evil witches existed. These were thought to be persons, usually
women, who used black magic and destructive sorcery to harm and
kill others. The Catholic Church, not wanting to promote what they
considered the pagan belief system, taught that it was a sin to
accuse someone of being a witch and made it a capital crime to
burn a witch at the stake.
The Church began to feel threatened by the power women and men (pagans and witches) had over local communities, and soon this fear filtered back to Rome. The church needed to keep control over the spirituality of the people. The Church began to look at its policy towards pagans and witches in particular more closely. They wondered why citizens should look up to pagan people and not to
3. Giving honor to the Devil by worshipping him and making sacrifices.
4. Dedication of children to the Devil.
5. Murdering children before they have been baptized.
6. Pledging to Satan children yet in the womb.
7. Spreading propaganda about the cult.
8. Honoring oaths sworn in the name of the Devil.
9. Incest.
10. Murdering men and little children to make broth.
11. Disinterring the dead, eating human flesh and drinking blood.
12. Killing by means of poisons and spells.
13. Killing cattle.
14. Causing famine on the land and infertility in the fields.
15. Having sexual intercourse with the Devil.
A number of questionable courtroom procedures were recommended by Bodin:
-A person once accused should never be acquitted, unless the falsity of the accuser is clearer than the sun.”
-Children were to be forced to indict their parents.
-Suspicion alone of witchcraft warranted torture, “for popular rumor is almost never misinformed.”
-The names of informers were never to be told.
In addition, Bodin “urged local authorities to encourage secret accusations by placing a black box in the church for anonymous letters.”
A woman with no witches’ mark was more suspicious than one with such a mark. Bodin was equally as cruel in his views on sentencing. He believed in the most painful and gruesome executions, and still feared that the witches were receiving insufficient punishment. He felt that roasting and cooking witches over a slow fire was not much of a punishment since it would only last an hour or two compared to the eternal agonies witches would receive by the Devil. According to Bodin, any judge who did not order the execution of a witch should himself be executed.
People accused their neighbors, friends, and relatives of Witchcraft. Most of the time this was brought on by
fear (of the unknown, or being accused themselves) or envy (of wealth, property, or a spouse.) When accused, you had very little ability to defend yourself.
In a huge show trial, you would be accused of Witchcraft, sleeping with the Devil, heresy, and other crimes. The punishments, trials, and ultimate sentence that an accused witch was forced to endure was atrocious, and included: being removed from your home, paraded
down the streets to the town square, where your clothing was ripped off and a full body inspection took place. Screaming crowds, spitting, and torture with
tools like a “Witch Pricker” (or bodkin- a long, thin needle about 3 inches long, with a wooden handle) were all very common. You could fail a physical
examination for not bleeding when pricked, not drowning when thrown into water, having blemishes, moles, warts or any other common irregularities. Almost
always the sentence was death, by public burning or hanging.
As the need to punish and kill witches grew, dozens and dozens of torture tools and methods were developed. One such item was the bootikens. These were boots that went from the person’s ankles to knees. Wedges were hammered up the length of the boot into the person’s leg, breaking and crushing bones as it went. Another tool used was called The Pear. It was a pear shaped apparatus that was often inserted into orifices. It was then expanded by way of a screw. It was often expanded enough until it tore and mangled which ever orifice it had been inserted in. Death would follow shortly, from either blood loss or infection. It was usually equipped with sharp spikes at the end so that a person could also be stabbed with it, usually in the neck. Another device known as Turcas was used to tear the fingernails out. This was followed by sticking pins or needles into the raw and exposed skin of the fingers. Using red hot pincers against a witch’s body was also a favorite. Often a pincer was used to tear off pieces of flesh and in some cases inserted into vaginas and rectums. Many times a person would be stripped naked, horse whipped, and then would have the pincers used on them. Women sometimes had their breasts torn off with hot pincers to further humiliate them. Crushing a witch was often used both to kill and force a confession. The accused would be made to lie on the ground or a table and usually a board was placed on top of them. As they lay there being questioned they would slowly place large rocks upon the board. They would add more and more until the person confessed and then, once having a confession, would add more until the person was no longer able to breathe. It was a slow and painful death. A variation on crushing was stoning. Stoning allowed a mob of people to gather around the accused and pelt them with stones until the person was killed. Depending on the situation a person could be battered for minutes or hours before succumbing to death. Stoning were not always organized events, in some communities a mob would develop before the so-called witch could be tried. Another method used to gain a confession was called the Strappado. In this case, the persons wrists were bound behind their back with a rope. The rope was then hoisted over a ceiling beam. The rope was pulled until the person was suspended in the air and then they were viciously dropped. This was repeated until the persons shoulders became dislocated.
