witchcraft Debated; or, a Discourse against their Opinions that affirm Witches’, opposing the witch hunts and declaring the belief in witchcraft to be superstition.
• 1676: John Webster published ‘The Displaying Of Supposed Witchcraft’, opposing the witch hunts and dismissing the belief in witches as superstition
• 1691: The Dutch theologian Balthasar Bekker published ‘Die Betooverde Wereld’, reprinted in English as ‘The World Bewitch’d’ (1695), an attack on the witch hunts and belief in witches
• 1651: The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes published ‘Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil’, in which he rejected the belief in witches and opposing witch hunts
• 1693-1700: Robert Calef wrote repeatedly opposing the witch hunts
• 1712: An anonymous English physician published ‘A Full Confutation of Witchcraft, More particularly of the DEPOSITIONS Against JANE WENHAM, Lately Condemned for a WITCH; at Hertford’, opposing the witch hunts and the belief in witches
• 1718: Anglican clergyman Francis Hutchinson published ‘An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft’, attacking the belief in witches and the witch hunts
• 1762: An anonymous work entitled ‘Anti-Canidia: or, Superstition Detected and Exposed’ attacked traditional beliefs on witchcraft, as well as the witch hunts --Taiwan boi 06:10, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

So, does anyone object to me including this information? I made this suggestion 5 days ago. --Taiwan boi 10:14, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Ahh, I'd like to see this information included, but I'm just trying to figure out whether it fits Wikipedia policy; specifically, WP:INFO. If this could be summarised, with a citation of a publication containing the more complete listing, it might be better. At the very least these items will each need to be accompanied by a citation from a reliable source. Add it all in with citations, and we can see what other people think. Fuzzypeg☻ 06:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I can provide a summary accompanied by a citation from each of the works referred to in the list, but I suppose that would be 'original research'. At present I don't know of any single work which presents this entire list which would be regarded as a 'reliable source' (I created the list myself, simply by personally reading all the primary sources, which I actually own). I suppose you mean that each one would have to be accompanied by a citation of a book or Website which counted as a 'reliable source', unlike the way the list was presented earlier (which didn't do any such thing). I could probably hunt down references to each of these men in a range of different secondary sources which would be considered reliable, such as the article by Jenny Gibbons which is already quoted here. I could also use the following sources which I own:

• Charles Mackay, 'Memoirs of Popular Delusions', 1841
• Charles W Upham, ‘Salem Witchcraft: With an Account of Salem Village and A History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects’, 1867
• Sir Walter Scott, 'Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft', 1885
• George L Burr (editor), 'Translations And Reprints From The Original Sources Of European History', 1896
• Paul Carus, 'History of the Devil', 1900
• Charles Lea, 'A History of the Inquisition In Spain', 1906-1907
• John D Seymour, ‘Irish Witchcraft And Demonology’, 1913
• Barbara J. Shapiro, ‘"Beyond Reasonable Doubt" and "Probable Cause": Historical Perspectives on the Anglo-American Law of Evidence’, 1991
• Stephen Snobelen, ‘Lust, Pride, And Ambition: Isaac Newton And The Devil’, November 2002
• Kathryn A Edwards, 'Review of Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, Cautio Criminalis, or a Book on Witch Trials', H-German, H-Net Reviews, August, 2005

Would these be considered 'reliable sources'? I could find citations for practically the whole list using these sources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Taiwan boi (talk • contribs) 06:17, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

