Breakriscute Susurantur Nomina Kisest malus kissest noches venit timor venit timor shadows lengthen in the slow night names are whisper Who is evil? Who is guilty? Fear comes. Fear comes.
SPEAKER_03Hello and welcome to Witches Truth, Trials and Terrors. When you hear the words witch hunt, what comes to mind? Millions of innocent women burned at the stake, pointy hats, black cats, medieval superstition, a Europe gripped by mass hysteria. The trouble is that much of what we think we know about the witch hunts isn't actually true. The famous claim that nine million women were executed? Almost certainly a myth. The idea that all witches were women, also wrong. Even the period we call the witch craze was shorter, patchier, and altogether stranger than most people realize. I'm John Briggs, and in this series my job is quite simple: to ask the questions you'd ask if you happen to find yourself in a pub with two of the world's leading experts on witchcraft. In fact, I have both of them. I don't have the pub, but I have them. One of them is my co-host, Robin Briggs, who's the Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College in Oxford University, and one of the historians who's done more than anyone to reshape our understanding of witchcraft and the people accused of it. The other guest today is Dr. Jan Makelson of Cardiff University, whose research explores witchcraft, demonology, and the curious ways that otherwise sensible human beings can end up believing some very strange things indeed. Together, we're going to separate the history from the Hollywood. Welcome to episode two. Everything you know about witch hunts is wrong.
SPEAKER_01I mean, if we're exploding myths, then obviously the idea that witch hunting is medieval is uh is is the is an even bigger myth than than the figure of nine million.
SPEAKER_02A local historian took the figure from a single town and then multiplied it up on the basis that all European towns must have had the same numbers.
SPEAKER_01Cold weather is not necessarily a good thing, and it has real impacts on the livelihood of early modern villagers who had to bring in a harvest, and if the harvest failed, you know, witches could be held responsible.
SPEAKER_02The leading court in France, the Parlement of Paris, hung three judges outside the town hall in Paris in 1641 for the murder of a suspected witch.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and let's start with a question that I think may upset a few people. If I stop ten people in the street and I asked them how many witches were executed in Europe, how wrong would they be?
SPEAKER_01There is a lot of myth and supposition about witchcraft, and all of it is really tied together in sort of like one holistic package. The number of nine million, which you mentioned, is a very common figure. It predates World War II, but it's clearly taken on a sort of new meaning after sort of the horrors of the 20th century, where this idea emerges that witchcraft must have been like, say, the Holocaust, and this idea that it must have been systematic, people must have been living in fear, elites must have been behind all of it, and that inevitably gives legitimacy to a figure like nine million. What you know historians usually say is that the total number of victims of the early modern witch hunt is between 40 and 50,000. You know, the number may have been creeping up more towards 50 rather than 40 in the past decade or so, but it's considerably less than what people on the street might think.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. I it's still a a reasonably large number of people, though, isn't it? Uh Robin, in comparison to the population of the time, do we have a percentage?
SPEAKER_02Well, my rough figure for the population of most of Europe which was affected is something eighty million, may maybe crept up to a bit nearer to a hundred million. So I I mean the the figure is very small compared with the total population. And indeed, of course, there were more people than that who lived at some stage during this, because that's just a moment in time, and so your chances of being executed as a witch were pretty low, one has to say, even in the hot spots. But there are just a few villages where extraordinary proportion of people were executed, but that I mean they they are really quite exceptional. But yes, I mean the the nine million figure is quite a story, really. I mean, it goes back to the early 19th century. And uh a local historian in Austria, I think it was, who took the figure from a single town, and I'm not sure whether he was right even about that figure, and then multiplied it up on the basis that all European towns must have had the same numbers. I I should say that um to be fair to him, at least at least he didn't say nine million women. I think he already knew that there were some men involved. And then most of the citations I've seen are to an 1880s book by an early American feminist writer, which is mainly actually quite an interesting expose of the what's called the white slave trade, as say, white women being recruited into prostitution and working in brothels and this sort of thing. And for some reason, this this lady took over this figure. And that's the place that usually seems to be cited in more recent works by feminist writers. So it's it had a long gestation. But it is, as Jan says, it's only really since the Second World War that somehow this alternative Holocaust notion has got going, I think. And when you start thinking about it, I mean, if if the Nazis with all the advantages of chemistry and so on could only manage to eliminate six million Jews and other unfortunate, to suppose that early modern uh uh uh Europeans could have eliminated nine million people is really completely fantastical. I mean, out of all imaginable possibilities. It doesn't add up, as you say.