The Thumbscrew torture was used during the Middle Ages, most notoriously during the inquisition. When a victim refused to reveal sensitive information, he or she would be subject to the thumbscrew. The victim’s hands were placed in the device and the torturer would crush the victim’s fingers slowly. Another common application of the thumbscrew was to crush a victim’s toes. A (bigger) variant of this torture was used to crush knees, arms and even heads. Tean Zu is an ancient Chinese torture device originally designed for women, though it quickly appealed torturers for male victims. It’s a relatively simple and yet painful torture, where a person’s fingers were placed on a flat surface. Wooden sticks were placed between the fingers connected by strings. When a victim refused to talk or deliver information to the torturer, he would tighten the string a bit more causing the tables to crush the fingers.
This torture was sometimes used in the West, for it did not damage the skin nor kill the victim.
Designed in Ancient Turkey (Greece), the Heat Torture was extremely painful and humiliating. After a person was “convicted”, he or she would be locked inside a coffin made of brass (sometimes called the Brazen Bull).
The victim’s feet were creatively fixed to the ground. Sometimes with ropes, sometimes with nails and sometimes they were not fixed at all. The coffin was placed vertically on top of a fire where it was left for many hours until the brass turned “red hot”.
According to some historians including Herodotus, the Heat Torture was the most common torture in Greece. As years passed, the Brazen Bull became more painful and amusing for those outside. At one point, the most sophisticated device had a complex set of tubes so the victim’s screams could be heard as an “infuriated ox”. Apparently, this amused certain rulers such as the Roman Emperor Hadrian who, according to legend, burnt entire families with the device.
Mostly in early Medieval Times, heretics and witches were condemned to be fixed to the ground with iron nails. Spreading arms and legs while being naked under the sun resulted in having very strong sunburns all around a person’s body. If this wasn’t enough, wild animals used to eat the victim alive; the pain of having an animal eating burnt flesh is comparable to the wheel and other more recent torture devices. The victim was lucky if the closest animal was a bear; for there were smaller animals, such as mice; who would eat them slowly.
The iron maiden is in fact a sarcophagus. The only two main differences are that it has tips all over the front door and that people died after getting in–and not before.
The Iron Maiden was introduced in Germany. Even though it is commonly believed that it was used in the Middle Ages, the truth is that it was invented a few centuries later. Very few people had the misfortune of experiencing what it feels like to be trapped in this sarcophagus. Normally, the big door would be shut slowly; the tips crushing a person in agonizing pain. There was a tube in the bottom that made the victim see his own blood as it poured out of his body. The few people that did make it to this device, lasted more than 2 days before death finally struck them.
Depending on the crime, a person could be sentenced to many days, or even weeks of staying confined by the stocks. Generally placed near a town, the victim was subject to the public’s harm. In a mild case, the sentenced person would leave with just a few punches in the face and a lot of urine in his or her body.
In a more severe case, townspeople acted very harsh and stoning was very common. Some people died and others were left severely injured. Cutting was very common, and some very offensive villagers would cut off parts of the victim (such as a hand) to later be burned; stopping him from dying.
Sometimes, death penalty was sentenced by this device. The victim was to be left confined to the stocks somewhere while the public, sun and animals did their job to kill them. Even though in movies they portrayed the stocks harmless, the reality was quite different. People suffered a lot and sometimes those who wanted to save the victim were also tortured by this method.
This is one of the most humiliating tortures ever designed by the human mind. When women were accused of being a whore or a witch, she was tied to a horse and grabbed everywhere the rider wanted. When the person was hated by the people, stones (hence the name) and other sharp or hot materials were placed on the floor to increase the victim’s suffering while being taken all over town for everyone to see.
