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227-512: The witch-cult hypothesis is a discredited theory that the witch trials of the Early Modern period were an attempt to suppress a pagan religion that had survived the Christianization of Europe. According to its proponents, accused witches were actually followers of this alleged religion. They argue that the supposed 'witch cult ' revolved around worshiping a Horned God of fertility and

454-447: A "correct intuition" in identifying the remnants of a pre-Christian 'religion of Diana', and in believing that witch-trial testimonies did at times represent actual or perceived experiences. In the original Italian preface to I benandanti , published in 1966, Ginzburg discussed the work of Murray, claiming that although it contained "a kernel of truth", it had been "formulated in a wholly uncritical way", containing "serious defects". With

681-592: A "more sympathetic" stance to Murray's ideas than other specialists in the witch trials, he "does not propose anything approaching the pan-European cult which Murray advocated". Witch trials in the early modern period In the early modern period , from about 1400 to 1775, about 100,000 people were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe and British America . Between 40,000 and 60,000 were executed, almost all in Europe. The witch-hunts were particularly severe in parts of

908-643: A brief outburst of witch panic that occurred in the New World when the practice was waning in Europe. In the 1690s, Winifred King Benham and her daughter Winifred were thrice tried for witchcraft in Wallingford, Connecticut , the last of such trials in New England . Even though they were found innocent, they were compelled to leave Wallingford and settle in Staten Island, New York . In 1706, Grace Sherwood of Virginia

1135-581: A butterfly to him. Earlier works on witchcraft often placed a large number of stereotypical witch trials in southern France in the early fourteenth century. This is the result of Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon , who published Histoire de l'inquisition en France in 1829. He described a sudden outburst of mass witch trials ending in hundreds of executions, and the accused were portrayed as the stereotypical demonic witch. He purported to extensively quote in translation from inquisitorial records. His book proved influential. Joseph Hansen included large excerpts from

1362-463: A claim, and ran a coven called the Clan of Tubal Cain ; he inspired the founding of several movements, including the 1734 Tradition . Alex Sanders also made such a claim, and founded Alexandrian Wicca ; however, Sanders turned out to be a Gardnerian initiate and had based Alexandrian ritual on Gardnerian Wicca. In 1974 E.W. Lidell made the claim that the occultist Aleister Crowley had been initiated into

1589-438: A confession from a suspect, but presents a higher risk of false confession. Many torture victims will say whatever the torturer wants to hear to end the torture. Others who are guilty refuse to confess, especially if they believe it would only bring more torture or punishment. Medieval justice systems attempted to counteract the risk of false confession under torture by requiring confessors to provide falsifiable details about

1816-406: A crime, although Islamic law has traditionally considered evidence obtained under torture to be inadmissible . Torture remained legal in Europe during the seventeenth century, but its practice declined. Torture was already of marginal importance to European criminal justice systems by its formal abolition in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Theories for why torture was abolished include

2043-482: A criminal offense under a country's laws, evidence obtained under torture may not be admitted in court, and deporting a person to another country where they are likely to face torture is forbidden . Even when it is illegal under national law, judges in many countries continue to admit evidence obtained under torture or ill treatment. It is disputed whether ratification of the CAT decreases, does not affect, or even increases

2270-532: A decline in living standards, and these averages remained high for nearly two centuries and averages across Northwestern Europe had done likewise. The convents were closed during the Protestant Reformation , which displaced many nuns. Many communities saw the proportion of unmarried women climb from less than 10% to 20% and in some cases as high as 30%, whom few communities knew how to accommodate economically. Miguel (2003) argues that witch killings may be

2497-462: A disaster that had befallen the community, such as crop failure, war, or disease. For instance, Midelfort suggested that in southwestern Germany, war and famine destabilised local communities, resulting in the witch prosecutions of the 1620s. Behringer also suggests an increase in witch prosecutions due to socio-political destabilization, stressing the Little Ice Age's effects on food shortages, and

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2724-442: A distinction between torture and painful punishments. Historically, torture was seen as a reliable way to elicit the truth, a suitable punishment, and deterrence against future offenses. When torture was legally regulated, there were restrictions on the allowable methods; common methods in Europe included the rack and strappado . In most societies, citizens could be judicially tortured only under exceptional circumstances and for

2951-502: A fertility-based faith that she also termed "the Dianic cult". She claimed that the cult had "very probably" once been devoted to the worship of both a male deity and a "Mother Goddess" but that "at the time when the cult is recorded the worship of the male deity appears to have superseded that of the female". In her thesis, Murray claimed that the figure referred to as the Devil in the trial accounts

3178-488: A fixed penalty to be torture, as it does not seek to break the victim's will. Torture may also be used indiscriminately to terrorize people other than the direct victim or to deter opposition to the government. In the United States , torture was used to deter slaves from escaping or rebelling. Some defenders of judicial torture prior to its abolition argued that it deterred crime; reformers contended that because torture

3405-465: A group of pagan villagers pretend to be witches in order to scare away Christians intent on disrupting their Walpurgis Night festivities. Jarcke's theories were adopted and altered by the German historian Franz Josef Mone in 1839. While serving as director of archives at Baden , he published his ideas in a paper in which he asserted that the pre-Christian religion which degenerated into Satanic witchcraft

3632-412: A higher rate than for any other traumatic experience. Not all survivors or rehabilitation experts support using medical categories to define their experience, and many survivors remain psychologically resilient . Criminal prosecutions for torture are rare and most victims who submit formal complaints are not believed. Despite the efforts for evidence-based evaluation of the scars from torture such as

3859-446: A human being can retain within himself" and that "whoever was tortured, stays tortured". Many torture victims, including Améry, later die by suicide. Survivors often experience social and financial problems. Circumstances such as housing insecurity , family separation , and the uncertainty of applying for asylum in a safe country strongly impact survivors' well-being. Death is not an uncommon outcome of torture. Understanding of

4086-554: A kind word for Murray". One of the foremost specialists of the trial records, L'Estrange Ewen, brought out a series of books specialising in the archival material which rejected Murray's ideas. Similarly, W.R. Halliday reviewed her work for the Folklore journal and exposed the flaws in her use of sources. E. M. Loeb criticised her in his review of The Witch-Cult in Western Europe for American Anthropologist . In Noble's words, "There

4313-428: A male deity known as Lucifer , as well as a female deity, the goddess Diana . Leland's work would provide much of the inspiration for the neopagan witchcraft religion of Stregheria . In 1915, Margaret Murray was an Egyptologist who worked under Sir Flinders Petrie at University College London . However, the outbreak of World War I had meant that many of their staff and students had abandoned scholarship to aid

4540-558: A manual for like-minded zealots. The Gutenberg printing press had only recently been invented along the Rhine River, and Kramer fully utilized it to shepherd his work into print and spread the ideas that had been developed by inquisitors and theologians in France into the Rhineland. The theological views espoused by Kramer were influential but remained contested. Nonetheless Malleus Maleficarum

4767-414: A minority of the accused. Roughly 80% of those convicted were women, most of them over the age of 40. In some regions, convicted witches were burnt at the stake , the traditional punishment for religious heresy. Throughout the medieval era , mainstream Christian doctrine had denied the belief in the existence of witches and witchcraft, condemning it as a pagan superstition . Some have argued that

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4994-414: A new development occurred when accusations of diabolism gradually became more common and more important in prosecutions, although they were still less common than trials for sorcery. Records of witch trials from this century also lacked extensive descriptions of meetings of witches. In 1329, with the papacy in nearby Avignon, the inquisitor of Carcassonne sentenced a Carmelite friar called Peter Recordi to

5221-475: A number of trials which, while technically not witch trials, are suspected to have involved a belief in witches. In 1782, Anna Göldi was executed in Glarus , Switzerland . Officially she was executed for "poisoning" (her employer, who believed that she had practiced witchcraft on his daughter )—a ruling at the time widely denounced throughout Switzerland and Germany as judicial murder . Like Anna Göldi, Barbara Zdunk

