1. Judicial Reasons (Don’t persecute as much)
a. Ankarloo
i. Chapter 1 and 2
1. Growing awareness of judicial people that witches were being convicted for crimes they didn’t commit – led to criticism of how trails were being conducted - this led to stricter procedural rules for conduct of witchcraft trials including more restraint on torture and more demanding standards for evidence
2. Courts became more reluctant to prosecute in the first place
3. Judicial skepticism – not really a skepticism about witchcraft existing but in whether the people being charged were actually guilty – led to “general uncertainty whether the crime could even be proved by law “ (7)
4. Wurzburg – mass witch hunt 1627-29 – led to the breakdown of the stereotypical witch which led to a lack of confidence about how trails were done
5. Cautio ciminalis – written by a Jesuit priest – Friedrich Spee – exposed the judicial pressures to which the accused was subject and the unreliability of their confessions
6. Sweden – 1668-1676 – mass witch hunt – lots of child witnesses – eventually some admitted to making it up and they were persecuted
7. Basque country- Spanish Inquisition (1609-1611) – didn’t involve extensive use of torture – Alonso Salazar de Frias – became skeptical about all the confessions – especially children – came to the conclusion that is was made up – but didn’t deny that witchcraft was used – led to strict set of procedural rules for the Inquisition
8. Four changes that had a bearing on the number of witchcraft trails, convictions, and executions
a. “the tighter control, supervision and regulation of local witchcraft trials by central or superior courts”
b. “The restriction and in some cases the prohibition of torture in witchcraft cases”
c. The adherence of trial judges to more demanding standards of proof”
d. “The admission of more lawyers to represent witches and their trail” (13)
9. Implication of necessary judicial review of witchcraft convictions and punishing volatiors of procedural norms = decline
10. Rules of Spanish Inquisition kept executions in Spain low – some major lapses
11. Roman Inquisition also had strict rules – had the Instructio – had all aspects of criminal procedure because of “grave errors” (17) – had influence over secular courts too
12. Restraining influences of the Holy Roman Empire – central courts of various duchies and principalities and law faculties at universities (not really till late 17th c.)
13. Main criticism of torture wasn’t that it was inhumane – it was that evidence obtained under torture was unreliable – these critics weren’t new
14. The end of torture normally came after the end witchhunt and sometimes not till after decriminalization
15. “the decline of witch persecutions therefore had more to do with the regulation and limitation of torture then with its formal elimination” (22)
16. people began to be reluctant about the evidence presented in order to justify the conviction and execution of a witch
17. Growing reluctance among judges and legal people to accept confessions
18. Burden of proof began to rest on the prosecution – had to show that there couldn’t have been natural causes
19. Revelation of frauds in possession cases = “greater caution in the handling of all witchcraft accusations” (29)
20. Witches started to gain more legal assistance in 17th c.
21. Lawyers could quite easily call attention to faulty evidence
22. Trials became longer
23. Skeptics in the 16th c. didn’t deny witchcraft existed – just different parts of what they did
24. “Until the late 17th c. the philosophical systems that prevailed in academic, theological, and judical circles made the existence of witchcraft possible, even likely” (35)
25. Critics never denied the existence of the devil – just of his power in the natural world and his pacts with humans
26. Prosecutions became too costly and the financial burden fell on the whole community – 46
27. Recognition that people were being executed -46
28. Hungary – the decline here “also involved much of the same judicial skepticism that accompanied the decline of witch-hunting in virtually all Western European countries” – 70
ii. Chapter 3
1. De jure decriminalization did not happen in most places until the end of the 18th c (and when it did most of the time there were still parts of witchcraft that were prohibited and in some it never happened) – de facto decriminalization was when judicial authorities imply stopped prosecuting and executing witches – this one was more common (74)
2. As the witch-hunt declined, there was more prosecution of the people who made false claims or lynched a person they thought was a witch – shows a change in the relationship of the courts and the witch – the were “serving now as their protector rather than their prosecutor” (79)
3. Counter-prosecutions shifted the criminal responsibility from the witch to her attacker or accuser - 83
2. Political Reasons (Stronger central government= more control especially over mobs)
a. Ankarloo
i. Chapter 1
1. The most severe witch-hunts happened under local officials who weren’t very controlled by the state – this changed an led to change in persecution
2. Local judges prosecuted more/ fiercer because gripped by community fear and had less training and less committed to due process
3. France- a country with an increasingly powerful central government- could use an appellate system to reduce the intensity of witch-hunting – 1590’s was when parlement started to insist on its formal right to review the death sentences passed by local judges (48) – parlement also banned water ordeals and made appeals to the higher court automatic which meant that local courts had to send the appellants themselves to the high court which they had to pay for – in 1587 parlement became to only body able to torture (49) – this didn’t have an effect on the other 8 parlements in France(50) – edict of 1682 – witchcraft was reclassified as pretended magic and therefore no longer associated with diabolism - had little effect on the actual volume of witchcraft persecutions (52) - “their reluctance to sentence witches to their death had much more to do with adherence to increasingly rigorous French standards of judicial proof than with some new philosophical or theological misgivings about the extent of Satan’s power” (53
