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Early modern European society started to take place roughly throughout the late 15th century to the early 18th century. A time of many social, economic and religious transformations, as well as a time in which witchcraft became popular and began to take place roughly in the same era. Accusations of witchcraft became more numerously increased at a steady rate for almost 3 centuries. Witchcraft? Yes, many hundreds and thousands of innocent people, most of them women, accused of supposed practice of witchcraft, where one was within the cooperation in which mortal humans were in connection with devils in order to cause harm to others, an alliance with the forces of evil rather to that of God. The Reformation divided people in Europe between Protestants, who took the crime of witchcraft not as seriously as Catholics, who were in the group of people loyal to the Pope. Who were the Witches? The witches of this era were believed to be in contact with the devil and were to have the capability to practice dark magic. These witches were held responsible for many causes such as diseases, among them the Black Death that killed many in that time of the 14th century. Disasters of weather, dying of cattle and supposed bewitching of others were all blamed on individuals thought to be witches. Many believed that if they owned cats or dogs, the animals were given to them by demons to act as advisors or messengers for them. They were also believed to hold ceremonies themselves called Witch’s Sabbath, a parody of the Christian masses that would connect them with the devil. In any case then, an individual that would appear to hold a contrary to God, or had unnatural behavior as well as appeared to be working with rituals or ingredients put together for a purpose would be labeled as a witch. The Witch Hunt The lookout for witches and the hunt for them reached its peak in Europe in the late 16th century to early 17th century. Many were blamed and females were accused more than males, so now that the society of the early modern European era had an idea of what was a witch, the “proof” for being a witch in the time back then, now to the society of today just seems ridiculous and kind of unreasonable. An approximate 80% of the accused were females an approximately 20% of them were males. The accusations that would happen in France had no link to gender at all, but overall in Europe, 48% of trials ended in execution, meaning around 60,000 witches died, if not more. According to witch hunters, a “witch’s mark” was more than enough evidence to indicate that a suspect was a witch. These “witch’s mark” to the European era back then would mean any signs of moles, scars, birthmarks, skin tags, odd nipples or skin that stood out as opposed to natural blemishes. Taking a look at this superstition, one can see how unfairly accused many suspects could have been blamed for. In many cases then, no further evidence was needed than the “witch’s mark,” if an individual represented a type of big enough scar, a mole or any other type of mark on their skin that may have not been very common in general society at the time, suspects were harshly accused of possible witchcraft and fell under a doomed situation. Having no knowledge whatsoever of reconsidering the suspect for suspicion of being a witch, the common sense of the time was that (s)he had to be a witch. Wives of men were actually less likely to ever be accused of witchcraft. A majority of accused witches that were female seemed to be older than 50 years, an age that back then was a more advanced age to be living than today. The strong accusation in them seemed clear to surrounding neighbors. Particularly older women who maybe never gave birth or were now far from ever giving birth had given the female group a difficulty to comprehend within the late medieval social family unit. The reason especially for the older female group to be a target of witchcraft was that women tended to live into an older age than males, so even if she had not married or had a husband that died, then survived more years later, suspicion would rise among the neighbors of the female elder. Due to the fact, they were seen as a burden by the neighbors. In consumption, it was more often the neighbors who labeled a woman for being a witch and had their mind set that she would want things for herself from neighbors, but had little to offer to those better off than her. This made her seem even more as an economic burden and the neighbors perceived her into being filled with envy and verbal violence. What we see here is ignorance of what the reality was and in results, torture occurred in many ways, thousands of un-justifications were made to poor women and some men. In many cases, European’s filled their minds with beliefs of the existence of demons, spirits and simple thoughts that their neighbor was causing harm to them on purpose by killing cattle and even to the extreme of bewitching someone. All of it twisted their minds to not being able to fix the problem they faced, which led to many cases of finding the simple excuse that it had to be a witch, there was no other explanation and therefore, the person they targeted for was guilty. This was the case of many witch hunters like Mathew Hopkins, who devoted their lives and careers to expose targeted witches. Not only were they well paid if they uncovered a witch, but they firmly believed that witches were real. Why were they blamed? One thing would be to blame a suspect of being a witch and another to know they were being blamed. What were their reasons to blame people of being witches and why did they belief that they could be a threat? The results for this were brutal punishments, which will be described a bit later. The ones blamed for witchcraft could have been blamed for many reasons that may have shown a believed threat to others. As many diseases would hit and with them the horrible Black Death that wiped out a vast majority of the population, the Europeans were all desperate and were somehow trying to find the reason for why the disease started and how to make it stop. Having no technological or scientific evidence that would help, they started to make up their own reasons to why this was happening. This is where once again the guilty party of numerous of people believed to be witches comes back. The wild