5448-570: A person to a capital crime if there were fewer than the two eyewitnesses required to convict someone in the absence of a confession. Torture was still a labor-intensive process reserved for the most severe crimes; most torture victims were men accused of murder, treason, or theft. Medieval ecclesiastical courts and the Inquisition used torture under the same procedural rules as secular courts. The Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran used torture in cases where circumstantial evidence tied someone to

5675-572: A person to do something and physical attacks that ultimately target the mind. Death threats , mock execution , or being forced to witness the torture of another person are often reported to be subjectively worse than being physically tortured and are associated with severe sequelae . Other torture techniques include sleep deprivation , overcrowding or solitary confinement , withholding of food or water, sensory deprivation (such as hooding ), exposure to extremes of light or noise (e.g., musical torture ), humiliation (which can be based on sexuality or

5902-514: A prehistoric matriarchal society, and concurred with Gage that the witch-cult was a survival of it. Pearson theorized that during the Christian era, the religion began to emphasise the male deity, which was then equated with the Christian Devil. Pearson also made the claim that Joan of Arc had been one of the last few priestesses of the religion. He was, however, unlike Michelet or Gage, opposed to

6129-477: A process of eliminating the financial burdens of a family or society, via elimination of the older women that need to be fed, and an increase in unmarried women would enhance this process. Torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including punishment , extracting a confession , interrogation for information , or intimidating third parties. Some definitions restrict torture to acts carried out by

6356-408: A real Satanic conspiracy against Christendom in the Early Modern period replete with witches with supernatural powers. As Hilda Ellis Davidson noted; "how refreshing and exciting her first book was at that period . A new approach, and such a surprising one." "Surely, discussion of what confessedly is so unripe is premature. When Miss Murray has broadened her study to all the lands where she can find

6583-579: A replacement for the king. No academic took the book seriously, and it was ignored by many of her supporters. It did however influence a few historical novels e.g. Philip Lindsay 's The Devil and King John . Upon initial publication, Murray's thesis gained a favourable reception from many readers, including a number of significant scholars, albeit none of whom were experts in the witch trials. Historians of Early Modern Britain like Sir George Clark and Christopher Hill incorporated her theories into their work, although Hill later publicly regretted doing so. For

6810-476: A repression of an indigenous Völkisch Norse-Germanic nature religion, and as evidence for reconstructing that religion. This prompted Stuart Clark to dub the Nazi regime "Europe's first and only 'pro-witch' government." One pamphlet, 1935's The Christian Witch-Craze , claimed that the witch-hunts were an attempt to exterminate "Aryan womanhood". In 1985 Classical historian Georg Luck , in his Arcana Mundi: Magic and

7037-402: A serious crime such as treason , often only when some evidence already existed. In contrast, non-citizens such as foreigners and slaves were commonly tortured. Torture was rare in early medieval Europe but became more common between 1200 and 1400. Because medieval judges used an exceptionally high standard of proof, they would sometimes authorize torture when circumstantial evidence tied

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7264-450: A shift to methods that do not leave marks to aid in deniability and to deprive victims of legal redress. As they faced more pressure and scrutiny, democracies led the innovation in clean torture practices in the early twentieth century; such techniques diffused worldwide by the 1960s. Patterns of torture differ based on a torturer's time limits—for example, resulting from legal limits on pre-trial detention. Beatings or blunt trauma are

7491-460: A side effect of a broken criminal justice system in which underfunding, lack of judicial independence , or corruption undermines effective investigations and fair trials . In this context, people who cannot afford bribes are likely to become victims of torture. Understaffed or poorly trained police are more likely to resort to torture when interrogating suspects. In some countries, such as Kyrgyzstan , suspects are more likely to be tortured at

7718-622: A significant proportion of them were held in France. Until 1330 the trials were linked to prominent figures in the church or politics, as victims or as accused suspects, and more than half took place in France, where it was the usual way of explaining royal deaths in the direct Capetian line . The papacy of John XXII was another engine for witchcraft accusations. There were also a significant number of trials in England and Germany. The charges were generally mild. Diabolism, believed to involve nocturnal orgies and traditionally linked to accusations of heresy,

7945-489: A small group meeting to practice witchcraft, while on the other hand, very great included respecting and admiring heretics. Kramer begins his work in opposition to the Canon Episcopi, but oddly, he does not cite Jacquier, and he may not have been aware of his work. Like most witch-phobic writers, Kramer had met strong resistance by those who opposed his heterodox view; this inspired him to write his work as both propaganda and

8172-429: A stronger central government, the witchcraft accusations began to decline. The witch trials that occurred there were symptomatic of a weak legal system and "witches were most likely to be tried and convicted in regions where magistrates departed from established legal statutes". During the early 18th century, the practice subsided. Jane Wenham was among the last subjects of a typical witch trial in England in 1712, but

8399-438: A surviving race of dwarves, who continued to live in the island up until the Early Modern period. She asserted that this race followed the same pagan religion as the witches, thus explaining the folkloric connection between the two. In the appendices to the book, she also alleged that Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais were members of the witch-cult and were executed for it, a claim which has been refuted by historians, especially in

8626-446: A torture program begins, it usually escalates beyond what is intended initially and often leads to involved agencies losing effectiveness. Torture aims to break the victim's will , destroy their agency and personality , and is cited as one of the most damaging experiences that a person can undergo. Many victims suffer both physical damage— chronic pain is particularly common—and mental sequelae . Although torture survivors have some of

8853-481: A universal explanation, for trials also took place in areas which were free from war, famine, or pestilence. Additionally, these theories—particularly Behringer's —have been labeled as oversimplified. Although there is evidence that the Little Ice Age and subsequent famine and disease was likely a contributing factor to increase in witch persecution, Durrant argues that one cannot make a direct link between these problems and witch persecutions in all contexts. Moreover,

9080-490: A vicious cycle in which a fear of internal enemies leads to torture, torture creates false confessions , and false confessions reinforce torturers' fears, leading to a spiral of paranoia and ever-increasing torture"—similar to a witch hunt . Escalation of torture is especially difficult to contain in counterinsurgency operations. Torture and specific techniques spread between different countries, especially by soldiers returning home from overseas wars , although this process

9307-533: A witch through this book, the public outlook of witchcraft soon transformed from evil to demonic. It is unknown if a degree of alarm at the extreme superstition and witch-phobia expressed by Kramer in the Malleus Maleficarum may have been one of the numerous factors that helped prepare the ground for the Protestant Reformation . The period of the European witch trials with the most active phase and which saw

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9534-475: Is prohibited under international law for all states under all circumstances and is explicitly forbidden by several treaties. Opposition to torture stimulated the formation of the human rights movement after World War II , and it continues to be an important human rights issue. Although prevention efforts have been of mixed effectiveness, institutional reforms and the elimination of enforced disappearance have had positive effects. Despite its decline, torture

9761-531: Is a gap of about a thousand years between the Christianisation of Britain and the start of the witch trials there, he asserts that there is no evidence for the existence of the witch-cult anywhere in the intervening period. He further criticises her for treating pre-Christian Britain as a socially and culturally monolithic entity, whereas in reality it contained a diverse array of societies and religious beliefs. In addition to this, he challenged Murray's claim that

9988-741: Is also apparent from an episode of English history, that during the civil war in the early 1640s, witch-hunters emerged, the most notorious of whom was Matthew Hopkins from East Anglia and proclaimed himself the "Witchfinder General". Italy has had fewer witchcraft accusations, and even fewer cases where witch trials ended in execution. In 1542, the establishment of the Roman Catholic Inquisition effectively restrained secular courts under its influence from liberal application of torture and execution. The methodological Instructio, which served as an "appropriate" manual for witch hunting, cautioned against hasty convictions and careless executions of

10215-459: Is appalling". They went on to assert that "Today, scholars are agreed that Murray was more than just wrong – she was completely and embarrassingly wrong on nearly all of her basic premises." In his sociological study of the Early Modern witchcraft, Gary Jensen highlighted that Murray's work had been "seriously challenged" and that it did not take into account "why it took so long for the heretic witch to be invented and targeted", noting that had