When on death penalty, the victim would take a long time to die; normally more than an hour. Villagers would scream things and yell insults to the unfortunate person. If they were bored, they would grab stones and throw them at their victim; thus increasing dying speed–and pain.
Known as “The Keep”, this is one of the most embarrassing and painful tortures ever designed by the human mind. A victim would be sometimes fixed with iron nails to the cage and the door would be shut forever. The small openings in “The Keep” were big enough for hungry birds to eat whatever they could. The defenseless victim, having their arms tied with a rope, had nothing better to do than to hysterically stare at the birds–and other animals–eating him alive.
Normally suited for nobles and the alike, this torture wasn’t only painful; but socially speaking, it killed whatever honor a person had left. The cage would be hung on the main square–or on a church–exhibiting the victim’s fate to a whole town.
After many days of agonizing and severe pain, the unlucky person would finally pass out. Sometimes the townspeople would throw stones or other objects to awaken them.
In the most severe punishments, the victim would be let down; and after a week or so of resting, they would be put up there again. Sometimes this intermittent punishment occurred three or four times until they were sent to another torture machine or until they finally died because of the birds–and the sun.
Not popularly seen as a very painful torture, the whip was in fact a menace.
The whip has been used throughout the millennia to inspire terror to whole nations. From Egypt to France, the whip has been a fearful torture device.
In the Netherlands, kids were the ones who punished their victims. Even today, the whip is used in many countries of the Middle East and Indonesia.
Probably due to the dim amount of suffering, guillotines were widely used. It is common belief that the guillotine is a French invention; nevertheless, its origins are much older. The Scots were the first to use a smaller guillotine as a means of execution for nobles. When the French found out about this very useful device, they decided to employ it officially as a way to punish everyone and not just nobles. Before being used, the guillotine was tested with dead bodies from a hospital. It was ready on April 4, 1792 at Paris. The first official execution in Paris occurred on the 25th of that month.
From 1792 to 1794, France used this machine very often. Louis XVI had his head cut on January 21, 1793. Hence the name “Le Louison” until in 1800 the term “guillotine” was employed.
It has been proven that a person whose head has been cut, is conscious for a few seconds. Probably a little more than the time it takes for the head to fall on the floor. Some people could even blink before dying. This deadly machine was used in many places such as The Papal States, France, Scotland, and other European countries. In France, its use stopped only after the abolition of the death penalty under Mitterrand in 1981.
The Dunk Stool was a torture commonly used to make witches confess their witchery and heresy. It consisted of a simple chair tied to a tree or a stick.
The victim would be intermittently submerged in a river or pond. At the beginning, he or she would be submerged for less than a minute, but if the victim refused to reveal information or deny charges; the period of under water could increment dramatically; up to two minutes or more.
Eventually, the victim died. Nevertheless, death by the Dunk Stool was better than what would await a witch or sorcerer if proven guilty.
From country to country, the methods varied. But no matter where you were, if you were accused you were in for pain, humiliation, and ultimate suffering.
The persecution of witchcraft enabled the Church to prolong the profitability of the Inquisition. The Inquisition had left regions economically destitute. By adding witchcraft to the crimes it persecuted, however, the Inquisition exposed a whole new group of people from whom to collect money. It took every advantage of this opportunity. Victims were charged for the very ropes that bound them and the wood that burned them. Each procedure of torture carried its fee. After the execution of a wealthy witch, officials usually treated themselves to a banquet at the expense of the victim’s estate.
King James–VI (Scotland) and I (England and Ireland)–was notoriously paranoid about spells, the occult, and prophesies, (especially those that predicted his own death.) So much in fact that he intentionally
mis-translated a passage in his official bible meant to excoriate poisoners to read: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”. Thus, the practice of Witchcraft
was banned under Pain of Death.
The process of formally persecuting witches followed the harshest inquisitional procedure. Once accused of witchcraft, it was virtually impossible to escape conviction. After cross- examination, the victim’s body was examined for the witch’s mark.
The accused would be stripped naked and the executioner would shave off all the body hair in order to seek in the hidden places of the body the sign which the devil imprinted on his cohorts. Warts, freckles, and birthmarks were considered certain tokens of amorous relations with Satan.
