Encyclopædia Britannica

• Between the 15th and 18th centuries, an estimated 50,000 people, mostly women, were executed for witchcraft across Europe.
• They were accused of devil-worship, heresy and harming their neighbours by using witchcraft.

1. Witchcraft is a medieval idea

• The Christian church was sceptical about the reality of witchcraft until the 15th century.
• Before that there were very few witchcraft trials, because acts of witchcraft were believed to be an illusion caused by the Devil with the permission of God.

2. Witchcraft trials occurred everywhere

• Most witchcraft trials happened in central, western, or northern Europe.
• In places like Iceland and Wales, there were very few witchcraft trials at all.
• It seems that local beliefs about magic and witchcraft, alongside the attitudes of clergymen and judges, may be the reasons for this.

3. The Inquisition tried and executed most witches

• They have become notorious for their rigour in rooting out opposition to Catholic orthodoxy.
• Across the whole of the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, the inquisitions executed fewer suspects than were hanged in England.

4. Only women were tried for witchcraft

• It’s true that 80% of those tried and executed for witchcraft were women.
• In England, women on the margins of society were more vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft when things went wrong for their neighbours, such as inexplicable deaths or harm.
• The suspects’ networks were founded on their sex; women named women and the few male suspects named men.

5. Witches were really the followers of a pagan fertility cult

• This new religion was founded by Gerald Gardner who revived what he believed to be ancient pagan witchcraft in the 1930s.
• Most witches were ordinary Christian women who found themselves accused of witchcraft by their neighbours, or denounced by other suspects under torture.

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Jonathan Durrant does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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