10442-584: Is correlated with the belief that torture is effective and used in ticking time bomb cases. Women are more likely to oppose torture than men. Nonreligious people are less likely to support the use of torture than religious people , although for the latter group, increased religiosity increases opposition to torture. The personality traits of right-wing authoritarianism , social dominance orientation , and retributivism are correlated with higher support for torture; embrace of democratic values such as liberty and equality reduces support for torture. Public opinion

10669-447: Is criticized based on all major ethical frameworks, including deontology , consequentialism , and virtue ethics . Some contemporary philosophers argue that torture is never morally acceptable; others propose exceptions to the general rule in real-life equivalents of the ticking time-bomb scenario. Torture stimulated the creation of the human rights movement . In 1969, the Greek case

10896-511: Is enabled by moral disengagement from the victims and impunity for the perpetrators. Public demand for decisive action against crime or even support for torture against criminals can facilitate its use. Once a torture program is begun, it is difficult or impossible to prevent it from escalating to more severe techniques and expanding to larger groups of victims, beyond what is originally intended or desired by decision-makers. Sociologist Christopher J. Einolf argues that "torture can create

11123-905: Is even more common in asymmetric war or civil wars. The ticking time bomb scenario is extremely rare, if not impossible, but is cited to justify torture for interrogation. Fictional portrayals of torture as an effective interrogational method have fueled misconceptions that justify the use of torture. Experiments comparing torture with other interrogation methods cannot be performed for ethical and practical reasons, but most scholars of torture are skeptical about its efficacy in obtaining accurate information, although torture sometimes has obtained actionable intelligence. Interrogational torture can often shade into confessional torture or simply into entertainment, and some torturers do not distinguish between interrogation and confession. A wide variety of techniques have been used for torture. Nevertheless, there are limited ways of inflicting pain while minimizing

11350-507: Is explicitly prohibited under the Geneva Conventions . Some authors, such as John D. Bessler , argue that capital punishment is inherently a form of torture carried out for punishment. Executions may be carried out in brutal ways, such as stoning , death by burning , or dismemberment. The psychological harm of capital punishment is sometimes considered a form of psychological torture. Others do not consider corporal punishment with

11577-492: Is forbidden for all states under all circumstances. Most jurists justify the absolute legal prohibition on torture based on its violation of human dignity . The CAT and its Optional Protocol focus on the prevention of torture, which was already prohibited in international human rights law under other treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights . The CAT specifies that torture must be

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11804-408: Is known about the perpetrators of torture. Many torturers see their actions as serving a higher political or ideological goal that justifies torture as a legitimate means of protecting the state. Fear is often the motivation for torture, and it is typically not a rational response as it is usually ineffective or even counterproductive at achieving the desired aim. Torture victims are often viewed by

12031-774: Is more common than torture in places of detention. There is even less information on the prevalence of torture before the twentieth century. Although it is often assumed that men suffer torture at a higher rate than women, there is a lack of evidence. Some quantitative research has estimated that torture rates are either stagnant or increasing over time, but this may be a measurement effect. Although liberal democracies are less likely to abuse their citizens, they may practice torture against marginalized citizens and non-citizens to whom they are not democratically accountable. Voters may support violence against out-groups seen as threatening; majoritarian institutions are ineffective at preventing torture against minorities or foreigners. Torture

12258-425: Is more likely when a society feels threatened because of wars or crises, but studies have not found a consistent relationship between the use of torture and terrorist attacks. Torture is directed against certain segments of the population, who are denied the protection against torture given to others. Torture of political prisoners and torture during armed conflicts receive more attention compared to torture of

12485-443: Is most favorable to torture, on average, in countries with low per capita income and high levels of state repression . Public opinion is an important constraint on the use of torture by states. The condemnation of torture as barbaric and uncivilized originated in the debates around its abolition. By the late nineteenth century, countries began to be condemned internationally for the use of torture. The ban on torture became part of

12712-524: Is no constructive criticism between peers here; it is a frontal attack on an author Loeb clearly believes has no place among published historians, at least on the topic of witchcraft." In his 1962 work A Razor for a Goat , Rose asserted that Murray's books on the witch-cult "contain an incredible number of minor errors of fact or of calculation and several inconsistencies of reasoning." He accepted that her case "could, perhaps, still be proved by somebody else, though I very much doubt it." Highlighting that there

12939-438: Is often assumed that torture is ordered from above at the highest levels of government, sociologist Jonathan Luke Austin argues that government authorization is a necessary but not sufficient condition for torture to occur, given that a specific order to torture rarely can be identified. In many cases, a combination of dispositional and situational effects lead a person to become a torturer. In most cases of systematic torture,

13166-411: Is poorly understood. Torture for punishment dates back to antiquity and is still employed in the twenty-first century. A common practice in countries with dysfunctional justice systems or overcrowded prisons is for police to apprehend suspects, torture them, and release them without a charge. Such torture could be performed in a police station, the victim's home, or a public place. In South Africa,

13393-489: Is still practiced in or by most countries. Torture is defined as the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on someone under the control of the perpetrator. The treatment must be inflicted for a specific purpose, such as punishment and forcing the victim to confess or provide information. The definition put forth by the United Nations Convention against Torture only considers torture carried out by

13620-640: Is transformed into a merely magical, or even black-magical practice under the pressure of the Inquisition." Historian of witchcraft Michael D. Bailey suggested that Ginzburg's work "somewhat revived" Murray's "discredited notion of witchcraft representing an ancient fertility religion". Conversely, other scholars drew a clear divide between the ideas of Murray and Ginzburg; in 1975, Cohn stated that Ginzburg's discovery had "nothing to do" with Murray's witch-cult hypothesis. Echoing these views, in 1999 English historian Ronald Hutton stated that Ginzburg's ideas regarding shamanistic fertility cults were actually "pretty much

13847-513: Is unclear whether the three men were aware of each other's work. The coevolution of their shared view centres around "a common challenge: disbelief in the reality of demonic activity in the world." Nicholas Jacquier's lengthy and complex argument against the Canon Episcopi was written in Latin. It began as a tract in 1452 and was expanded into a fuller monograph in 1458. Many copies seem to have been made by hand (nine manuscript copies still exist), but it

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14074-631: The Cathars and the Waldensians . The Dominicans eventually evolved into the most zealous prosecutors of persons accused of witchcraft in the years leading up to the Reformation. Records were usually kept by the French inquisitors, but the majority of these records did not survive, and one historian who was working in 1880, Charles Molinier, refers to the surviving records as only scanty debris. Molinier notes that

14301-666: The Council of Basel (1431–1437) and some scholars have suggested a new anti-witchcraft doctrinal view may have spread among certain theologians and inquisitors in attendance at this council as the Valais trials were discussed. Not long after, a cluster of powerful opponents of the Canon Episcopi emerged: a Dominican inquisitor in Carcassonne named Jean Vinet, the Bishop of Avila Alfonso Tostado, and another Dominican Inquisitor named Nicholas Jacquier . It

14528-763: The Holy Roman Empire . There was much regional variation within the British Isles . In Ireland, for example, there were few trials. There are particularly important differences between the English and continental witch-hunting traditions. In England the use of torture was rare and the methods far more restrained. The country formally permitted it only when authorized by the monarch, and no more than 81 torture warrants were issued (for all offenses) throughout English history. The death toll in Scotland dwarfed that of England. It

14755-517: The Holy Roman Empire . Prosecutions for witchcraft reached a high point from 1560 to 1630, during the Counter-Reformation and the European wars of religion . Among the lower classes, accusations of witchcraft were usually made by neighbors, and women made formal accusations as much as men did. Magical healers or ' cunning folk ' were sometimes prosecuted for witchcraft, but seem to have made up