4. England – torture was prohibited in all English criminal trials but it was used illegally in the great witch hunt of 1645-47 when witchcraft became extremely linked with diabolism – lack of inquisitorial procedure like other countries (53) – because assize judges were committed to due process and they lacked personal knowledge of the witch they were a restraining influence during the trail (54) – Anne Gunter and her father Brain Gunter were prosecuted in 1606 in Star Chamber b/c they had conspired through a supposed deomn possession? To indict two women of witch craft who were innocent – the beginning of the decline – the witch-hunt of Matthew Hopkins and John Stearned put a hold on the end of witchcraft prosecutions with their witch hunt that took 200 lives – this “can be attributed in large measures to the breakdown of central government control over the judicial process” (55) – elimination of charges of Devil – worship after 1664 – last execution (alice Molland) took place in 1684 in Devonshire – the last conviction (Jane Wenham) was in Hertforshsire in 1712 – formal decriminalization of witchcraft wasn’t until 1736 (56)
5. Scotland – criminal justice system was a combo of features from England and France – no system of appeals- trail by jury- “difficulty in controlling the excesses of local justice and the strength of religious sentiment in favour of witch-hunting” – central government didn’t have the administrative resources to enforce its will and it was also inconsistent in its attitude towards witchcraft which delayed the end (60) – the Privy Council granted most requests for witchcraft trails – almost all accused witches would be convicted and executed – local trails were conducted by untrained magistrates who were convinced of their guilt and had a lot of procedural abuses especially in regaurds to torture (61) – the central government even initiated some of the witch hunts (62) – skeptical judges could disqualify certain witnesses – the successful implementation of an effective circuit court system after 1671 helped the decline of Scottish witch-hunting (62) – the “determination on the part of officials in the central government to control the administration of local justice” also helped (63)
6. Germany- “because of the multiplicity and variety of the jurisdictional areas within the Holy Roman Empire and the weaknessof central imperial control, the decline of witch-hunting followed different patterns in the various duchies and principalities that constituted the Empire” Focused on Wurtemberg – (66) the decline “can be attributed in large measure ot the efoorts of a skeptical and legally demaning central government to restrain the determination of local magistrates to extirpate witchcraft from their communities” (66)
7. Hungary – declined after 1750’s mass trails – in 1756 Empress Maria Theresa “ordered that all witchcraft cases be submitted to her conciliar appellate court for confirmation before sentences could be carried out” (69)- came to a total end in 1777 – people who defamed their neighbors or who made fraudulent accusations were supposed to be prosecuted and others (the supposedly mentally ill) were sent to hospitals – 71
8. In England, group violence was only restrained when after 1856 a paid and uniformed police force came into existence – in part because they were not orginially from where they were policing – so after 1880 collective ciolent actions against witches rarely happened although this was nt always the case with individual violence – 147
ii. Chapter 1
1. “Louis XIV’s edict of 1682, an eloquent testament to centralizing absolutism, had virtually ended witchcraft persecutions in the secular courts” -211
2. Frederick William I of Prussia in 1728 brought an end to witch-hunting
b. Davies
i. Constables were more responsible to the will of the community then to the will of the state- 113
ii. The purpose of the new police force was to enforce the laws of the state and were not beholden to the community like the constable (who was normally from that location) was 114
iii. “With the inception of a full-time, uniformed police force and increasing numbers of stipendiary magistrates, the popularly perceived right to mob ans swim witches was hindered and suppressed”-288-289
3. Reasons People still believed in witches
a. Ankarloo
i. Groups of people (even after prosecutions stopped) took illegal action against suspected witches still – 46
ii. England- sometimes even though judges recommended acquittal the jury would still return a guilty verdict in the 17th c (54) – few educated men (especially those in the legal profession) didn’t express open disbelief in the reality of the crime (58)
iii. “During the later centuries there are numerous scattered accounts of lynchings or maltreatment of supposed witches and of the actions of unwitching specialists” 114
iv. people in the country who still believed in witchcraft were probably frustrated that the judges would not cooperate and therefore took matters into their own hands – “Dupont-Bouchat mentions some ten, mainly Walloon, cases of lynching or maltreatment, two of which are from the end of the 17th c, one from the beginning of the eighteenth and the rest form the 19th c up to 1882” -115
v. In France “witchcraft continued to belong to the cultural repertoire of misfortune after the end of the witch-trails” -118
vi. 1771 Anne Fousset was branded and thrown in the fire by her fellow villagers – 121
vii. in Italy around Perugia in 1911 an old woman who was supposed to be a witch was burnt in a limekiln by farmers
viii. Briget Cleary in Ballyvadlea in 1895 was killed by her husband who was trying to drive the fairy changeling out of her and bring back the real her – 143
ix. In Denmark – a woman named Dorte in 1722 was tied down in her house which was then set on fire
x. In Russia in 1879 – in Vrachevo a 50 year old woman was burnt alive in her hosue
xi. “For those concerened, witchcraft remained a useful, culturally accepted and therefore rational strategy for dealing with certain problems” 175
xii. even after the witch-trails had ended – witches were often still held responsible for misfortunes 184
xiii. a decline in wc accusations led to a decline in wc belief and not the other way around 185
xiv. “Rejection of belief in witches opened the door the atheism” 198
xv. To believe too little was atheism, too much was superstition” 199
xvi. “Addison and Huntenson were of a mind: gentlemen no longer believed in witches” 208
xvii. “At the dawn of the 20th c, villagers in remote rural Essex still believed in magic; witches brought on illness and even paralysis and visited victims with plagues and lice. Witchcraft worked within a wider cosmology helping people to make sense of existence and handle adversity” 257
b. Davies
i. “Many educated men and women continued to believe that witchcraft had existed and could exist, but ceased to believe that it continued to exist in their own times” – 8
ii. Rev. William Ettrick was originally skeptical of witchcraft until a series of misfortunes befell his house – 17
iii. Some made reference to the Bible in order to defend their belief – didn’t have the patience to listen about the mistranslation of the bible 105
good idea to prep the essay this way
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