SPEAKER_03You you make the point, though, that witchcraft belief and witchcraft persecutions have largely separate histories. What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_02Well, there. I mean the the point is that witchcraft beliefs are not universal in human societies, but they're immensely widespread. I mean, there are not many societies in the past or the present that have been studied where you don't find some kind of witchcraft belief. And uh it's quite clear, I think, although the evidence is very scrappy, that that this was a w a widespread belief in Europe from the Roman Empire period, I mean, and and right through the Middle Ages. But there are almost no known persecutions. There are a handful of trials for sorcery, and then a few trials for heresy, which seems to involve certain kinds of behavior that m you know involve diabolism. But I mean, the actual prosecution of witches only starts around the year 1400 and is pretty much at an end by the late 17th century in most of Europe. But witchcraft belief carries on and clearly is still around under the surface in uh quite large parts of Europe.
SPEAKER_03So, yeah, and what's behind this explosion then in that case? Why does it happen then and not 500 years earlier, for example?
SPEAKER_01I mean, if we're exploding myths, then obviously the idea that witch hunting is medieval is the is is the is an even bigger myth than than the figure of nine million. Right? It's really rather striking that you know the peak of you know witch hunting happened around the year 1600 or or maybe just after that. So from that perspective, we have to what Robin knows already so suggest it's you know, separating witchcraft from from the actual witch hunting. And the belief is you know it goes back to time immemorial, is common to all sorts of different societies. And I would consider it plausible that you know hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people were actually stigmatized by the label of witch, but the actual number of people who were persecuted in a court of law um was considerably smaller than that, um and stands as as already mentioned at a figure of forty to fifty thousand executions and um perhaps a hundred thousand trials. Um and and that you know is actually sort of like a very time-specific moment, you know, sort of really picking up it towards the 1560s, fifteen seventies, sort of like reaching a peak somewhere between sixteen hundred and you know, sixteen thirty, and then sort of like dropping quite rapidly after that.
SPEAKER_03So, but what is it that inspires the the the requirement to take these people and actually put them on trial, torture them potentially, and then execute them? Why is it then if these beliefs have been around in human society since the beginning of time, pretty much?
SPEAKER_01Well, this is in some sense really one of the big puzzles for which we don't have um a completely convincing answer. The main thing to sort of say is that you know, for you know, witchcraft to be prosecutable, as it were, it needed to be a crime. And it's only in the 16th century that we see countries actually passing um a law against witchcraft. So in England and Scotland, you know, the witchcraft acts are date to 1562 and 1563. So before that, you know, there were occasional sort of like prosecutions in church courts and that sort of thing, but without sort of like the danger of a death penalty. Um, but of course, that in some sense just pushes back, you know, the question sort of like why was it at that particular sort of moment in time that these practices, these witchcraft practices were seen to be so threatening that they needed to be criminalized. And you know, historians have advanced a number of explanations, particularly sort of like the impact of the European reformations and um the sort of general sort of apocalyptic thinking of the time that the end of the world was near, that the devil as a result was you know ranging, you know, before the world ended. But at the same time, that doesn't quite explain everything. Um Wolfgang Beringer, like a famous German historian, has really made the point about the the impact of climate change at this particular moment in time. Um, but whatever the circumstances are, is like you can sort of like really see, particularly in the 1580s and 1590s, which is a period that I've done a lot of work on, you can sort of really see a rising trend where sort of like the number of persecutions is picking up year on year. So there's definitely a peak that that is happening towards the end of the 16th century and into the early 17th.
