The belief that one person can use supernatural means to harm another has held many people in a grip of fear
By Richard Holland
Do you believe it’s possible to be cursed? That someone can use a supernatural power to make you ill or even kill you? Or that it is possible to employ demons to do so? Centuries ago the belief in witchcraft was as universal as our faith today in modern medicine. I’ve never seen the virus that gives me a cold, but I believe in it all the same.
Because witchcraft is described in the Bible (for example, in the case of the Witch of Endor and the conjuring up of a demon for King Solomon), educated people formerly believed in its existence as wholeheartedly as the uneducated. For a long time presumed practisers of witchcraft were treated just like any other criminal. If it was believed someone had caused the death of a farm animal by witchcraft (a common complaint), the punishment was the same as if they had poisoned the beast. If it was believed witchcraft had been used to kill a person, the supposed witch was treated with no more severity
than a more orthodox murderer.
This attitude changed during the Reformation. The established church, under attack from a raft of new religious sects, fought back with a ruthless campaign against heresy. For the first time, practisers of witchcraft were considered not just criminals but heretics. So began the witch-hunting craze which swept Europe. Thousands of people died in the flames of fanaticism. Any unpopular individual could become a scapegoat for a community’s superstitious fears. Most commonly, these were isolated elderly women who may have performed various offices for their neighbours, using time-worn spells and potions. These may have included divination, the creation of love charms, midwifery or the termination of unwanted children. Some may have been skilled herbalists and healers. Others, by contrast, may have played upon their neighbours’ fears by claiming to have the ‘evil eye’ and extorting gifts and favours as a result. Either risked an equally unpleasant death.
Anyone could fall foul of this fanatical fear, however. Respected village elders, even the lord of the manor or his wife, might find themselves on trial for their lives. Ignorance, malice, leading questions from the poorly educated judiciary and the horrors of torture all contributed to accusations followed by enforced confessions. With such growing ‘evidence’ for the existence of covens and devil worshippers, the flames were fanned further. There are some ghastly stories from continental Europe. At Mohra, in Sweden, for example, 23 adults and 15 children were burned in one day. When the insanity jumped the Atlantic to America, hundreds were accused of practising witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, and ultimately 20 people were executed.
Both of the above events took place in the 17th century, the highpoint (or rather, lowpoint) of the witch hunts. On the whole, Britain escaped the worst ravages of the mania. Quite simply, there was less reason to pursue heretics in Britain, and witchcraft was rarely treated as heresy.
King James VI of Scotland (and later of England) was a firm believer in witchcraft, however, and was convinced there were several supernatural plots against him; this led to a higher degree of persecution for a time in Scotland. In England there were also some high profile trials, but the worst area affected was Essex – for the sole reason that one Matthew Hopkins [pictured] made the county the base of his operations. Hopkins, a sadistic young man with an eye on the main chance, gave himself the title of Witchfinder General and used a variety of tricks and a strong, bullying personality to take advantage of the growing witch hysteria. Many unfortunate people were executed due to his machinations. Eventually, however, his reign of terror was ended by a judiciary more enlightened than their continental counterparts. There are even fewer witch trials on record in Wales. The hysteria failed to reach so far west but, by contrast, the belief in witchcraft lingered longer, with some unfortunate old women suffering violence encouraged by superstition well into the 19th century.
Although the witch hunts had blown themselves out by the first half of the 18th century, they provide a sobering example of how fear and hatred fuelled by dogma can have devastating effects. The Nazi persecutions of the 1930s and the anti-communist ‘witch hunts’ in the USA in the 1950s are two examples. More recently still, and in our own country, the ‘Satanic child abuse’ scares of the 1980s were a very real example of how false facts, leading questions, religious fanaticism and phobia can create hysteria and cause real harm. Witch hunts can start anywhere, any time.
[SOURCES: Various, but see 'Witchcraft in England' by Christina Hole (1945)]
© Richard Holland
