![]() Protestants and Catholics alike felt threatened." It is notable that the witch-hunts lost most of their momentum with the end of the Thirty Years War (Peace of Westphalia, 1648), which "gave official recognition and legitimacy to religious pluralism." (Ben-Yehuda, "The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist's Perspective," American Journal of Sociology, 86: 1, pp. the Reformation was definitely the first time that the church had to cope with a large-scale threat to its very existence and legitimacy." But Ben-Yehuda adds that "Protestants persecuted witches with almost the same zeal as the Catholics. Where the Catholic church was strong (Spain, Italy, Portugal) hardly any witch craze occurred. ![]() Writes Nachman Ben-Yehuda, "This helps us understand why only the most rapidly developing countries, where the Catholic church was weakest, experienced a virulent witch craze (i.e., Germany, France, Switzerland). Gibbons' allusion to the Reformation reminds us that the clash between institutional Catholicism and emergent Protestantism contributed to the collapse of a stable world-view, which eventually led to panic and hyper-suspiciousness on the part of Catholic and Protestant authorities alike. ![]() (Gibbons, "Recent Developments in the Study of the Great European Witch Hunt".) Trials dropped sharply after 1650 and disappeared completely by the end of the 18th century. In the 17th century, the Great Hunt passed nearly as suddenly as it had arisen. What we think of as "the Burning Times" - the crazes, panics, and mass hysteria - largely occurred in one century, from 1550-1650. Then, around 1550, the persecution skyrocketed. At the beginning of the 16th century, as the first shock-waves from the Reformation hit, the number of witch trials actually dropped. The first mass trials appeared in the 15th century. After the terrible devastation caused by the Black Death (1347-1349), these rumors increased in intensity and focused primarily on witches and "plague-spreaders." Witchcraft cases increased slowly but steadily from the 14th-15th century. Some malign conspiracy (Jews and lepers, Moslems, or Jews and witches) was attempting to destroy the Christian kingdoms through magick and poison. Early 14th century central Europe was seized by a series of rumor-panics. Traditional attitudes towards witchcraft began to change in the 14th century, at the very end of the Middle Ages. ![]() Jenny Gibbons' analysis ties the witch-hunts to other "panics" in early modern Europe: As we will see in the modern-day case-studies below, such generalized stress - including the prevalence of epidemics and natural disasters - is nearly always central to outbreaks of mass hysteria of this type. The witch-hunts of early modern Europe took place against a backdrop of rapid social, economic, and religious transformation. Arguably, neither before nor since have adult European women been selectively targeted for such largescale atrocities. Witch-hunts, especially in Central Europe, resulted in the trial, torture, and execution of tens of thousands of victims, about three-quarters of whom were women. For three centuries of early modern European history, diverse societies were consumed by a panic over alleged witches in their midst. ![]()
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