Witch Hunting Research Paper

A witch is defined as a person capable of magical ability. Witches have been feared for their magic for centuries. Societies have shunned witches, put them on trial, and even burned them at the stake. It’s tradition for people to fear what they don’t know about, and for them to dismiss learning things that are different from the typical. Witch hunting was a serious problem for hundreds of years across the globe. I will look at the political aspects of witch hunting and a general overview of witch hunting as it happened in England. Witchcraft has always been associated with Satan or some form of demonic worship, and I will look at that as well. Societies have burned witches at the stake and hung them from trees for a fear of their magic as well as discrimination against those that are different. Witch hunting has been driven by society. In England we can see how poor women were the most likely to be put on trial. “Common tragedies such as sickness, cattle death, and fruitless labor then seemed to become punishments for their breach of charity and they turned on their poorer neighbors, accusing them of
using witchcraft as revenge"(Maclean). The accused witches in these cases were accused solely because of the guilt of their accusers. The accusers felt the need to place blame on someone for all the misfortunes in their lives. This of course meant that they placed blame on the least liked people of the community, which were the people of the lower class, and then in general the women. Witch trials were driven by popularity. The balance of angry mobs vs. a legitimate court system is hard to place. “Severe witch hunts-in the German states and probably elsewhere-were inescapably linked with administrative patterns that were dead ends or short-lived anomalies in state building. Even though they might thrive for some years in each region, overall they had no future"(Dillinger). This article looks specifically at Germany, but we learn a lot about how the courts intermingled with the witch-hunt organizations. The angry mobs essentially fueled the court systems. The more witches that burned at the stake, the better liked the judges and those committing witches to their fate became. The trials in each place became wildly popular before they eventually came to a stop. Witchcraft almost always went hand in hand with demonic possession or the worship of satan. Invoking the fear of those people that would put witches on trial. “Most of the approximately 100,000 individuals prosecuted for the crime of witchcraft during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were originally charged with performing harmful magic, which in many instances had resulted in the illness or death of their intended victims”(Levack). The witch trials were driven by a common fear of magic. And this fear only increased when the people began to believe their loved ones lives were in danger. The fear of satan was essentially the fear of harm coming to one's friends and family, and to squash this fear society placed blame on witches. Easily accused and difficult to defend themselves. Witch hunting and witch trials were cruel to those accused.
Driven by society, they punished all those that dared to be different, and even those that were the same as everyone else, and had been falsely accused. Those accused tended to consist of lower class women, as the accusers would rather put blame on those they didn't like instead of their friends and loved ones. The popularity of witch trials grew immensely before eventually dying out. The relationship between the judicial system and the angry communities was frightening in how much they were correlated. The fear of witchcraft only increased when connected to fear of Satan or ungodly worship. All of these pieces came together to create the tragedies we remember as the witch trials. Every trial for witchcraft was essentially driven by society and the need to eliminate the outcasts and the
unknown.