SPEAKER_03You say climate change, what was going on that we should be aware of? Because I mean, of course, that's what we're concerned with right now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's it's in some sense the very opposite as to the world that we live in now, because now we live in an age of rising temperatures, but in the early modern period, and particularly around the year 1600, uh, you know, people were confronting a period called the the mini ice age. So then that had all sorts of other different consequences, of course, uh than what we're facing today. We have harvest failures, you know, sort of like there's stories of it still snowing in July in some places. Um there are stories of the Thames freezing over, which is something that we couldn't possibly imagine sort of like happening today. Um I'm I'm Dutch by origin. So if you look at the for the great Netherlandish artists of the of the period, you know, there are endless paintings of frozen rivers and people having you know sort of fares on them and ice skating, you know, and ice skating is a is of course a Dutch pastime, but in actual practice, you know, all of that cold weather is not necessarily a good thing, and it has real impacts on the livelihood of early modern villagers who had to bring in a harvest. And if the harvest failed, you know, witches could be held responsible. And one of the things we do sort of see in the period is also sort of like a rising concern about weather magic and the idea of witches sort of like brewing up storms and and that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_03So these things all add in to the idea that something supernatural must be going on.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and and when if we were thinking about the chronology, this is the the big wave of witch hunting, witch persecution. I think you know we we need these kinds of explanations, or quite a lot of others, which we'll perhaps come back to. But I think it is rather striking that uh persecution falters. It it starts in the beginning of the 15th century, and very quickly you get the development of virtually the full story of diabolical witchcraft, of sabbatts, and of uh a conspiracy to harm fertility. I mean, all this is there in 15th century trial documents. It's uh something that's emerged very strongly, but from recent research. But you know, the numbers are quite small, and large parts of Europe just don't have any trials at all. And it it doesn't it doesn't take off. However, I mean what we can see there, I think, is quite clearly uh the role of the church, particularly of the friars, who go out into backwoods regions of Europe, particularly, and and noticeably the Western Alps seem to be a focal point for this. And what they find, of course, are witchcraft beliefs of the traditional kind, but also certain stories about people who do strange things at night and so on. And they and they stick these together, I mean, and and create this diabolical conspiracy theory. And there are some enthusiasts for persecution we can identify at that at that period, but they they've actually run into trouble. I mean, and famously the Heinrich Kramer, the author of the Malius Malificarum, writes his book, partly because he's been given a fearful ticking off by the Bishop of Innsbruck and thrown out for irregular procedures identifying witches. So um it's a very puzzling pattern.
SPEAKER_03But do we not have this famous character, Matthew Hopkin, who was the witch finder general? You've got characters whose job is to go and find these people. Is that is that real or is that myth?
SPEAKER_02No, it's real. But I mean, Hopkins and his associate John Stern, and they operate partly together and partly separately, only get that opportunity because of the breakdown of ordinary legal proceedings at the end of the English Civil War. And I mean that comes after a period when the Royal Government in in England had virtually stopped the prosecution of witches. I mean, in the English system, the role of the assize judges is terribly important. There are other reasons also to do with the grand jury and so on. Well, in England prosecutions can get stopped before they ever reach the asises. But there's a kind of an opportunity which they take to operate as as witchfinders. Actually, I think they are very close in nature to uh a more substantial group of these people, particularly in the German lands. One doesn't want to say Germany at this period because there are hundreds of principalities and bishoprics and so on. I mean, Germany isn't a state in any normal sense. The German lands of the Holy Roman Empire are amazing patchwork quilt. But there, a number of rulers, particularly prince bishops, um, are faced with outbreaks of excitement about witchcraft in the locality. And one of the things they tend to do is to appoint a special commissioner to take charge. So these are people who have a much more official stance than Hopkins did. It looks as if actually some of those bishops, at least, or rulers, thought that the commissioners would control the thing, but commissioners tend to get very enthusiastic and to uh set off on a real witch hunt. So I mean there are a number of these people. It should be said that a small proportion of them were actually convicted and executed for offences committed in that role. I mean For being over enthusiastic. Yes. I mean, you know, again, it that would surprise people, I think. I mean, one of my favorite moments, admittedly not quite the same, is uh that the leading court in France, the Parlement of Paris, uh hung three judges outside the town hall in Paris in 1641 for the murder of a suspected witch. Good grief. I mean, that is not what not what popular understanding.