14982-523: The Istanbul Protocol , most physical examinations are inconclusive. The effects of torture are one of several factors that usually result in inconsistent testimony from survivors, hampering their effort to be believed and secure either refugee status in a foreign country or criminal prosecution of the perpetrators. Although there is less research on the effects of torture on perpetrators, they can experience moral injury or trauma symptoms similar to

15209-644: The Middle Ages . The witch-cult hypothesis has influenced literature, being adapted into fiction in works by John Buchan , Robert Graves , and others. It greatly influenced Wicca , a new religious movement of modern Paganism that emerged in mid-twentieth-century Britain and claimed to be a survival of the 'pagan witch cult'. Since the 1960s, Carlo Ginzburg and other scholars have argued that surviving elements of pre-Christian religion in European folk culture influenced Early Modern stereotypes of witchcraft, but scholars still debate how this may relate, if at all, to

15436-475: The Roman Inquisition acknowledged its own trials had "found scarcely one trial conducted legally". In the middle of the 17th century, the difficulty in proving witchcraft according to the legal process contributed to Rothenburg (Germany) following advice to treat witchcraft cases with caution. Although the witch trials had begun to fade out across much of Europe by the mid-17th century, they continued on

15663-519: The Scottish Historical Review . In The Witch-Cult in Western Europe , Murray stated that she had restricted her research to Great Britain, although made some recourse to sources from France, Flanders, and New England . She drew a division between what she termed "Operative Witchcraft", which referred to the performance of charms and spells with any purpose, and "Ritual Witchcraft", by which she meant "the ancient religion of Western Europe",

15890-446: The United Nations Convention against Torture (CAT) in 1984. Successful civil society mobilizations against torture can prevent its use by governments that possess both motive and opportunity to use torture. Naming and shaming campaigns against torture have shown mixed results; they can be ineffective and even make things worse. The prohibition of torture is a peremptory norm ( jus cogens ) in international law , meaning that it

16117-480: The average age at first marriage had gradually risen by the late sixteenth century; the population had stabilized after a period of growth, and availability of jobs and land had lessened. In the last decades of the century, the age at marriage had climbed to averages of 25 for women and 27 for men in England and the Low Countries, as more people married later or remained unmarried due to lack of money or resources and

16344-555: The civilizing mission justifying colonial rule on the pretext of ending torture, despite the use of torture by colonial rulers themselves. The condemnation was strengthened during the twentieth century in reaction to the use of torture by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union . Shocked by Nazi atrocities during World War II, the United Nations drew up the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights , which prohibited torture. Torture

16571-813: The liberal democracies of the West, but torture was still used there, against ethnic minorities or criminal suspects from marginalized classes, and during overseas wars against foreign populations. After the September 11 attacks , the US government embarked on an overseas torture program as part of its war on terror . It is disputed whether torture increases, decreases, or remains constant. Most countries practice torture, although few acknowledge it. The international prohibition of torture has not completely stopped torture; instead, states have changed which techniques are used and denied, covered up, or outsourced torture programs. Measuring

16798-462: The state , while others include non-state organizations. Most victims of torture are poor and marginalized people suspected of crimes, although torture against political prisoners , or during armed conflict, has received disproportionate attention. Judicial corporal punishment and capital punishment are sometimes seen as forms of torture, but this label is internationally controversial. A variety of methods of torture are used, often in combination;

17025-469: The "cult"; when she has dealt with documents worthier the name of records than the chap-books and the formless reports that have to serve us for the British trials; when she has traced back witch-sabbath and questionary through the centuries of witch and heretic hunting that precede the British; when she has trusted herself to study the work of other students and fairly to weigh their conclusions against her own in

17252-560: The 1486 Malleus Maleficarum . In the following two centuries, witch trials usually included the charge of membership in a demonic conspiracy, gathering in sabbaths, and similar. It was only with the beginning Age of Enlightenment in the early 18th century, that the idea of an organized witch-cult was abandoned. Early Modern testimonies of accused witches "confirming" the existence of a witch cult are considered doubtful. Norman Cohn has argued that such testimonies were often given under torture , and that their details were determined mainly by

17479-754: The 1560s and the 1620s. Some trials went on to continue for years and would result in hundreds of executions of all sexes, ages and classes. These included the Trier witch trials (1581–1593), the Fulda witch trials (1603–1606), the Eichstätt witch trials (1613–1630), the Würzburg witch trials (1626–1631), and the Bamberg witch trials (1626–1631). In 1590 the North Berwick witch trials occurred in Scotland and were of particular note as

17706-546: The 1961 reprint of The Witch-Cult in Western Europe , Medieval historian Steven Runciman provided a foreword in which he accepted that some of Murray's "minor details may be open to criticism", but in which he was otherwise supportive of her thesis. Her theories were recapitulated by Pennethorne Hughes in his 1952 book Witches . It was also adopted and championed by the archaeologist T. C. Lethbridge , marking his increasing estrangement from mainstream academia; in turn, Murray publicly defended his controversial theories regarding

17933-470: The 19th century, some scholars were agnostic, for instance, Jacob Grimm (1844) talked of "countless" victims and Charles Mackay (1841) named "thousands upon thousands". By contrast, a popular news report of 1832 cited a number of 3,192 victims "in Great Britain alone". In the early 20th century, some scholarly estimates on the number of executions still ranged in the hundreds of thousands. The estimate

18160-570: The British war effort, while archaeological excavation to Egypt had been rendered impossible. These events gave Murray more latitude in her studies, and she began to branch out and explore other interests. To aid Britain's war effort, Murray enrolled as a volunteer nurse in the Volunteer Aid Detachment of the College Women's Union Society, and for several weeks was posted to Saint-Malo in France. However, after being taken ill herself, she

18387-476: The Christianization and the trials themselves. Both Jarcke and Mone were politically conservative, and their depiction of the threatening witch-cult would have had parallels with the widespread conservative fear of secret societies as bringers of revolution and irreligion in early nineteenth-century Europe. In 1862, French historian Jules Michelet published La Sorcière ( The Witch ), in which he adapted

18614-452: The Decline of Magic , English historian Keith Thomas dismissed Murray's thesis when he asserted that scholarship on the Early Modern witch trials had established that there was "very little evidence to suggest that the accused witches were either devil-worshippers or members of a pagan fertility cult". Although accepting that when she first published her ideas, they were "the best alternative" to

18841-823: The Horned God was represented by Pan in Greece, Cernunnos in Gaul, and in various Scandinavian rock carvings. Claiming that this divinity had been declared the Devil by the Christian authorities, she nevertheless asserted that his worship was testified in officially Christian societies right through to the Modern period, citing folkloric practices such as the Dorset Ooser and the Puck Fair as evidence of his veneration. In 1954, she published The Divine King in England , in which she greatly extended on

19068-494: The Middle Ages, heresy became a heinous crime, warranting severe punishment, so when one was accused of being a witch they were thus labeled as a heretic. If accused of witchcraft, the accused was forced to confess, even if they were innocent, through brutal torture, just to in the end be killed for their crimes. In certain instances, the clergy became truly concerned about the souls they were executing. Therefore, they decided to burn

19295-560: The Murrayite witch-cult been a reality, then it would have been persecuted throughout the Medieval and not just in the Early Modern period. During the 1930s and 1940s, Neo-Pagan Heinrich Himmler organised a branch of the SS to undertake the largest survey of witch-hunt trial records in Europe ever taken, with the dual aim of using it as anti-Christian propaganda, to claim that the inquisition had been

19522-425: The Murrayite witch-cult hypothesis. The witch-hunt of the 16th and 17th centuries was an organized effort by authorities in many countries to destroy a supposed conspiracy of witches thought to pose a deadly threat to Christendom . According to these authorities, witches were numerous, and in conscious alliance with Satan , forming a sort of Satanic counter-religion. Witch-hunts in this sense must be separated from

