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"comprehensive account of one of the most malign periods in Eureopean history" - Glasgow Herald
`Lively and readable. It is written in a style as personal and attractive as any I have encountered...It has just the right balance of magisterial detachment and personal insight.'
Ronald Hutton, Universityof Bristol
6 page feature article on book in History Today, November 2006
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`Lively and readable. It is written in a style as personal and attractive as any I have encountered...It has just the right balance of magisterial detachment and personal insight.'
Ronald Hutton, University of Bristol
Tens of thousands of people were persecuted and put to death as witches between 1400 and 1700 – the great age of witch hunts. Why did the witch hunts arise, flourish and decline during this period? What purpose did the persecutions serve? Who was accused, and what was the role of magic in the hunts? This important reassessment of witch panics and persecutions in Europeand colonial America both challenges and enhances existing interpretations of the phenomenon. Locating its origins 400 years earlier in the growing perception of threats to Western Christendom, Robert Thurston outlines the development of a ‘persecuting society’ in which campaigns against scapegoats such as heretics, Jews, lepers and homosexuals set the scene for the later witch hunts.
He examines the creation of the witch stereotype and looks at how the early trials and hunts evolved, with the shift from accusatory to inquisitorial court procedures and reliance upon confessions leading to the increasing use of torture.
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The author covers the subject objectively and attempts to explain why the witch hunts started, how they operated and why they ended. For me the more interesting aspect of this subject was how/why they ended rather than how they started and also the contemporary arguments against the witch hunts and the use of torture. This was mostly covered in chapter five and was therefore the most interesting chapter for me.
Although the book is relatively short (about 250 pages once all the notes, maps etc. are excluded) he covers a lot of ground. Some of the points made are
1) Although similar to sorcery witches were considered worse as they had made a pact with the devil.
2) Witch hunts occurred throughout the whole of Western Europe and parts of North America though they appeared more densely in France and Germany.
3) They tended to occur more in villages than larger urban areas and usually where the elite encouraged such behaviour. Even so they were sporadic.
4) About 75 per cent of the victims were women, however the author rejects the view that the witch hunts were a systematic attack on women per se.
5) He also rejects any other 'functional' explanation, e.g. that they were an attempt of the rich and powerful to grab more power.
6) Torture was more prevalent in continental Europe and Scotland because of the change from an 'acusatorial' legal procedure to an 'inquisitorial' procedure and the requirement of a 'complete' proof, ideally a confession. In England and North America cases only had to be proved 'beyond a reasonable doubt' therefore putting less emphasis on a confession. I guess it's better to just be executed rather than tortured, then executed.
7) Interestingly witch hunts and trials were less numerous in Italy and Spain where most cases would have been sent to the Inquisition to deal with. The Inquisition was however more interested in heresy than witchcraft and was aware of the problems of confessions gained from torture.
Hopefully listing some of the points above will encourage you to read the book.
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