SPEAKER_03Can were were there governments and judges who were actually trying to stop some of the madness in the studies that you you you've made? I mean, or or or was this you know, it seems to be a bandwagon that people kind of got onto.
SPEAKER_01So I I would emphasize the importance of checks and balances in general. So you mentioned John, you know, the the case of Matthew Hopkins and John Stern, and and as Robin explained, they were given an opportunity because you know political control had basically collapsed in that territory. My own research is on the Basque witch hunt in the southwest of France in 1609, and there we sort of see something very similar to what Robin was just describing with the appointment of a sort of commissioner, you know, as happened in parts of Germany, is sort of you know, for a time-limited period, uh Henry IV, the King of France, appointed these two judges from Bordeaux, uh Pierre de Lancre and Jean d'Espagne, to go to the Basque country um with unchecked powers. And for six months, you know, they were well, they only ended up going for four months, but for six months, according to the decree, they were allowed to execute witches uh um, you know, as they saw fit, basically. And when you get when you give people that amount of power, then they're going to use that amount of power. Whereas what we normally sort of see, and and the Parlement of Paris, which is a supreme court that sort of has jurisdiction over most of the north of France, is that as soon as you introduce appeals processes like that, you know, you end up creating checks and balances, and it becomes much more difficult to um convict people of witchcraft.
SPEAKER_03Let's look at the process of what would happen then. What would it take for somebody to be arrested, as it were, before being put on trial? Because there clearly were an awful lot of people who were suspected witches, but they never came to court, did they?
SPEAKER_01What I think I'd emphasize here is sort of that if you prosecute people for witchcraft, then there is a mistaken belief sometimes that you know these persecutions happened, you know, because witches have money, but actually most people accused of witchcraft were really poor, and it actually cost communities money to prosecute witches. What happened in the Bas country that I worked on is that they tried to prosecute witches under the normal system, but it cost so much money because you know there were appeals processes, these witches had to be transported from the Basque country, which you know is on the border with Spain, they had to be transported to Bordeaux for trial at the Bordeaux Parlement, the appeals court there, and that was just an extraordinary expense. And it was at that point that the communities of the Bas country petitioned the king to sort of say, it's like, you know, you know, we need some more help. You know, could you please send us a judge who could cut through all of the sort of legal paperwork?
SPEAKER_03So hang on, who would have paid? Who would have paid initially for that process? Where does the money come from to transport your supposed witch to Bordeaux?
SPEAKER_01The the communities themselves. So the account books, and I mean that's one of the sources I found was the account books of the town. They, you know, a lot that the actual trial records have almost all of them been lost. So I sort of was able to reconstruct, you know, sort of a lot of the process simply by following, you know, sort of like the payments, basically. Um and then the c in the case of the Basque country, you also had the added problem that all of these Basque witches were speaking Basque. So you not only had to pay for the transport, you had to pay for interpreters and waiters. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So and and you know, all the while these people had to be put kept in in prison and they had to be fed. So it's you can sort of see how the cost implications of of a witch trial could be a real obstacle. And in in the case of the of the basque witch hunt, um, you know, it was to sort of cut through the the financial implications of uh of these witch hunting um that that uh a judge like Pier Dolanco was appointed to sort of like cut through all of that.
SPEAKER_03But you can also see why, having paid that money, uh no result would have been extremely disappointing for the community.
SPEAKER_02It's very annoying for them. I mean, and one sees I think that this there are some very clear examples of this. I mean, actually, there are a number of German examples. I mean, Alison Rowlands indeed studied one area where this um where there were official skepticism meant that I think it was very discouraging for people to go. For the lengths of trying to bring a case. I mean, two examples I can give, which are very important, actually. I mean, one is um in in England, where you have this system of the grand jury, which is uh made up of fairly substantial freeholders, you have to find a true bill. Even if you get the suspect to the assizes, the judge is going to intervene. In effect, it looks as if people just stop bringing witchcraft cases in the 1620s and 30s because they know that they won't succeed. Um I'm not entirely clear, I have to admit, about the way that the costs are assigned in England. I mean, it is a sort of royal official system, and maybe it does just fall on, as it were, some sort of official funding. But in the French case, uh they're a bit slow to get it to be effective, but they introduce this formal appeal system so that you've got to send the papers and the accused up to Paris. So so again, I mean that's going to have to fall on local funding. And in fact, after 1625, so it's very early really, there are only three executions carried out by the the Paris Parlement, all of men who had allegedly signed a pact with the devil. You see, I mean th again, this all starts in most parts of Europe in very local courts. Courts where, you know, you would probably only have one or two legally trained people around at best. Um the level of advocacy is is low, in other words. Well well well advocacy doesn't really happen. I mean, in most of Europe, the process is one where evidence is presented, the suspect is invited to comment on it, to to explain themselves, and is confronted with the main witnesses, and could in theory argue against whatever was claimed. I mean, it doesn't happen very effectively, but at least formally this is done. And then um they're tortured. I mean in in my Lorraine example, there there is a a review by a central court, but it's simply to say you can torture them.