19749-606: The Nocturnal Meeting of Witches ), the Italian cleric Girolamo Tartarotti claimed that the stereotype of the witch in Early Modern Europe was influenced by pre-Christian folk beliefs. Similar ideas were echoed by the German folklorist Jacob Grimm in his Deutsche Mythologie ( Teutonic Mythology ), first published in 1835. Here, he claimed that the witch stereotype reflected a blending of pre-Christian folk traditions with

19976-665: The Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds , theorised that the origins of the witch-cult may have appeared in late antiquity as a faith primarily designed to worship the Horned God, stemming from the merging of Cernunnos , a horned god of the Celts, with the Greco-Roman Pan / Faunus , a combination of gods which he posits created a new deity, around which the remaining pagans , those refusing to convert to Christianity, rallied and that this deity provided

20203-450: The Pope declared witchcraft to be crimen exceptum and thereby removed all legal limits on the application of torture in cases where evidence was difficult to find. In Italy, an accused witch was deprived of sleep for periods up to forty hours. This technique was also used in England, but without a limitation on time. Sexual humiliation was used, such as forced sitting on red-hot stools with

20430-493: The Rome Statute, torture can also be a crime against humanity if committed as part of a systematic attack on a civilian population. In 1987 , Israel became the only country in the world to purportedly legalize torture . Torture prevention is complicated both by lack of understanding about why torture occurs and by lack of application of what is known. Torture proliferates in situations of incommunicado detention . Because

20657-682: The Sabbath ceremonies involved the witches' paying homage to the deity, renewing their "vows of fidelity and obedience" to him, and providing him with accounts of all the magical actions that they had conducted since the previous Sabbath. Once this business had been concluded, admissions to the cult or marriages were conducted; ceremonies and fertility rites took place; and the Sabbath concluded with feasting and dancing. Deeming Ritual Witchcraft to be "a fertility cult", she asserted that many of its rites were designed to ensure fertility and rain-making. She claimed that there were four types of sacrifice performed by

20884-562: The United Kingdom and Portugal also used torture in attempts to retain their respective empires. Independent states in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia often used torture in the twentieth century, but it is unknown whether their use of torture increased or decreased compared to nineteenth-century levels. During the first half of the twentieth century, torture became more prevalent in Europe with

21111-628: The Witches in 1931; although similar in content, it was aimed at a mass market audience and published by the popular press Sampson Low . Whereas the tone in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe had been "dry and academic, the second bubbles with enthusiasm", as her language becomes "emotionally inflated and coloured with religious phraseology"; in particular she refers repeatedly to the cult as "the Old Religion". In this work she "cut out or toned down" many of

21338-402: The abolition of judicial torture, it sees continued use to elicit confessions, especially in judicial systems placing a high value on confessions in criminal matters. The use of torture to force suspects to confess is facilitated by laws allowing extensive pre-trial detention . Research has found that coercive interrogation is slightly more effective than cognitive interviewing for extracting

21565-400: The accused witches alive in order to "save them". Various acts of torture were used against accused witches to coerce confessions and cause them to provide names of alleged co-conspirators. Most historians agree that the majority of those persecuted in these witch trials were innocent of any involvement in Devil worship. The torture of witches began to increase in frequency after 1468, when

21792-400: The accused witches' genuine experiences of witchcraft, regardless of whether those confessions had been obtained through torture and coercion. He also charged her with selectively using the evidence to serve her interpretation, for instance by omitting any supernatural or miraculous events that appear in the trial accounts. As Pagan studies scholar Catherine Noble later put it, "Burr has hardly

22019-508: The accused. In contrast with other parts of Europe, trials by the Venetian Holy Office never saw conviction for the crime of malevolent witchcraft, or "maleficio". Because the notion of diabolical cults was not credible to either popular culture or Catholic inquisitorial theology, mass accusations and belief in Witches' Sabbath never took root in areas under such inquisitorial influence. The number of people tried for witchcraft between

22246-505: The advent of secret police , World War I and World War II , and the rise of communist and fascist states. Torture was also used by both communist and anti-communist governments during the Cold War in Latin America, with an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 victims of torture by United States–backed regimes. The only countries in which torture was rare during the twentieth century were

22473-497: The alleged records in Histoire de l'inquisition were highly dubious and possible forgeries. Kieckhefer notes that a 1855 publication of a summary inventory from inquisitorial records from Carcassonne did not match with Lamothe-Langon's work at all. Besides, the language and stereotypes in the supposed records were anachronistic. Lamothe-Langon also had a track record in forging several genealogies about his ancestry and his political motive

22700-455: The ancient Jewish tradition of mystical interpretation of the Bible. The Fränkel witchtrial was one of the first convictions obtained without the use of spectral evidence or confession obtained through torture. Fränkel was sentenced to life imprisonment and spent twenty-four years in solitary confinement in the tower of Schwabach. In France, scholars have found that with increased fiscal capacity and

22927-782: The autonomous territories of the Catholic prince-bishops in Southern Germany were infamous in all of the Western world , and the contemporary writer Herman Löher described how they affected the population within them: The Roman Catholic subjects, farmers, winegrowers, and artisans in the episcopal lands are the most terrified people on earth, since the false witch trials affect the German episcopal lands incomparably more than France, Spain, Italy or Protestants. The mass witch trials took place in Southern Catholic Germany in waves between

23154-412: The belief in witches, the evil eye , and other such phenomena, which are common features of folk belief worldwide. The belief that witches are not just individual villains but conspirators organized in a powerful but well-hidden cult is a distinguishing feature of the early modern witch-hunt. This idea of an organized witch-cult originates in the second half of the 15th century, notoriously expounded in

23381-408: The book, though Lamothe-Langon's sources could not be found at the end of the nineteenth century. Through reuse by other writers, Lamothe-Langon's work established the view that witch hunts suddenly began in the late Middle Ages and implied a link with Catharism . Academics continued to rely on Lamothe-Langon as a source until Norman Cohn and Richard Kieckhefer showed independently in the 1970s that

23608-435: The case of Joan of Arc. Later historian Ronald Hutton commented that The Witch-Cult in Western Europe "rested upon a small amount of archival research, with extensive use of printed trial records in 19th century editions, plus early modern pamphlets and works of demonology". He also noted that the book's tone was generally "dry and clinical, and every assertion was meticulously footned to a source, with lavish quotation." It

23835-503: The chalk hill figures of Wandlebury Hill in the Gog Magog Hills , Cambridgeshire . As a result, a commentator writing in 1962 could comment that the Murrayite interpretations of the witch trials "seem to hold, at the time of writing, an almost undisputed sway at the higher intellectual levels", being widely accepted among "educated people". Canadian historian Elliot Rose suggested that the reason why Murray's theory gained such support

24062-434: The claim that the accused woman would not perform sexual acts with the devil. In most cases, those who endured the torture without confessing were released. The use of torture has been identified as a key factor in converting the trial of one accused witch into a wider social panic , as those being tortured were more likely to accuse a wide array of other local individuals of also being witches. The scholarly consensus on

24289-560: The claims of her previous book which would have painted the cult in a bad light, for instance regarding animal and child sacrifice, and also omitted any mention of sex. In this book she began to refer to the witches' deity as the Horned God , and asserted that it was an entity who had been worshipped in Europe since the Palaeolithic . She further asserted that in the Bronze Age, the worship of

24516-546: The clergy practiced crafts such as necromancy, the practice of communicating with the dead. However, witchcraft was still assumed as inherently demonic, so backlash to witches was inevitable due to the collective negative image. In 1233, a papal bull by Gregory IX established a new branch of the inquisition in Toulouse , France, to be led by the Dominicans . It was intended to prosecute Christian groups considered heretical, such as

24743-482: The cloven-hoofed Devil appeared at the witches' Sabbath by stating that he was a man with a special kind of shoe, and similarly asserted that witches' claims to have flown through the air on broomsticks were actually based on their practice of either hopping along on broomsticks or smearing hallucinogenic salves onto themselves. In 1996, historian Diane Purkiss asserted that Murray's thesis was "intrinsically improbable" and that it "commands little or no allegiance within

