George Way

10/30/08

Per.0

DBQ Prosecution of Witches

In Europe from 1480 to 1700, over 100,000 people were tried as witches, mainly

to do with the fact that religion compelled people to look for things that do not exist,

suspicion of someone being a witch, or because scientists also believed in witches. This,

in turn, divides the documents into three main categories. The first group, is suspicion

using Testimonies of accused witches and eyewitnesses, the second is the religious

opinions on witches and the last major category is, the scientific opinions. However,

leaving a sub-category in which are the charts and tables.

First off, the witch hunts were started by suspicions that people had created about

certain individuals. In the category of suspicion, the first document is the, testimony of a

licensed mid-wife in Dillingen, Germany. This document is important mainly to do with

the accused person being a mid-wife but, mainly to do with the torture applied to the

suspect. Torture can make anyone say anything you want them to; therefore making the

confession questionable, but at the same time this helps demonstrate the drastic measures

that people would go through to find these imaginary beings. However, in three more

documents the people show the innocence of the accused. First, there is an, eyewitness to

the persecution in Trier (doc 2); the eyewitness says that the witch trials were to make the

people in office more money that’s why it happened in town to town. On the other hand

the witch trials started to become part of the culture, therefore forging a poem, written in

1621, that shows that the witches are not real however, we make people into witches
ourselves. And last, there is a letter from am accused person Johannes Junius (doc 7), in

which he tells about the torture applied if one were to deny being a witch. On the other

side of the argument, there are the mislead individuals, for example Thomas Ady (doc 3),

describing the feelings of an English house-holder, in which he refuses to help an old

lady because he suspects she is a witch. Then there is a report of churchwardens in

Gloucestershire (doc 4), England, 1563, in which they accuse someone of being a witch

simply because the person helped to cure illness. Then the last article is Roger North (doc

6), brother of the Chief Justice in Exeter, England in 1683, whom states “this judge hath

no religion, for he does not believe in witches. This shows that religion really had a huge

impact in the inquisition of suspects.

However, religion does play a major role in the search for witches. This can be

represented through two groups of religious leaders and religious people. First, there are

two Dominican monks (doc 1), that wrote a handbook used in the Inquisition, whom

wrote that women are more vulnerable to the evil because God formed women through a

bent rib. This helps demonstrate how pious these people were and how they basically

interpreted the bible as it was written. Next is from the diary of a young, Protestant boy

(doc 5), late 16th century. Before any analysis of the words one can assume that if he can

read and write he is probably not a poor boy, most likely upper class. However, he writes

that he is scared of hell; this shows also how people probably felt, giving reason to the

Inquisition of witches. On the other hand, there are the Religious leaders, which are Pope

Innocent VIII (doc 2), the witch bull, 1484, Martin Luther (doc 3), and John Calvin (doc

4); all of which state that there are witches out there and the people need to find them, in

order to purge the land of their evil. This might also be the main cause for the Witch trial
because major religious figures are telling their people that there, are in fact witches

amongst them.

Then there are scientific opinions on witches and they seem to contradict one

another, showing that the study of witches was not uniform. To begin with, there is W.

Fulhecke (Doc 1) who states that witches actually exist, in which his basis of evidence is

that when they are evil they succumb to disease and malice; therefore he thinks that there

are in fact witches among the people. On the contrary, there is Johan Wier (Doc 2), a

Belgian physician, whom states that there are not witches but, the devil does affect people

whom are not Christian, mainly women. By this said, we can assume that there was no

concrete evidence of witches and their supernatural powers, so that witch hunts were of

the imagination. This is because they are old and their minds are easy to trick, so, people

should not throw suspect in dungeons because the devil and evil spirits can reach them

there and make them confess things they haven’t really done. Through evidence one can

see that it is not the devil but in fact the torture that makes the suspect confess. However,

shown in the chart (doc 1) many of the convicted were poor people, mostly whom of

which were females in middle-age or older. Thus, the three major causes for persecution

were suspicion, religion and misleading science.