SPEAKER_03Okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna pause you there because I want to talk about the torture in just a second. I want to just go back to this idea of what gets somebody from an argument between neighbors to actually appearing in court. What is the tipping point that occurs to ensure that happens, Jan.
SPEAKER_01So this is one of the you know questions that we again don't really have uh an answer to, and part of the problem is the source material, right? Because the sources that survive are the legal trials. So we only as historians sort of start getting the source material once the trial happens. But one of the key things to sort of always emphasize is that when you read a lot of these trials, you know, witnesses, accusers are asked, How long have you suspected this person of witchcraft? And quite often the the response is really surprising. You know, it's never yesterday when I saw them perform a curse. You know, it's it's always going to be sort of like 10 years ago or 20 years ago. I've you know, we've in this community everyone has always suspected this person to be a witch. And then you know they will report stories of harm that they attribute to this person that may have happened five years ago or six years ago. Usually what happens if you read those trials closely is that you can sort of find one particular trigger event, you know, one child that falls ill inexplicably, and you know, that death being attributed to this accused person. But it's then really unclear as to why it was that trigger event and not an event that happened five years earlier.
SPEAKER_03I suppose we have to remember that that the village gossip is all you really have, isn't it? There's no television, there's no no you know, there's no reading of books. You know, what happens in the village is on everybody's minds and it's talked about by everybody, correct?
SPEAKER_02Yes. And remember that for several months of the year, the day is quite short and the night is long. And what do you do? And also, I mean, fuel is expensive and people tend to gather in groups in somebody's house, you know, with a fire and talk. I sometimes thought, you know, think of some huge spider web of of rumor and so on, where these things do spread from one village to another as well, because people move around, they go to market and so on, they talk to our but then this you know, this information gets back. I mean, entertainment is very limited. Obviously, these people sing and dance and they work at these evening sessions. I mean, people are spinning and doing things which you can do in your house to produce something which will generate a little bit of income. But it's ideal for spreading rumors, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Trevor Burrus, Jr. And and mud sticks, clearly. And and yeah, and you were talking about this idea that this person has been known to be possibly a witch for several years. And as youngsters grew up, the person that they'd get to recognize would have that stigma attached to them. And I suppose a bit like um, as they always say, the king thinks the world smells of fresh paint, because everywhere they go is everyone's been painting everything. Uh, here all you've got to rely on are the court documents, and there is no record of what's happened to bring somebody to court. When we get to the torture element We're at are we kind of just re-emphasizing the idea? Because I mean, under torture, for an awful lot of people, they'll just say yes to anything just to stop being tortured, surely.