24970-562: The complete academic rejection of Murray's theories in the 1970s, Ginzburg attempted to clarify his work's relationship to Murray's Witch-Cult theory in his "Preface to the English Edition", written in 1982. Here, he expressly stated that "Murray, in fact, asserted: (a) that witchcraft had its roots in an ancient fertility cult, and (b) that the sabbat described in the witchcraft trials referred to gatherings which had actually taken place. What my work really demonstrated, even if unintentionally,

25197-479: The crime, and only allowing torture if there was already some evidence against the accused. In some countries, political opponents are tortured to force them to confess publicly as a form of state propaganda . The use of torture to obtain information during interrogation accounts for a small percentage of worldwide torture cases; its use for obtaining confessions or intimidation is more common. Although interrogational torture has been used in conventional wars , it

25424-436: The criticisms of her work, but did react to her critics in a hostile manner; in later life she asserted that she eventually ceased reading reviews of her work, and believed that her critics were simply acting on religious prejudice. Noble later stated that Murray "repeatedly dismissed [her critics] in print as close-minded, bigoted, or uninformed." Murray's work came to be increasingly criticised following her death in 1963, with

25651-409: The debate about the possible interconnections between witchcraft beliefs and the survival of pagan fertility cults". Similarly, Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade commented that while Ginzburg's presentation of the benandanti "does not substantiate Murray's entire thesis", it did represent a "well-documented case of the processus through which a popular and archaic secret cult of fertility

25878-542: The definitive academic rejection of the Murrayite witch-cult theory occurring during the 1970s. At this time, a variety of scholars across Europe and North America began to publish in-depth studies of the archival records from the witch trials, leaving no doubt that those tried for witchcraft were not practitioners of a surviving pre-Christian religion. Such critics of Murray included Alan Macfarlane , Erik Midelfort, William Monter, Robert Muchembled, Gerhard Schormann, Bente Alver and Bengt Ankarloo. In his 1971 book Religion and

26105-524: The deity could be found throughout Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa, claiming that the depiction of various horned figures from these societies proved that. Among the evidence cited were the horned figures found at Mohenjo-Daro , which are often interpreted as depictions of Pashupati , as well as the deities Osiris and Amon in Egypt and the Minotaur of Minoan Crete . Within continental Europe, she claimed that

26332-512: The discipline of folkloristics had been damaged by its association with Murray, who had been appointed President of the Folklore Society . Simpson outlined how Murray had selected her use of evidence very specifically, particularly by ignoring and/or rationalising any accounts of supernatural or miraculous events in the trial records, thereby distorting the events that she was describing. Thus, Simpson pointed out, Murray rationalised claims that

26559-484: The dominant "rationalist" view of witchcraft as "total delusion", he stated that her conclusions were "almost totally groundless" because she ignored the systematic study of the trial accounts provided by Ewen and instead used sources very selectively to argue her point. In his 1975 book Europe's Inner Demons , English historian Norman Cohn commented on the "extraordinary" manner in which Murray's theory had come to "exercise considerable influence" within scholarship. Cohn

26786-425: The dungeon for life. The sentence refers to ... multas et diversas daemonum conjurationes et invocationes ... and it frequently uses the same Latin synonym as a word for witchcraft, sortilegia —found on the title page of Nicolas Rémy 's work from 1595 , where it is claimed that 900 persons were executed for sortilegii crimen . He was accused of using love magic to seduce women and of invoking Satan and sacrificing

27013-431: The end of the month because of performance quotas. The contribution of bureaucracy to torture is under-researched and poorly understood. Torturers rely on both active supporters and those who ignore it. Military, intelligence, psychology, medical, and legal professionals can all be complicit in torture. Incentives can favor the use of torture on an institutional or individual level, and some perpetrators are motivated by

27240-468: The existence of something for which no evidence exists. The Murrayites ask us to swallow a most peculiar sandwich: a large piece of the wrong evidence between two thick slices of no evidence at all." In 1994, the English folklorist Jacqueline Simpson devoted a paper in the Folklore journal to the subject of "Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her, and Why?". She noted that the Murrayite theory was "based on deeply flawed methods and illogical arguments" and that

27467-425: The expansion and increased popularity of the Malleus Maleficarum . Given the book was published nearly thirty times between the years 1487 and 1669 across Europe, it easily provided Europe's literate citizens with a more concrete, solidified depiction of a witch. Kramer creates an idea of a new medieval witch, that being an evil woman, which far outstretches to the modern day. Through the spread of Kramer's depiction of

27694-484: The expectations of the interrogators and by free association on the part of the accused, reflecting only the popular imagination of the times. Carlo Ginzburg and Éva Pócs hold that some of these testimonies can still give insights into the belief systems of the accused. Ginzburg discovered records of a group calling themselves benandanti , the "good walkers" who believed that they combatted witches ( streghe ) by magical means. The benandanti were persecuted for heresy in

27921-487: The free-born population both in the pagan period and the Christian era, eventually resulting in the witch trials. However, as English historian Norman Cohn asserted in 1975, "neither of [Jarcke or Mone's] theories are convincing", with neither being able to show any evidence of pre-Christian gods being worshipped in Early Modern Germany or being able to explain why there were no accounts of this witch-cult in between

28148-754: The fringes of Europe and in the American Colonies. In the Nordic countries, the late 17th century saw the peak of the trials in a number of areas: the Torsåker witch trials of Sweden (1674), where 71 people were executed for witchcraft in a single day, the peak of witch hunting in Swedish Finland, and the Salzburg witch trials in Austria (where 139 people were executed from 1675 to 1690). The 1692 Salem witch trials were

28375-474: The group and to Goddess worship in general, believing that it was primitive and savage. Charles Leland was an American folklorist and occultist who travelled around Europe in the latter 19th century and was a supporter of Michelet's theories. In 1899 he published Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches , which he claimed had been a sacred text for Italian witches. It made no mention of a horned god , but did mention

28602-481: The guilty party was ordered to attend the parish church, wearing a white sheet and carrying a wand, and swear to lead a reformed life. The Old Testament 's book of Exodus (22:18) states, "Thou shalt not permit a sorceress to live". Many faced capital punishment for witchcraft, either by burning at the stake, hanging, or beheading. Similarly, in New England, people convicted of witchcraft were hanged. Meanwhile, in

28829-581: The hanging of ten of the eleven who were tried. The witch-panic phenomenon reached the more remote parts of Europe as well as North America later in the 17th century, among them being the Salzburg witch trials , the Swedish Torsåker witch trials and, in 1692, the Salem witch trials in Colonial New England . There had never been a lack of skepticism regarding the trials. In 1635, the authorities of

29056-508: The health of a young woman. The case against the supposed witch was dismissed upon the failure of the alleged victim, who had sworn out a warrant against him, to appear for the trial. However, some of his other accusers were convicted on criminal charges for their part in the matter, and various libel actions were brought. In 1895, Bridget Cleary was beaten and burned to death by her husband in Ireland because he suspected that fairies had taken

29283-402: The highest rates of post-traumatic stress disorder , many are psychologically resilient. Torture has been carried out since ancient times. However, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many Western countries abolished the official use of torture in the judicial system , although it continued to be used throughout the world. Public opinion research shows general opposition to torture. It

29510-403: The inquisitors themselves describe their attempts to carefully safeguard their records, especially when they were moving from town to town. The inquisitors were widely hated and they would be ambushed on the road, but their records were more often the target than the inquisitors themselves [ plus désireux encore de ravir les papiers que porte le juge que de le faire périr lui-même ] ( better to take

29737-403: The international reputation of countries that use it, strengthen and radicalize violent opposition to those states, and encourage adversaries to themselves use torture. Studies have found that most people around the world oppose the use of torture in general. Some hold definite views on torture; for others, torture's acceptability depends on the victim. Support for torture in specific cases

