Spellcraft And EarthMagick

Trials

There were extensive efforts to root out the supposed influence of Satan by various measures aimed at the people who were accused of being servants of Satan. To a lesser degree, animals were also targeted for prosecution, as described in the article animal trial. People suspected of being "possessed" by Satan were put on trial. These trials were biased against the witch. On the other hand, the church also attempted to extirpate the superstitious belief in witchcraft and sorcery, considering it as fraud in most cases.

The evidence required to convict an alleged witch varied from country to country - but prosecutions everywhere were most frequently sparked off by denunciations, while convictions invariably required a confession. The latter was often obtained by extremely violent methods. Although Europe's witch-frenzy did not begin until the late 1400s - long after the formal abolition of "ordeal" in 1215 - brutal techniques were routinely used to extract the required admission of guilt. They included hot pincers, the thumbscrew, and the 'swimming' of suspects (an old superstition whereby innocence was established by immersing the accused in water for a sufficiently long period of time). Investigators were consequently able to establish many fantastic crimes that could never have occurred, even in theory. That said, many judicial procedures of the time required proof of a causative link between the alleged act of witchcraft and an identifiable injury, such as a death or property damage.

The flexibility of the crime and the methods of proving it resulted in easy convictions. Any reckoning of the death toll should take account of the facts that rules of evidence varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and that a significant number of witch trials always ended in acquittal. :"In York, England, at the height of the Great Hunt (1567–1640) one half of all witchcraft cases brought before church courts were dismissed for lack of evidence. No torture was used, and the accused could clear himself by providing four to eight "compurgators", people who were willing to swear that he wasn't a witch. Only 21% of the cases ended with convictions, and the Church did not impose any kind of corporal or capital punishment."[4] In the Pays de Vaud, nine of every ten people tried were put to death, but in Finland, the corresponding figure was about one in six (16%). A breakdown of conviction rates (along with statistics on death tolls, gender bias, and much else) can be found in Brian Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (2nd ed, 1995).

There are particularly important differences between the English and continental witch-hunting traditions. The checks and balances inherent in the jury system, which required a 23-strong body (the grand jury) to indict and a 12-strong one (the petit jury) to convict, always had a restraining effect on prosecutions. Another restraining influence was its relatively rare use of torture: the country formally permitted it only when authorised by the monarch, and no more than 81 torture warrants were issued (for all offences) throughout English history.[8] Continental European courts, while varying from region to region, tended to concentrate power in individual judges and place far more reliance on torture. The significance of the institutional difference is most clearly established by a comparison of the witch-hunts of England and Scotland, for the death toll inflicted by the courts north of the border always dwarfed that of England.[9] It is also apparent from an episode of English history during the early 1640s, when the Civil War resulted in the suspension of jury courts for three years. Several freelance witch-hunters emerged during this period, the most notorious of whom was Matthew Hopkins, who emerged out of East Anglia and proclaimed himself "Witchfinder General".[10] Such men were inquisitors in all but name, proceeding pursuant to denunciations and torture and claiming a mastery of the supposed science of demonology that allowed for identification of the guilty by, for example, the discovery of witches' marks. Research into the laws and records of the time show that the witchfinders often used peine forte et dure and other torture to extract confessions and condemnations of friends, relatives and neighbors.

Besides torture, at trial certain "proofs" were taken as valid to establish that a person practiced witchcraft. Peter Binsfeld contributed to the establishment of many of these proofs, described in his book Commentarius de Maleficius (Comments on Witchcraft).

The diabolical mark. Usually, this was a mole or a birthmark. If no such mark was visible, the examiner would claim to have found an invisible mark.
Diabolical pact. This was an alleged pact with Satan to perform evil acts in return for rewards.
Denouncement by another witch. This was common, since the accused could often avoid execution by naming accomplices.
Relationship with other convicted witch/witches
Blasphemy
Participation in Sabbaths
To cause harm that could only be done by means of sorcery
Possession of elements necessary for the practice of black magic
To have one or more witches in the family
To be afraid during the interrogatories
Not to cry under torment (supposedly by means of the Devil's aid)
To have had sexual relationships with a demon

In England, witch-pricking was common. It was believed that the diabolical mark would neither bleed, hurt nor show a wound when stabbed by a needle.

An overview of the history of Europe's witch-hunts - which traces the continuities between the witch-hunts' continental origins, its later manifestions in England and colonial America, and the late twentieth-century pursuit of supposed Satanist child abusers - can be found in Sadakat Kadri's The Trial, A History, from Socrates to O.J. Simpson (Random House, 2005).

Middle Ages

During the Early Middle Ages, the Church did not conduct witch trials. Canon law, in Canon Episcopi, followed the views of the church father Augustine of Hippo (AD 400) that belief in the existence of witchcraft was heresy, since according to Augustine "a heretic is one who either devises or follows false and new opinions, for the sake of some temporal profit".[citation needed] The Council of Paderborn in 785 explicitly outlawed the very belief in witches, and Charlemagne later confirmed the law. The first[citation needed] medieval trials against witches date to the 13th century with the institution of the Inquisition, but they were a side issue, as the Church was concentrating on the persecution of heresy, and witchcraft, alleged or real, was treated as any other sort of heresy.