SPEAKER_01I I think that torture is sort of the second big ingredient that explains sort of regional variations, right? So, you know, the first thing we've emphasized is the importance of appeals processes in places like France. Um, uh you could also add Spain and then in a sort of different way, sort of like the English system as well, as explaining why you know these checks and balances introduced or into you know, sort of limited the number of persecutions in certain territories, whereas in these German lands, the Prince Bishopric's that Robin mentioned, you know, there were fewer checks and balances, and therefore it was much easier for a witch hunt to sort of spin out of control. And torture, in some sense, sort of like you know, is the at a bit there, right? Because if you can torture without any constraint, then anyone is going to confess. And there are these horrible examples of people, you know, sort of like who've had limbs broken. There is a famous letter surviving by a mayor, Johannes Unius, who was the mayor of Bamberg, who sort of you know tried to write a letter to his daughter explaining why he confessed under torture uh to being a witch, because he just basically had no choice. And in a in a Prince Bishopric like Bamberg, you know, where the judges could basically continue to torture you until you confess, that sort of makes sense. But you know, the Paris Parlement that Robin already mentioned as a sort of contrast, no one uh tortured by the Paris Parlement ever confessed. And that sort of shows that if you sort of use torture properly, normally there were meant to be limits. Normally you're only allowed to torture someone once or you know, at most you know, two or three times. And then the accused was meant to repeat their confession freely after the torture had ended. So there was space, even if you confessed on the torture, to then retract, as it were, afterwards. Whereas if there is no limit, then you know, sort of like what what what hope in hell do you have to escape the outcome? So the way in which the torture as adds to the different legal systems, I think, sort of really helps explain why you see so much witch hunting, for instance, in Germany or in Scotland, which are these weaker states, um, and and a lot less in places like France and England and Spain.
SPEAKER_02Yes, that must that must be right. I should perhaps explain that, of course, you you rather need torture under the legal systems in continental Europe as opposed to England, where you know the trial by jury provides system that doesn't need torture in a sense. But the legal requirement for capital sentences was two complete accepted witness statements. And of course, you couldn't have witness statements proving that people have been at the Sabbath. The only people who could have testified to that were other witches who, by definition, weren't allowed, but uh you couldn't bring them into a court. And so i you've got to get a confession. And it's interesting that in my Lorraine case, I mean, yes, you know, 80% are convicted and executed, but others uh do withstand the torture. It was, on the whole, carried out according to the rules. And uh in that case you were renvoyé jusqu'à rappel, you're sent home until you're recalled, which leaves it open to the local authorities to say, we've got more evidence now, back you come, we'll do you again. So, I mean, I think what you have is uh during the the high period of persecution from the 1570s through to sometime 1630s or 40s, I mean, you have on the one hand, you have a pretty high level in quite a lot of Europe of village prosecutions, if I can put it that way. I mean, of individuals who somehow cross the line, uh do something that provokes the village to seek action. It can happen in two ways under the normal inquisitorial system. I mean, uh th this is a general term for the continental jurisdictional system. One is that somebody could actually make themselves the formal accuser. That's less common, but it does happen in significant numbers. Uh, and the other is that some local official can start the process. Um what we don't see, there's actually no evidence for, is what must have been informal pressures on some of these local people. I mean, that the man who is r running the area, as it were, or the small group, will be told, look, you know, we're really upset because we've got this awful witch, and come you please start proceedings. Um that must be what happened, but we actually never see it, you know, it's it isn't recorded. You don't put that down on paper. But within that, there is then a second level, which I'm not sure I would want to call witch hunting exactly, but it is a sort of witch hunting, which is that you get your first candidate in, as it were. Sometimes they do accuse more than one at the start, but quite often there's one. And you torture them, they confess, and then you say, and who did you see at the Sabbath? And that's a crucial question. And it varies, but in some of those German cases they name lots of people, but or are forced to. But more typically, they would name two or three other local suspects, people from their village who they know that they or other people also suspect. And so those people are hauled in. So you get three or four trials, sometimes as many as ten, you know, but it very rarely gets beyond ten, of people who, once they're on trial, you see that they've also been suspected. They may also be family members and so on. But so you use the torture and the story of the Sabbath to identify others. So I think putting those together, that would account for the majority of your cases. But oh, I don't know. I mean, 15,000 perhaps, even more would be in the big panics, which we've already mentioned, where this mechanism is used almost without control, where more and more people are pulled in. The first of those really is at Trier, I think, in Western Germany, starting in the late 1580s and running into the early 1590s. Um, not entirely clear why it stops. I mean, the Archbishop does get concerned, having originally been involved in starting it. But anyway, through the next period, there are a number of others, and the biggest of all come around late 1620s, beginning of the 1630s.