As long as each entry in your list is cited from either a reliable secondary source or a primary source, it's fine by me. I still don't know how other editors might respond, whether they might want the list trimmed down a bit or moved elsewhere. Seems like useful info to me though. It might even be split into its own article! In terms of verifiability primary sources are OK to cite as long as we present them without analysis or interpretation, and don't present them in a misleading context. Fuzzypeg☻ 02:31, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Well I own all the relevant primary and secondary sources. Which would you prefer me to cite? For example, I can cite primary sources for the Canon Episcopi, Regino, Agobard, Wagstaffe, Hutchinson, Mede, Scot, Hobbes, Ady, Webster, Calef, and Bekker. I can cite reliable secondary sources for the rest. Do you want simply the name and the citation, or a brief description as well, like I've given? --Taiwan boi 05:39, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I see this entire section has been removed. I cannot find any reference to a reason for its removal. --Taiwan boi (talk) 01:22, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I've just found it in the split to 'Witch trials in Early Modern Europe'. That makes sense. --Taiwan boi (talk) 01:23, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I have added to that section a number of references containing the information cited in the list of protests which follows. --Taiwan boi (talk) 01:48, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Adding Gender

I added a small section on Gender. Since the women's movement, the scholarship on witchcraft and witch hunts has brought the question of "why women?" into a central position of inquiry. Because of the statistics, i thought gender would be very appropriate in this entry. There is a large amount of information on Gender in this topic and my addition is short, but with additions, can be a good addition to the wikipedia. Please comment —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sgrif981 (talk • contribs) 20:22, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Causes of witch-hunts

I think there should be a better explanation of the underlying reasons and causes behind witch-hunts -- and not just individual historical triggers, but the general social ideas and situations which bring them about. The witch-hunt mentality of persecuting a scape-goat has been seen many times in history, (salem, red scare) and a general explanation of the psychology of this would be great. Personally, it's what I was looking for in this article, not the historical details (although those are needed too).

And is it just me, or is this article long-winded and difficult to get through? Bigdan201 (talk) 06:35, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

We've had quite a few editors adding little bits of info without considering the article as a whole. Yes, the article needs some serious tightening and some consideration given to its overall structure.

In terms of reasons for the witch hunts, yes that would be fabulous. There have been a lot of suggestions, and one good summary to start from (that I know of) might be Ankarloo's and Henningsen's introduction to Early Modern Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries (ed. Ankarloo and Henningsen). It's available in most university libraries, and provides succinct summaries of the major viewpoints that have emerged since the late 1960s. Other sources are of course also welcome, and help is always appreciated. Fuzzypeg★ 03:38, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Spelling issues

I see the following different spellings occurring:

• witchfinder
• witch-finder
• witch finder
• Witch Finder
• Witch-Finder

The section on Africa has examples of the first three in a short text. There's also "witch hunt" and "witch-hunt". As an Arch-Anti-Over-Hyphenationist, I see no need for any of the hyphenated versions. But my main concern here is consistency. Is there a consensus about which of these alternative spellings are preferred in this article? If not, let one now emerge. -- JackofOz (talk)

United States

Hi all. I don't understand why the United States has been placed under the category of Modern Witch Trials. It's sort of... ridiculous, actually, and obviously more-than-a-little POV. I can practically hear the hysterical diatribe of the far-lefty who wrote it in the first place. Where something should be written about the United States is in the history of the hunts, where I think Salem should at least be mentioned. If nobody minds, I'd like to delete the entry in question. --J.Dayton (talk) 03:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC)--69.253.92.203 (talk) 03:17, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I mind. A church in the United States is threatening a witch-hunt. It has been reported by a credible source. Maybe, what you "can practically hear" is the cognitive dissonance: face it, brother. You live in a big, scary country. Trachys (talk) 16:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Stigmatization of sex offenders

Someone has twice added a paragraph about the stigmatization of sex offenders being seen as a "witch hunt". I have some objections to this:

1. This is not necessary to the article to explain the history or usage of witch-hunts. It is only a metaphorical witch-hunt, and it is covered by the Political Usage section.
2. It is not even a good example of a metaphorical witch-hunt, since the victims of the hunt are not only perceived as guilty; they actually are (if they are indeed sex offenders).
3. As discussed earlier on this talk page (for a somewhat similar topic) many examples of modern metaphorical "witch-hunts" that people might add to this page are likely to be POV-pushing. It was agreed that we would exercise caution around such additions.
4. The information has been added to make a point about the treatment of sex offenders, not to make a point about witch-hunts.
5. If we add examples like this we risk the article becoming a dumping ground for people's persecution grievances. That's not to say their grievances aren't warranted; it's just not appropriate for this article.

