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A witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. Practicing evil spells or incantations was proscribed and punishable in early human civilizations in the Middle East. In medieval Europe, witch-hunts often arose in connection to charges of heresy from Christianity. An intensive period of witch-hunts occurring in Early Modern Europe and to a smaller extent Colonial America, took place about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Counter Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 executions. The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In other regions, like Africa and Asia, contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, and official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon today.
Petronilla de Meath was the maidservant of Dame Alice Kyteler, a Hiberno-Norman noblewoman who lived in Ireland in what is now County Kilkenny. After the death of Kyteler's fourth husband, Kyteler was accused of practicing witchcraft and Petronilla was charged with being one of her accomplices. Petronilla was tortured and forced to proclaim that she and Kyteler were guilty of witchcraft. Kyteler fled to save her life, and Petronilla was then flogged and eventually burnt at the stake on 3 November 1324, in Kilkenny. Hers was the first known case in Ireland or Great Britain of death by fire for the crime of heresy.
Malin Matsdotter or Mattsdotter, also known as Rumpare-Malin was an alleged Swedish witch. She is known as one of few people in Sweden confirmed to have been executed by burning for witchcraft, and the only one to be executed by this method during the famous witch hunt Det Stora oväsendet in Sweden during 1668–1676, which ended with her execution.
Werewolf witch trials were witch trials combined with werewolf trials. Belief in werewolves developed parallel to the belief in European witches, in the course of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Like the witchcraft trials as a whole, the trial of supposed werewolves emerged in what is now Switzerland during the Valais witch trials in the early 15th century and spread throughout Europe in the 16th, peaking in the 17th and subsiding by the 18th century. The persecution of werewolves and the associated folklore is an integral part of the "witch-hunt" phenomenon, albeit a marginal one, accusations of lycanthropy involved in only a small fraction of witchcraft trials.
The Pappenheimer Case centered around a family who were tried and executed for witchcraft in 1600 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. The family were executed, along with accomplices they were forced to name under torture, after a show trial as scapegoats for a number of unsolved crimes committed years back in a display of extreme torture intended to deter the public from crime. The witch trial resulted in the death of twelve people: four of the Pappenheimer family and two of their accused accomplices in the first trial, followed by the remaining member of the family and five other accomplices in the second trial. The trial was of one of the most well-publicized witch trials in German history.
The witch trials of Vardø were held in Vardø in Finnmark in Northern Norway in the winter of 1662–1663 and were one of the biggest in Scandinavia. Thirty women were put on trial, accused of sorcery and making pacts with the Devil. One was sentenced to a work house, two tortured to death, and eighteen were burned alive at the stake.
Lisbet Nypan was an alleged Norwegian witch. As one of the most famous victims of the witch-hunts in her country, she was also the penultimate defendant to be executed for witchcraft in Norway.
Anne Palles was an alleged Danish witch. She was the last woman to be legally executed for sorcery in Denmark.
Events in the year 1674 in Norway.
Brita Alvern was an alleged Norwegian witch. She was accused of sorcery in 1729, in one of the last witch trials in Scandinavia. As the documentation of the trial is incomplete, it is unknown whether she was executed or not. Her trial is regarded as notable, as it illustrates the witch trials at the outbreak of a new age and a conflict between a public that still believed in witches and authorities that had become skeptical despite the law.
Margaret Bane also called Clerk, was a Scottish midwife and prominent victim of The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597.
Sweden was a country with few witch trials compared to other countries in Europe. In Sweden, about four hundred people were executed for witchcraft prior to the last case in 1704. Most of these cases occurred during a short but intense period; the eight years between 1668 and 1676, when the witch hysteria called Det stora oväsendet took place, causing a large number of witch trials in the country. It is this infamous period of intensive witch hunt that is most well known and explored.
In the Holy Roman Empire, witch trials composed of the areas of the present day Germany, were the most extensive in Europe and in the world, both to the extent of the witch trials as such as well as to the number of executions.
The Witch trials in Denmark are poorly documented, with the exception of the region of Jylland in the 1609–1687 period. The most intense period in the Danish witchcraft persecutions was the great witch hunt of 1617–1625, when most executions took place, which was affected by a new witchcraft act introduced in 1617.
The witch trials in Norway were the most intense among the Nordic countries. There seems to be around an estimated 277 to 350 executions between 1561 and 1760. Norway was in a union with Denmark during this period, and the witch trials were conducted by instructions from Copenhagen. The authorities and the clergy conducted the trials using demonology handbooks and used interrogation techniques and sometimes torture. After a guilty verdict, the condemned was forced to expose accomplices and commonly deaths occurred due to torture or prison. Witch trials were in decline by the 1670s as judicial and investigative methods were improved. A Norwegian law from 1687 maintained the death penalty for witchcraft, and the last person to be sentenced guilty of witchcraft in Norway was Birgitte Haldorsdatter in 1715. The Witchcraft Act was formally in place until 1842.
Witch trials in Latvia and Estonia were mainly conducted by the Baltic German elite of clergy, nobility and burghers against the indigenous peasantry in order to persecute Paganism by use of Christian demonology and witchcraft ideology. In this aspect, they are similar to the Witch trials in Iceland. They are badly documented, as many would have been conducted by the private estate courts of the landlords, which did not preserve any court protocols.
The Witch trials in Finland were conducted in connection to Sweden and were relatively few with the exception of the 1660s and 1670s, when a big witch hunt affected both Finland and Sweden. Finland differed from most of Europe in that an uncommonly large part of the accused were men, which it had in common with the witch trials in Iceland. Most of the people accused in Finland were men, so called "wise men" hired to perform magic by people. From 1674 to 1678, a real witch hysteria broke out in Ostrobothnia, during which twenty women and two men were executed.
In England, witch trials were conducted from the 15th century until the 18th century. They are estimated to have resulted in the death of perhaps 500 people, 90 percent of whom were women. The witch hunt was at its most intense stage during the English Civil War (1642–1651) and the Puritan era of the mid-17th century.
The Katarina witch trials took place in the Katarina Parish in the capital of Stockholm in Sweden in 1676. It was a part of the big witch hunt known as the Great noise, which took place in Sweden between the years 1668 and 1676, and it also illustrated the end of it.
The Bredevoort witch trials took place in Bredevoort in The Netherlands in 1610.
References
- https://snl.no/Kirsten_Iversdatter
- Mona, Marte: Berømte og gløymde trondheimskvinner. Utg. Samlaget. 2004.
- Alm, Ellen: The Last Burning of a Witch in Trondheim: The Witch-Trial Against Finn-Kirsten, 2014