SPEAKER_03But it is this it is this 80-year period, isn't it? 1570 to 1650, where we see everything that popular culture has latched on to as being the witch hunt. And and Jan, Germany, as Robin has just been saying, was quite a hotspot and where some of this originated. Why was that? Why was the German land, as you put it, rather than Germany? I shall be correct. But why was that the area where this took off? Because that's the area you've started most of.
SPEAKER_01So Germany, you know, as Robin already mentioned, you know, didn't exist at a time. It was the Holy Roman Empire. But the Empire was very weak, very um removed from things. Um de facto, rather than thinking of the Holy Empire as a single sort of political entity, we should think of it as uh basically a patchwork of hundreds, maybe thousands, of actual mini-states, some of them as small as a monastery with some land attached. Uh in other cases it could be quite big. You know, you know, Bavaria was already sort of a duchy at that time, but for the most part, you know, these were very small territories with very little oversight, which is why it sort of links back to you know the general point is that you know, the more Jackson balances, you know, the the fewer witch hunting you'd see. And I think in addition to that, you have these prince-bishoprics, which Robin mentioned. There, the the local bishop was also a territorial ruler. And these rulers, you know, because they were bishops, they might have religious reasons for you know sort of favoring persecution of witches, because witches were obviously also heretics and devil worshippers and um and and that sort of thing. They weren't just sort of like, you know, a concern because they were hurting people. But these bishops were also quite often quite weak rulers, because the one thing that a bishop can't do is pass on their bishopric to a son, right? I mean, at least formally, actually rarely in practice in the 16th century, but at least formally, sort of like bishops were meant to be celibate men, you know, and they're they were usually elected, usually by a cathedral chapter. So these bishops were therefore, you know, possibly devout, but they were also quite often weak rulers and therefore also didn't necessarily always have the authority to sort of step in and prevent a witch hunt from happening. So these bishoprics really are the hotspots, and those are places like Trier, Cologne is another famous one. Um, I mentioned Bamburg earlier, there's Wurzburg, so there in Eichstadt is another one. So there so if you were to draw a list of sort of like the top ten hotspots um in in Europe for witch hunting, my my guess would be that you know seven or eight of them would probably be um these small territories in Germany. And uh and and I think that that's where you could probably get closest to the myth of of you know of of of being a being Banax. But it's but it's not, you know, these are very small pockets. The majority of Europe really, you know, I don't think had any sort of real witchcraft fears to sort of speak of. And and Wales, for instance, where I'm from, you know, saw five executions across the entire early modern period. So if you were living in Wales, I don't think you were ever in fear of death for they simply weren't trying in Wales, quite clearly.
SPEAKER_03One of the other aspects, I suppose, to this is is is once you start the ball rolling with trials, then people notice and it gathers momentum because people go, well, if they're doing that, we should have a go as well with so-and-so. I reckon, I've always reckoned she's a witch. Is that what happens? Is people people feed off it?
SPEAKER_02I think it is. I think there is there are good reasons for thinking that the news of trials and executions in one place could stimulate it elsewhere, although it could work the other way. I mean, again, you know, you just can't rely on on there being any automatic connection of that sort. But I I do think, yes, that people people learn to do it. I mean, that is bound to be true to some extent.
SPEAKER_01I I would also just sort of add that, and this happens in the Basque witch hunt that I studied, is that once these witch hunts spiral out of control, partly through these Sabbath stories, right, where people sort of say, Oh, I saw so-and-so at the Sabbath. What tends to also happen is that these accusations then sort of move up the food chain. So in Bamberg, for instance, we saw Johannes Yunius, you know, a mayor of the city being accused. And it's usually when elites start getting accused themselves that they actually press into action, being it's like, hmm, maybe this witch hunting was not such a good idea. And then that's what we sort of see happen in the past country in in the Bayonne, where you know, once you know the mother of the deputy mayor is is accused of witchcraft, you know, then it's sort of really time for Pierre Delancre to pack his bags and go home. So the role of elites is important, I think, also in trying to bring these witch hunts to a close. The other thing I'd emphasize again is the financial aspect is that sometimes communities just literally run out of money. And that's sort of something you see with Matthew Hopkins, for instance, in the great East Anglia witch hunt, is sort of that, you know, sort of like yeah, all of these people, Matthew Hopkins needed to be paid. Um, the the the witch prickers he was using, sort of like all of that required payment. And sometimes these communities just ran out of money and had to stop witch hunting as a result.