disease that is killing a lot of people in a horrible way has a cause not known, so of course, answers are needed desperately and maybe a cure to try to combat it is in need too! Many people that may have been actually trying to be helpful would possibly try to make cures and treat the sick with the hope that maybe they would be able to come up with something to battle the disease. Most of those people were probably women in search for natural remedies, they may have been seen putting a lot of herbs and natural medicines together to cure the sick, which automatically may have been misinterpreted and lead people to think that the person was a witch and even so more if the person showed a “witch’s mark,” then that was just horrible luck. If the person was treating the sick with their remedies or by using a method that they thought would make the sick better and the situation ended with the sick dying because the remedy did not work and the disease got stronger, then others would accuse the person trying to help of being a witch. Others thinking the sick were bewitched and died. Some were probably accused of witchcraft for similar reasons as to that, which was just misunderstanding. Instead of having those kinds of thoughts, what should have hapened would be to get together and try to find a cure for the diseases instead of blaming others for death. Superstition here is shown to be strong and sadly overpowered the human improvement of understanding. Having to be involved with the persecution of witches may have just been linked to men’s effort to gain power and status due to ideals of masculinity, a social impact of this negative female stereotype turned to be enormous. The ones to blame a person of witchcraft could have just maybe even had personal reasons too. Witch-hunts were depicted partly as a “war against women” controlled mainly by men, especially those of high authority. It may have felt easiest to men and women to fix problems of witchcraft and turn them to reality when attached to women. Most accusations could have also resulted in conflicts opposing a woman to another, leaking to men who controlled political structures of society. Records show that 43% of the witnesses testifying against other women were indeed women and female witnesses rose to about 53% in the last years of Queen Elizabeth. Women started to build a reputation of gossip, accusing suspects and needed intervention of men, preferably of high status. After all, we can start seeing that it was mainly people different in a way through age, physical disability or any other reason, who were picked out by who wanted to believe there was a reason why something wrong happened, ignoring all awareness that could have improved society to make it better. Punishments To be more traditionally, punishments were used to make the accused confess all accusations which would include whipping, being pricked with a sharp instrument or burning them, where accused were bounded to a large stake surrounded by burning wood, a method of punishment famous for punishing witchcraft at this era. Another famous punishment used a lot included throwing the suspect to a river, tying their hands and feet together. If the suspect drowned (s)he was innocent, but if they somehow floated, they were being rejected by water (God’s creation) and were guilty. Matthew Hopkins, the all-time famous witch hunter of the 17th century came up with many advance interrogation techniques, all aiming for the accused suspect to confess for their crime. A cruel punishment at the time strapped the accused and kept them in a chair without food, water or sleep as long as 3 days sometimes, under super close watch. Being kept awake with the concentration and pressure of the chair was a method to see if the witch magically called his or her imp to release the pain, any animal that would approach was considered to be the imp. Hopkins would also try to make them confess of any others that supposedly practiced witchcraft too. The torture continues with the instrument called strappado, which tied the witch’s hands behind his/her back and pulled them to the air by them. The rack was another technology developed for witchcraft, it was a way to tie the victim’s arms and legs to ropes at the top and bottom of device, a lever was turned to dislocate their limbs, the best part was that each person got to see the ones that went before them. Judas Cradle was the name of another technique where the victim was hung up above dirty and infectious pyramid, being repeatedly dropped on it, the torture would continue if they refused to talk. Then as if that wasn’t enough, other methods included starvation or psychological pressure. The superstition of the era in the ignorance of early modern European society, made believe that demons such as witches were real, created horrible time especially for women during the 15th, 16th, and late 17th centuries. The ways of torture were caused by so much ignorance preventing the scientific world to develop the way it did not until the end of this era. People’s beliefs made an extreme amount of innocent people to be killed because of superstition. If only everyone reasoned the way we do now, society would’ve been so much better back then in the world. Reality behind Witchcraft The evidence is clear that witchcraft was a whole misunderstanding of possibly many things. In them, probably the first attempts to cure diseases, men’s will to keep the control over women and even not being able to communicate and solve problems, but just basing knowledge on beliefs. Through all, it is evident that much superstition resulted in various scenes of torture, which all just led a misguidance of what the awaring reality truly was and then prevented an improvement in society. If things were done in a diferent way, the social life of many could have been much better. People could have been more aware of what exactly was spiritually happening. Famous witch hunters as Mathew Hopkins were part of the misleading policies of the era and instead of trying to improve the world they were living in, they came up with harsh punishments for innocent people, all due to there superstition. This appears to be a horrible chain reaction that took control over the early modern European society and is now part of the history that makes who we, humans are. 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