Should the accused show no sign of a witch’s mark, guilt could still be established by methods such as sticking needles in the eyes of the accused. In such a case, guilt was confirmed if the inquisitor could find an insensitive spot during the process.
Confession was then extracted by the hideous methods of torture already developed during earlier phases of the Inquisition. In witch prisons women would be driven half mad by frequent torture and kept in prolonged squalor and darkness in the dungeons. They would be constantly dragged out to undergo atrocious torment until they would be willing to confess whatever crimes are suggested to them rather than to be thrust back into their hideous dungeon. Unless the witch died during torture, she was taken to the stake. Since many of the burnings took place in public squares, inquisitors prevented the victims from talking to the crowds by using wooden gags or cutting their tongue out. Unlike a heretic or a Jew who would usually be burnt alive only after they had relapsed into their heresy or Judaism, a witch would be burnt upon the first conviction. Sexual mutilation of accused witches was not uncommon. With the orthodox understanding that divinity had little or nothing to do with the physical world, sexual desire was perceived to be ungodly. When the men persecuting the accused witches found themselves sexually aroused, they assumed that such desire emanated, not from themselves, but from the woman. They attacked breasts and genitals with pincers, pliers and red-hot irons. Some rules condoned sexual abuse by allowing men deemed “zealous Catholics” to visit female prisoners in solitary confinement while never allowing female visitors.
The horror of the witch hunts knew no bounds. The Church had never treated the children of persecuted parents with compassion, but its treatment of witches’ children was particularly brutal. Children were liable to be prosecuted and tortured for witchcraft: girls, once they were nine and a half, and boys, once they were ten and a half. Younger children were tortured in order to elicit testimony that could be used against their parents. Even the testimony of two-year-old children was considered valid in cases of witchcraft though such testimony was never admissible in other types of trials. A famous French magistrate was known to have regretted his leniency when, instead of having young children accused of witchcraft burned, he had only sentenced them to be flogged while they watched their parents burn.
Witches were held accountable for nearly every problem. Any threat to social uniformity, any questioning of authority, and any act of rebellion could now be attributed to and prosecuted as witchcraft. Not surprisingly, areas of political turmoil and religious strife experienced the most intense witch hunts. Witch-hunting tended to be much more severe in Germany, Switzerland, France, Poland and Scotland than in more homogeneously Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain. The Reformation played a critical role in convincing people to blame witches for their problems. Protestants and reformed Catholics taught that any magic was sinful since it indicated a belief in divine assistance in the physical world. The only supernatural energy in the physical world was to be of the devil. Without magic to counter evil or misfortune, people were left with no form of protection other than to kill the devil’s agent, the witch. Particularly in Protestant countries, where protective rituals such as crossing oneself, sprinkling holy water or calling on saints or guardian angels were no longer allowed, people felt defenseless. It was most often the sermons of both Catholic and Protestant preachers that would instigate a witch hunt. The terrible Basque witch hunt of 1610 began after Fray Domingo de Sardo came to preach about witchcraft. The witch hunts in Salem, Massachusetts, were similarly preceded by the fearful sermons and preaching of Samuel Parris in 1692.
The climate of fear created by churchmen of the Reformation led to countless deaths of accused witches quite independently of inquisitional courts or procedure. For example, in England where there were no inquisitional courts and where witch-hunting offered little or no financial reward, many women were killed for witchcraft by mobs. Instead of following any judicial procedure, these mobs used methods to ascertain guilt of witchcraft such as “swimming a witch,” where a woman would be bound and thrown into water to see if she floated. The water, as the medium of baptism, would either reject her and prove her guilty of witchcraft, or the woman would sink and be proven innocent, albeit also dead from drowning.
As people adopted the new belief that the world was the terrifying realm of the devil, they blamed witches for every misfortune. Since the devil created all the ills of the world, his agents- witches- could be blamed for them. Witches were thought by some to have as much if not more power than Christ: they could raise the dead, turn water into wine or milk, control the weather and know the past and future. Witches were held accountable for everything from a failed business venture to a poor emotional state. A Scottish woman, for instance, was accused of witchcraft and burned to death because she was seen stroking a cat at the same time as a nearby batch of beer turned sour. Witches now took the role of scapegoats that had been held by Jews. Any personal misfortune, bad harvest, famine, or plague was seen as their fault.