This information seems inappropriate to this page. Remember, Wikipedia is not a soapbox. Fuzzypeg★ 10:29, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I just thought I should say I've read a bit more from the cited articles accompanying this information, and I can see they're making a quite valid point. I want to give my assurance that I'm not deleting the addition because I don't believe it or because I disapprove of it, but because I don't think it's very relevant or useful to this article. I'm sure a better place can be found for it; start looking at sex and the law perhaps, or social stigma. The golden rule is, put it where people are most likely to look for it! Best wishes, Fuzzypeg★ 10:46, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The article needs to be about actual witch hunts, not metaphorical ones. Ashmoo (talk) 12:18, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Cereal crops

Why do we have to use the awkward "cereal crops" when there's a perfectly good word "corn" available? Are we dumbing Wikipedia down here? Assuming that "corn" will always mean maize, not other cereals, "America" will always mean the US, not the continents of North and South America, and "root canal" will always mean endodontic therapy, not the anatomical structure? That "Nike" will always be a brand of shoe and never a Greek deity? Fuzzypeg★ 02:44, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

McCarthyism

I removed a paragraph saying that the word witchhunt has been applied to describe McCarthyism, as it has no source, but I search Google and I see that some people really use this word, eg see [2] or [3]. I am not sure whether this is something that should be included in this or another article. What do you think? NerdyNSK (talk) 03:05, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

McCarthyism was very famously termed a 'witch-hunt', and is largely responsible for the modern popularity of the term. It's well worth including in this article, and it shouldn't be too hard to track down a reliable source. Fuzzypeg★ 21:43, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I see that you have found two references to books, thanks for referencing the article. NerdyNSK (talk) 12:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Checking these books on Google Books, I read that in page 229 of The Path of the Devil book, Jensen writes that framing McCarthyism as a witchhunt is often used as a political strategy in discrediting McCarthyism. I think this info should be included in the paragraph to show that calling McCarthyism a witchhunt cannot be assumed to be simply an apolitical, neutral, or scientific fact, but is often associated with politics, personal perceptions, and socially constructed realities. Also, it would be a good idea when referencing books to include the pages where you found the information that supports the paragraphs in our article. Thanks again for helping to find the references, I just wanted to improve it. NerdyNSK (talk) 12:18, 12 September 2008 (UTC)♥☻☺♦♣♠•◘○☺0o♀♪♫☼►◄↕‼¶§▬↨↑↓→←∟↔▲▼

Adding petition link

There is a petition going for the woman accused of witchcraft in Saudi Arabia: www.petitiononline.com/AIDFAWZA/petition.html Do you think we can include it in the text discussing the case? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.112.39.17 (talk) 14:20, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Excuse for seizure of property?

I don't see anything in this article about using accusations of witchcraft as a pretense for seizing someone's property, thereby enriching the local medieval government and/or accusers. Does that belong in another article or what? Tkech (talk) 02:04, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

You may possibly find something about confiscations at Witch trials in Early Modern Europe, but with a quick search I couldn't see anything. There needs to be a whole lot more information added about the various factors that encouraged the hunts, and confiscations were indeed an element in some places. We should be careful, though, not to over-generalise these factors: confiscations, for example, were only legally enacted in certain countries and certain periods. Many other contributing factors to the witch craze at various places and times have also been proposed. Fuzzypeg★ 22:36, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Requested articles

On Wikipedia:WikiProject Netherlands/Article requests are three article requests related to witch trials in the Netherlands, maybe some of this article's editors could help create them?

• Anna Muggen (requested since 12 November 2007)
• Triene Langheldes (requested since 12 November 2007)
• Witchhunt in the Netherlands (requested since 23 July 2007)

Thanks, Ilse@ 15:12, 24 December 2008 (UTC)