There were still secular laws against witchcraft, such as that promulgated by King Athelstan (924-999)

And we have ordained respecting witch-crafts, and lybacs, and morthdaeds: if any one should be thereby killed, and he could not deny it, that he be liable in his life. But if he will deny it, and at threefold ordeal shall be guilty; that he be 120 days in prison: and after that let kindred take him out, and give to the king 120 shillings, and pay the wer to his kindred, and enter into borh for him, that he evermore desist from the like.[3]

It had been proposed that the witch-hunt developed in Europe after the Cathars and the Templar Knights were exterminated and the Inquisition had to turn to persecution of witches to remain active. In the middle of 1970s, this hypothesis was independently disproved by two historians (Cohn 1975; Kieckhefer 1976). It was shown that the pursuit originated amongst common people in Switzerland and in Croatia that pressed on the civil courts to support them. Inquisitorial courts became systematically involved in the witch-hunt only in the 15th century: in the case of the Madonna Oriente, the Inquisition of Milan was not sure what to do with two women who in 1384 and in 1390 confessed to have participated in a type of white magic.

[edit] Early Modern Europe

At the time, Basel was a center of theologians who preached the dangers of witchcraft, and with the Council of Basel (1431-1449), their ideas came to the attention of a wider audience. The European witch-hunts only began on a large scale in the wake of the Council, from the 1450s, and was sustained throughout the Early Modern period.

Rather than a theologically sanctioned campaign of the church, the phenomenon had all traits of mass hysteria. The classical attributes of a witch—flying on brooms, intercourse with the Devil, and meeting of demons and other witches at sabbats—became canonical from around 1400, although similar accusations had been issued against heretics since the 11th century. The idea of witch sabbats fostered a classical conspiracy theory, with fantasies of an underground witch sect plotting to overthrow Christianity[citation needed]. The areas mainly affected by this were the Holy Roman Empire and adjacent parts, as well as Scotland. Reprints of the Malleus Maleficarum in 29 editions between 1487 and 1669 mark the peak of the European craze. This book had been condemned by the Catholic Church in 1490 but continued to be widely used by secular witch-hunting courts. The clergy and the intellectuals began to speak out against the trials from the late 16th century. Johannes Kepler in 1615 could only by the weight of his prestige keep his mother from being burnt as a witch. The 1692 Salem witch trials were a brief outburst of witch hysteria in the New World at a time when the practice was already waning in Europe. Winifred King was the last person tried for witchcraft in New England. Winifred's daughter Winifred Jr and mother Mary Hale were also tried for witchcraft.[citation needed]

Although the reasons for the witch scares are debated, there is a correlation between centralized government and acquittals in witch trials. Most witch trials that resulted in convictions took place in rural areas. In these areas there was about a 90% conviction (and execution) rate. Although most citizens of the time did believe that witchcraft was real, equally they were not ignorant of how personal interests could be involved in accusations. Another interesting aspect of witchcraft in the early modern period is how the highest concentration of trials took place in border areas lacking strong central authority and in social turmoil, especially in northern Italy, Switzerland, Germany, eastern France and the French-Spanish border.[4][5] Witch trials were significantly less common in both Catholic and Protestant countries that were less affected by Reformation upheavals than were the torn regions of central and north-western Europe. The Spanish Inquisition was generally skeptical on the reality of witchcraft, while in Italy (except Lombardy under French laws) the trials were rare and with relatively mild consequences. In England this was largely due to the 1563 Witchcraft Act and the Anglican doctrine of lack of miracles.[5]

The period of witch trials came in waves and then subsided. There were early trials in the 15th and early 16th centuries, but then the witch scare went into decline, before becoming a big issue again and peaking in the 17th century. Some scholars argue that a fear of witchcraft started among intellectuals who believed in maleficium; that is, bad deeds. What had previously been a belief that some people possessed supernatural abilities (which sometimes resulted in protecting the people), now became a sign of a pact between these people with supernatural abilities and the devil. Witchcraft became associated with wild Satanic ritual parties in which there was much naked dancing, orgy sex, and cannibalistic infanticide.

Witch-hunts were seen across early modern Europe, but the most significant area of witch-hunting in modern Europe is often considered to be southwestern Germany[citation needed]. In Germany the number of trials compared to other regions of Europe shows it to have been a late starter. Witch-hunts first appeared in large numbers in southern France and Switzerland during the 14th and 15th centuries. The peak years of witch-hunts in southwest Germany were from 1561 to 1670.[6] The first major persecution in Europe, that caught, tried, convicted, and burned witches in the imperial lordship of Wiesensteig in southwestern Germany, is recorded in 1563 in a pamphlet called “True and Horrifying Deeds of 63 Witches”