The social turmoil created by the Reformation intensified witch-hunting. The Reformation diminished the important role of community and placed a greater demand for personal moral perfection. As the communal tradition of mutual help broke down and the manorial system which had provided more generously for widows disappeared, many people were left in need of charity. The guilt one felt after refusing to help a needy person could be easily transferred onto that needy person by accusing her of witchcraft. The most common victims of witchcraft accusations were those women who resembled the image of the Crone. As the embodiment of mature feminine power, the old wise woman threatens a structure which acknowledges only force and domination as avenues of power. The Church never tolerated the image of the Crone, even in the first centuries when it assimilated the prevalent images of maiden and mother in the figure of Mary. Although any woman who attracted attention was likely to be suspected of witchcraft, either on account of her beauty or because of a noticeable oddness or deformity, the most common victim was the old woman. Poor, older women tended to be the first accused even where witch hunts were driven by inquisitional procedure that profited by targeting wealthier individuals.
Old, wise healing women were particular targets for witch-hunters. Common people of pre-reformed Europe relied upon wise women and men for the treatment of illness rather than upon churchmen, monks or physicians. By combining their knowledge of medicinal herbs with an entreaty for divine assistance, these healers provided both more affordable and most often more effective medicine than was available elsewhere. Churchmen of the Reformation objected to the magical nature of this sort of healing, to the preference people had for it over the healing that the Church or Church- licensed physicians offered, and to the power that it gave women. Until the terror of the witch hunts, most people did not understand why successful healers should be considered evil. But in the eyes of orthodox Christians, such healing empowered people to determine the course of their lives instead of submitting helplessly to the will of God. According to churchmen, health should come from God, not from the efforts of human beings. Preachers and Church-licensed male physicians tried to fill the function of healer. Yet, their ministrations were often considered ineffective compared to those of a wise woman. Even the Church-licensed male physicians, who relied upon purging, bleedings, fumigations, leeches, lancets and toxic chemicals such as mercury were little match for an experienced wise woman’s knowledge of herbs. Physicians often attributed their own incompetence to witchcraft. When an illness could not be understood, even the highest body of England, the Royal College of Physicians of London, was known to accept the explanation of witchcraft.
Not surprisingly, churchmen portrayed the healing woman as the most evil of all witches. Medicine had long been associated with herbs and magic. The Greek and Latin words for medicine, “pharmakeia” and “veneficium,” meant both “magic” and “drugs.” Mere possession of herbal oils or ointments became grounds for accusation of witchcraft.
A person’s healing ability easily led to conviction of witchcraft. In 1590 a woman in North Berwick was suspected of witchcraft because she was curing those who had a sickness. The ailing archbishop of St. Andrews called upon Alison Peirsoun of Byrehill and then, after she had successfully cured him, not only refused to pay her but had her arrested for witchcraft and burned to death. Simply treating unhealthy children by washing them was cause for convicting a Scottish woman of witchcraft.
Witch-hunters also targeted midwives. Orthodox Christians believed the act of giving birth defiled both mother and child. In order to be readmitted to the Church, the mother should be purified through the custom of “churching,” which consisted of a quarantine period of forty days if her baby was a boy and eighty days if her baby was a girl, during which both she and her baby were considered heathen. Some thought that a woman who died during this period should be refused a Christian burial. Until the Reformation, midwives were deemed necessary to take care of what was regarded as the nasty business of giving birth, a dishonorable profession best left in the hands of women. But with the Reformation came an increased awareness of the power of midwives. Midwives were now suspected of possessing the skill to abort a fetus, to educate women about techniques of birth control, and to mitigate a woman’s labor pains.
A midwife’s likely knowledge of herbs to relieve labor pains was seen as a direct affront to the divinely ordained pain of childbirth. In the eyes of churchmen, God’s sentence upon Eve should apply to all women.
It is hardly surprising that women who not only possessed medicinal knowledge but who used that knowledge to comfort and care for other women would become prime suspects of witchcraft.