SPEAKER_03Uh we haven't talked, um, and we must do before we close, um, about this aspect of of witches not just being women. We will talk about that in more detail in future episodes. But yeah, and would would would people be shocked to discover that many witches were actually men?
SPEAKER_01I think I think the picture is really mixed across Europe. So if you just focus just on, say, England, then the picture of witches being almost entirely women, you know, sort of I would say actually broadly holds. Like there, the figure is in the high 80s, 80%, you know, sort of 80%. I'm not entirely sure. So in some places, you know, sort of like the witch hunt was heavily gendered female, but there is actually a lot of regional variety. The figure for France is well been known as well, is more 50-50. And then actually, like where when you sort of move towards Normandy, um, you get to a territory where a majority of um the accused were men. Same is true for parts of Austria, famously, sort of like parts of um Northern Europe, so Iceland in particular, has a majority of male victims.
SPEAKER_03Um there these are not what we might think of as warlocks or the female equivalent, as it were, of witches. These are people accused of witchcraft, correct, Robin?
SPEAKER_02It is, yes. I mean, I had a very sort of central kind of example in my work on Lorraine, where 28% of the accused were men, and they suffered in exactly the same proportions as women. I mean, there was no difference in who got off and number who got off. There were a few rather subtle distinctions you could perhaps draw between the men and the women, but they weren't very strong. And I did a calculation, I was rather proud of, where I uh tried to sum up the things they were accused of, and had a graph showing, you know, babies and uh animals and so on. And I mean, there was remarkably little difference. I it stunned me. I thought there would be a far bigger um gender difference there. I mean, well, we're going to talk, we'll talk about gender in another session and so on. But yes, this is very important. And it it tends to stun people when I mean I've had innumerable conversations over dinner tables and so on, because when people find, I'm sure Jan has found this too, they that you know about witches, they want to know. And and and one of the things that startles the most, is I say, well, yes, about a quarter of them were men, you know. And you know, that is not expected at all. I mean, there there's no reason to suppose the men were accused for any other reasons than the women were. I mean, they too are thought to have damaged their neighbors and the community. Um and interestingly, well, I won't go on about it now, because I think we need to have gender as a separate issue, but it will be, and it will be up for discussion as well.
SPEAKER_03So we will draw a close to our our myth bashing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, if I if I can just also just say that, you know, age is another factor that's worth worth mentioning, right? If we're doing myth bust if we're doing myth busting. Um because when people think about a witch, they don't just think about witches being women, they think of them as being old crones, basically, sort of like you know, 60, 70 years old. And actually, you know, the the the statistics are much less robust. It's much, you know, age is not always as close, and historians have not been as good as at counting age as they've been at counting gender. But you know, the figures really are you know, you know, point to uh a great variety, and yes, probably the majority of them would be 40 plus, but that does not necessarily make people into old crones, of course, like speaking as someone in their early 40s. I'm not an old crone yet. Um 40 was not the new 60, then are that? No, no, I don't think so. So I think that's another sort of point that's worth sort of saying is sort of that the that when we're thinking about the stereotype of the witch, we don't only think about the witch as being female, but also as extremely old, haggard looking. And and that certainly is not the case.
SPEAKER_03So we have discovered that the story most of us think we know about the witch hunts isn't quite the story the historical evidence tells. Behind every accusation was a real person, a neighbor, a widow, a healer, a troublemaker. Sometimes a man, more often a woman, and somewhere along the line, an ordinary member of a community became somebody that their neighbors feared enough to call a witch. Why? Why were women more vulnerable than men? Why did some communities turn on their own? And how much of the portrayal of witches in mainstream culture is actually true? That is what we'll be exploring next time. My thanks to Robin Briggs and to Dr. Jan McKilson. Join us next time for episode three of Witches Truth, Trials and Terrors. I'm John Briggs. Thank you for listening. And if your neighbor turns out to be a witch, statistically speaking, there's a one in four chance he's called Nigel. Goodbye.
SPEAKER_00Who is evil? Who is guilty? Fear comes, fear comes.