Required fields are marked *. Among the main effects of the papal judicial institution known as the Inquisition was in fact the restraint and reduction of witch trials that resulted from the strictness of its rules. Some of her predictions for the future were amazingly accurate as she prophesied the invention of iron ships and the destruction of London. 3. I agree that decisions on the use of torture was supposedly reserved for the monarch, but, like those on waterboarding in the US, this was not much of a restriction. Yet as with the Privy Council, we should not simply assume that this group was sceptical about witchcraft. And why was the Privy Council, the elite group of advisors around the king, interested in four women from rural Lancashire? 6. Young women were sometimes accused of infanticide, but midwives and nurses were not particularly at risk. It might have been as simple as one person blaming his misfortune on another. The responsibility for the witch hunts can be distributed among theologians, legal theorists, and the practices of secular and ecclesiastical courts. Witchcraft - Witchcraft in Africa and the Discover and use our high-quality applied research to support the protection and management of the historic environment. In Spain, Portugal, and southern Italy, witch prosecutions seldom occurred, and executions were very rare. The intensity of these beliefs is best represented by the European witch hunts of the 14th to 18th century, but witchcraft and its associated ideas are never far from the surface of popular consciousness andsustained by folk talesfind explicit focus from time to time in popular television and films and in fiction. She described how she was visited by the devil sometimes as a brown coloured dog, sometimes as a white cat and at other times like an hare and that she had two duggs or papps in her private parts where the familiars sucked her blood 4. Not in English-speaking countries. If you suspect one of your neighbours is a witch, do not ever let her have the last word in a conversation. Find out about listed buildings and other protected sites, and search the National Heritage List for England (NHLE). The actual numbers are far lower, but still striking: between 1482 and 1782, around 100,000 people across Europe were accused of witchcraft, and some 4050,000 were executed. You look at the lumps in the grass. Only 25 per cent of those tried across the period in England were found guilty and executed. By the 1590s, the last decade of Elizabeth Is reign, the idea of the witch in England had crystallised as an old, very poor woman, lame or blind in one eye, and inclined to lose her temper over personal slights. Even in England, the idea of a male witch was perfectly feasible. By the 14th century, fear of heresy and of Satan had added charges of diabolism to the usual indictment of witches, maleficium (malevolent sorcery).