How many lives were lost during the centuries of witch- hunting will never be known. Some members of the clergy proudly reported the number of witches they condemned, such as the bishop of Wurtzburg who claimed 1900 lives in five years, or the Lutheran prelate Benedict Carpzov who claimed to have sentenced 20,000 devil worshippers. But the vast majority of records have been lost and it is doubtful that such documents would have recorded those killed outside of the courts. While the formal persecution of witches raged from about 1450 to 1750, sporadic killing of women on the account of suspected witchcraft has continued into recent times. In 1928 a family of Hungarian peasants was acquitted of beating an old woman to death whom they claimed was a witch. The court based its decision on the ground that the family had acted out of “irresistible compulsion.” In 1976 a poor spinster, Elizabeth Hahn, was suspected of witchcraft and of keeping familiars, or devil’s agents, in the form of dogs. The neighbors in her small German village ostracized her, threw rocks at her, and threatened to beat her to death before burning her house, badly burning her and killing her animals. A year later in France, an old man was killed for ostensible sorcery. And in 1981, a mob in Mexico stoned a woman to death for her apparent witchcraft which they believed had incited the attack upon Pope John Paul II.
Witch hunts were neither small in scope nor implemented by a few aberrant individuals; the persecution of witches was the official policy of both the Catholic and Protestant Churches. The Church invented the crime of witchcraft, established the process by which to prosecute it, and then insisted that witches be prosecuted. After much of society had rejected witchcraft as a delusion, some of the last to insist upon the validity of witchcraft were among the clergy. Under the pretext of first heresy and then witchcraft, anyone could be disposed of who questioned authority or the Christian view of the world.
Witch-hunting secured the conversion of Europe to orthodox Christianity. Through the terror of the witch hunts, reformed Christians convinced common people to believe that a singular male God reigned from above, that he was separate from the earth, that magic was evil, that there was a powerful devil, and that women were most likely to be his agents. As a by-product of the witch hunts, the field of medicine transferred to exclusively male hands and the Western herbal tradition was largely destroyed. The vast numbers of people brutalized and killed, as well as the impact upon the common perception of God, make the witch hunts one of the darkest chapters of human history.
It wasn’t until the middle of the 1900’s that Pagans could safely come out of the broom closet, in a few countries. The word “Witch” still carries with it the taint of the Inquisition, with unfair connotations of evil, or “devil worship”, as defined by the Church. Make no mistake – the misconceptions, prejudice, intolerance and violence that started in the dark and Middle Ages, have left a deep mark and still exist today. Because of the hatred and fear surrounding paganism and witchcraft, it was thought best that those who followed our faith and practices went underground. For hundreds of years, the craft survived underground. Covens were scarce, and no one could learn unless they were from a family of Witches. To learn and
practice the craft took a great deal of courage and secrecy, as the possibility of being found out carried with it a death-sentence. There could be a number of reasons of why pagans went underground. Surviving, staying alive, played a factor in going underground. Even though there were those accused of witchcraft; some still stood their ground and proclaimed their innocence. There were those who had family members and did not want their loved ones killed so they went underground for their families. Wanting to keep the traditions/practices alive but not displaying them are letting others know because of the consequences. Some other people may have had abilities of healing others or possible psychic abilities and were scared of them and perhaps that is why they hunted/tortured/killed those who were already accused because killing something they were frightened of may have felt right in their eyes and perhaps that is why some of those people went underground as well; even if they did not practice witchcraft but had certain abilities they were frightened of their own selves and did not want to be accused and tortured/killed. The reason why witches were getting bad press even when they went underground is because of the age of wicked witches in fairy tales. In fairy tales witches were women who were in their crone years and they looked like hags. Women who wore black and black pointy hats, having white/gray unkempt hair, blind/bad eye sight, wrinkly skin, warts on their faces/bodies, a cackle for a laugh, little to no teeth that could be rotting. Witches were seen as someone who was evil and had a cat as a familiar. The witches were supposed to talk to animals and the animals were supposed to help the witch do evil deeds. Witches were supposed to live in deep, dark woods away from people in shacks or in caves. They were to have a cauldron always bubbling with horrible things in it and the most popular were either of small animals or parts of animals and parts of humans. The witch in fairy tales were supposed to like to eat little children. Evil spells and curses were put on people/places, flying on broomsticks at night. I’m sure there are many more descriptions of what a wicked witch in fairy tales are used in books and people’s minds but I would gather that what I have written would say much with why witches were still getting bad press.