29964-721: The killings of Anna Klemens in Denmark (1800), Krystyna Ceynowa in Poland (1836), and Dummy, the Witch of Sible Hedingham in England (1863). In France, there was sporadic violence and there was even murder in the 1830s, with one woman reportedly burnt in a village square in Nord . In the 1830s, a prosecution for witchcraft was commenced against a man in Fentress County, Tennessee, either named Joseph or William Stout, based upon his alleged influence over

30191-438: The king, James VI , became involved himself. James had developed a fear that witches planned to kill him after he suffered from storms while traveling to Denmark in order to claim his bride, Anne , earlier that year. Returning to Scotland, the king heard of trials that were occurring in North Berwick , and ordered the suspects to be brought to him—he subsequently believed that a nobleman, Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell ,

30418-441: The larger witchcraft trials which were to come in later centuries is deciding how much can be extrapolated from what remains. There was no concept of demonic witchcraft during the fourteenth century; only at a later time did a unified concept combine the ideas of noxious magic, a pact with the Devil and an assembly of witches for Satanic worship into one category of crime. Witch trials were infrequent compared to later centuries and

30645-438: The largest number of fatalities seems to have occurred between 1560 and 1630. The period between 1560 and 1670 saw more than 40,000 deaths. Authors have debated whether witch trials were more intense in Catholic or Protestant regions; however, the intensity had not so much to do with Catholicism or Protestantism as both regions experienced a varied intensity of witchcraft persecutions. In Catholic Spain and Portugal for example,

30872-541: The later Medieval views of heresy . Both Tartarotti and Grimm would subsequently be erroneously cited as claiming that the witches had been members of a surviving pre-Christian cult. The first modern scholar to advance the claim that the witch trials had been designed to wipe out an anti-Christian sect was the German Karl Ernst Jarcke , a professor of criminal law at the University of Berlin . In 1828 he edited

31099-545: The law has limited legitimacy or is routinely ignored. Sociologically torture operates as a subculture , frustrating prevention efforts because torturers can find a way around rules. Safeguards against torture in detention can be evaded by beating suspects during round-ups or on the way to the police station. General training of police to improve their ability to investigate crime has been more effective at reducing torture than specific training focused on human rights. Institutional police reforms have been effective when abuse

31326-445: The light of the further evidence they may adduce: then perhaps she may have modified her views. Whether she changes or confirms them, she will then have earned the right to a hearing." Nevertheless, Murray's theories never received support from experts in the Early Modern witch trials, and from her early publications onward many of her ideas were challenged by those who highlighted her "factual errors and methodological failings". Indeed,

31553-631: The link between specific torture methods and health consequences is lacking. These consequences can include peripheral neuropathy , damage to teeth, rhabdomyolysis from extensive muscle damage, traumatic brain injury , sexually transmitted infection , and pregnancy from rape . Chronic pain and pain-related disability are commonly reported, but there is scant research into this effect or possible treatments. Common psychological problems affecting survivors include traumatic stress , anxiety , depression, and sleep disturbance . An average of 40 percent have long-term post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),

31780-424: The majority of Britons in the Middle Ages remained pagan as "a view grounded on ignorance alone". Simpson noted that despite these critical reviews, within the field of British folkloristics Murray's theories were permitted "to pass unapproved but unchallenged, either out of politeness or because nobody was really interested enough to research the topic." As evidence, she noted that no substantial research articles on

32007-497: The majority of scholarly reviews of her work produced at the time were largely critical. George L. Burr critically reviewed both of her initial books on the subject for the American Historical Review . In his review of The Witch-Cult in Western Europe he asserted that she was not acquainted with the "careful general histories by modern scholars" and criticised her for assuming that the trial accounts accurately reflected

32234-554: The male-centric nature of their own perspectives. In his 1999 book The Triumph of the Moon , Hutton asserted that Murray had treated her source material with "reckless abandon", in that she had taken "vivid details of alleged witch practices" from "sources scattered across a great extent of space and time" and then declared them to be normative of the cult as a whole. Concurring with this assessment, historian Jeffrey B. Russell and Brooks Alexander stated that "Murray's use of sources in general

32461-443: The modern academy". She nevertheless felt that male scholars like Thomas, Cohn, and Macfarlane had committed "ritual slaughter" when setting up their own histories of witchcraft by condemning Murray's. In doing so, she identified a trend for them to contrast their own perceived methodologically sound and sceptical interpretations with Murray's "feminised belief" about the witch-cult, hence ignoring any theoretical considerations regarding

32688-679: The most common form of physical torture reported by about two-thirds of survivors. They may be either unsystematic or focused on a specific part of the body, as in falanga (the soles of the feet ), repeated strikes against both ears, or shaking the detainee so that their head moves back and forth. Often, people are suspended in painful positions such as strappado or upside-down hanging in combination with beatings. People may also be subjected to stabbings or puncture wounds , have their nails removed , or body parts amputated . Burns are also common, especially cigarette burns , but other instruments are also employed, including hot metal, hot fluids,

32915-485: The most common form of physical torture is beatings. Beginning in the twentieth century, many torturers have preferred non- scarring or psychological methods to maintain deniability. Torturers more commonly act out of fear , or due to limited resources, rather than sadism . Although most torturers are thought to learn about torture techniques informally and rarely receive explicit orders, they are enabled by organizations that facilitate and encourage their behavior. Once

33142-517: The most dubious professional fortune tellers and mediums), and punishment was light. In Austria, Maria Theresa outlawed witch-burning and torture in 1768. The last capital trial, that of Maria Pauer occurred in 1750 in Salzburg, which was then outside the Austrian domain. In the late 18th century the practice of witchcraft had ceased to be considered a criminal offense throughout Europe, but there are

33369-824: The necessary infrastructure for a torture program and instead intimidate by killing. Research has found that state torture can extend the lifespan of terrorist organizations, increase incentives for insurgents to use violence, and radicalize the opposition. Another form of torture for deterrence is violence against migrants, as has been reported during pushbacks on the European Union's external borders. Torture has been used throughout history to extract confessions from detainees. In 1764, Italian reformer Cesare Beccaria denounced torture as "a sure way to acquit robust scoundrels and to condemn weak but innocent people". Similar doubts about torture's effectiveness had been voiced for centuries previously, including by Aristotle . Despite

33596-605: The new heterodox view was the Malleus Maleficarum , published in 1487 by clergyman and German inquisitor Heinrich Kramer, accompanied by Jacobus Sprenger. Malleus Maleficarum is split up into three different sections, each individual section addressing an aspect of witches and their culture. The following sections were magic, a witches origin, and appropriate punishment. The appropriate punishment section divides offenses into three different levels, ranging from slight, great, and very great. Slight could be something as simple as

33823-429: The number of executions. Attempts at estimating the total number of executions for witchcraft have a history going back to the end of the period of witch-hunts in the 18th century. A scholarly consensus only emerges in the second half of the 20th century, and historical estimates vary wildly depending on the method used. Early estimates tend to be highly exaggerated, as they were still part of rhetorical arguments against

34050-548: The numbers of witch trials were few because the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions preferred to focus on the crime of public heresy rather than the crime of witchcraft, whereas Protestant Scotland had a much larger number of witchcraft trials. In contrast, the witch trials in the Protestant Netherlands stopped earlier and they were among the least numerous in Europe, while the large-scale mass witch trials which took place in

34277-499: The opposite" of what Murray had posited. Hutton pointed out that Ginzburg's argument that "ancient dream-worlds, or operations on non-material planes of consciousness, helped to create a new set of fantasies at the end of the Middle Ages" differed strongly from Murray's argument that an organised religion of witches had survived from the pre-Christian era and that descriptions of witches' sabbaths were accounts of real events. The folklorist Juliette Wood stated that while Ginzburg articulated

34504-402: The papers the judge carries than to make the judge himself perish ). The records seem to have often been targeted by the accused or their friends and family, wishing to thereby sabotage the proceedings or failing that, to spare their reputations and the reputations of their descendants. This would be all the more true for those who were accused of practicing witchcraft. Difficulty in understanding

34731-510: The peaks of witchcraft persecutions overlap with hunger crises that occurred in 1570 and 1580, the latter lasting a decade. Problematically for these theories, it has been highlighted that, in that region, the witch hunts declined during the 1630s, at a time when the communities living there were facing increased disaster as a result of plague, famine, economic collapse, and the Thirty Years' War . Furthermore, this scenario would clearly not offer

34958-522: The period of 1575 to 1675. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the common belief among educated sectors of the European populace was that there had never been any genuine cult of witches and that all those persecuted and executed as such had been innocent of the alleged crimes. At this time, two figures independently raised the prospect that the witch trials had been influenced by stereotypes and folk customs that had pre-Christian origins. In his 1749 work Del Congresso Notturno delle Lamie ( On

35185-566: The perpetrators as severe threats and enemies of the state . Studies of perpetrators do not support the common assumption that they are psychologically pathological. Most perpetrators do not volunteer to be torturers; many have an innate reluctance to employ violence, and rely on coping mechanisms , such as alcohol or drugs. Psychiatrist Pau Pérez-Sales finds that torturers act from a variety of motives such as ideological commitment, personal gain, group belonging, avoiding punishment, or avoiding guilt from previous acts of torture. Although it

35412-427: The persecution of witches rather than purely historical scholarship. Notably, a figure of nine million victims was given by Gottfried Christian Voigt in 1784 in an argument criticizing Voltaire 's estimate of "several hundred thousand" as too low. Voigt's number has shown remarkably resilient as an influential popular myth , surviving well into the 20th century, especially in feminist and neo-pagan literature . In

35639-413: The perspective of a historian of religion, "her use of comparative materials and, in general, the methods of Religionswissenschaft have been unfortunate." "That this 'old religion' persisted secretly, without leaving any evidence, is of course possible, just as it is possible that below the surface of the moon lie extensive deposits of Stilton cheese . Anything is possible. But it is nonsense to assert

35866-503: The phenomenon of witches to expand, solidifying the fear that witches are a danger that could be within anyone, anywhere. A variety of different punishments were employed for those found guilty of witchcraft, including imprisonment, flogging, fines, or exile. Non-capital punishment, especially for a first offence, was most common in England. Prior to 1542, Church courts dealt with most cases in England and most sanctions were directed more to penance and atonement than harsh punishments. Often

36093-443: The police have been observed handing suspects over to vigilantes to be tortured. This type of extrajudicial violence is often carried out in public to deter others. It discriminatorily targets minorities and marginalized groups and may be supported by the public, especially if people do not trust the official justice system. The classification of judicial corporal punishment as torture is internationally controversial, although it

36320-420: The poor , through laws targeting homelessness , sex work , or working in the informal economy , can lead to violent and arbitrary policing. Routine violence against poor and marginalized people is often not seen as torture, and its perpetrators justify the violence as a legitimate policing tactic; victims lack the resources or standing to seek redress. Since most research has focused on torture victims, less

36547-499: The poor or criminal suspects. Most victims of torture are suspected of crimes; a disproportionate number of victims are from poor or marginalized communities. Groups especially vulnerable to torture include unemployed young men, the urban poor , LGBT people , refugees and migrants, ethnic and racial minorities, indigenous people , and people with disabilities . Relative poverty and the resulting inequality in particular leave poor people vulnerable to torture. Criminalization of

36774-408: The prehistoric world, humanity had been matriarchal , worshiping a great Goddess, and that the witches of the witch cult had been pagan priestesses preserving this religion. In 1897, the English scholar Karl Pearson , who was the professor of Applied Mathematics at University College London and an amateur historian and anthropologist, expanded on Michelet's theory. Pearson agreed with the theory of

37001-451: The previously dominant rationalist idea that the witch trials were the result of mass delusion. Related to this, folklorist Jacqueline Simpson suggested that part of the Murrayite theory's appeal was that it appeared to give a "sensible, demystifying, liberating approach to a longstanding but sterile argument" between the rationalists who denied that there had been any witches and those, like Montague Summers , who insisted that there had been

37228-415: The prospect of career advancement. Bureaucracy can diffuse responsibility for torture and help perpetrators excuse their actions. Maintaining secrecy is often essential to maintaining a torture program, which can be accomplished in ways ranging from direct censorship, denial, or mislabeling torture as something else, to offshoring abuses to outside a state's territory. Along with official denials, torture

37455-603: The prototype for later Christian conceptions of the Devil , and his worshippers were cast by the Church as witches. While Murray's theory had received some negative critical attention at the time of its first publication, it was not until the 1950s and 1960s that her books became best sellers, reaching a larger audience and thereby subsequently causing experts to decide that "the Murray thesis had to be stopped once and for all". Simpson noted that

37682-493: The publication of the Murray thesis in the Encyclopædia Britannica made it accessible to "journalists, film-makers popular novelists and thriller writers", who adopted it "enthusiastically". It influenced the work of Aldous Huxley and Robert Graves . The Murrayite thesis provided the blueprint for the contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca . In the 1950s, several British occultists claimed they had found remnants of

37909-676: The rate at which torture occurs is difficult because it is typically committed in secrecy, and abuses are likelier to come to light in open societies where there is a commitment to protecting human rights. Many torture survivors, especially those from poor or marginalized populations, are unwilling to report. Monitoring has focused on police stations and prisons, although torture can also occur in other facilities such as immigration detention and youth detention centers . Torture that occurs outside of custody—including extrajudicial punishment, intimidation, and crowd control —has traditionally not been counted, even though some studies have suggested it

38136-524: The rate of torture in a country. In international humanitarian law , which regulates the conduct of war, torture was first outlawed by the 1863 Lieber Code . Torture was prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials as a crime against humanity ; it is recognized by both the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as a war crime . According to

38363-569: The real Bridget and replaced her with a witch. The killing of people who were suspected of performing malevolent sorcery against their neighbors continued into the 20th and 21st centuries. In 1997, two Russian farmers killed a woman and injured five members of her family because they believed that the woman and her relatives had used folk magic against them. It has been reported that between 2005 and 2011, more than 3,000 people were killed for allegedly being witches by lynch mobs in Tanzania. Witchcraft

38590-405: The records of a seventeenth-century German witch trial for publication in a legal journal, and included the theory in his own comments. Jarcke suggested that witchcraft had been a pre-Christian religion that survived Christianisation among the rural population, but that after being condemned as Satanism by the Church, it eventually degenerated into genuine Devil-worship and malevolence. At that point,

38817-491: The religion as many of her family had previously done, and a similar claim came from the Australian artist Rosaleen Norton , whose family had been of Welsh origin. Charles Cardell also made the claim of a hereditary lineage of the witch-cult, and he posited that the horned deity of the witches was known as Atho. Other Britons soon made the claim that they were members of a long line of family Witches. Robert Cochrane made such

39044-482: The rise of Enlightenment ideas about the value of the human person, the lowering of the standard of proof in criminal cases, popular views that no longer saw pain as morally redemptive, and the expansion of imprisonment as an alternative to executions or painful punishments. It is not known if torture also declined in non-Western states or European colonies during the nineteenth century. In China, judicial torture, which had been practiced for more than two millennia,

39271-464: The risk of death. Survivors report that the exact method used is not significant. Most forms of torture include both physical and psychological elements and multiple methods are typically used on one person. Different methods of torture are popular in different countries. Low-tech methods are more commonly used than high-tech ones, and attempts to develop scientifically validated torture technology have failed. The prohibition of torture motivated

39498-448: The risk of torture is highest directly after an arrest, procedural safeguards such as immediate access to a lawyer and notifying relatives of an arrest are the most effective ways of prevention. Visits by independent monitoring bodies to detention sites can also help reduce torture. Legal changes that are not implemented in practice have little effect on the incidence of torture. Legal changes can be particularly ineffective in places where

39725-561: The scholarly proposal that some ideas concerning witchcraft were taking hold in the region around western Switzerland during the 1430s, recasting the practice of witchcraft as an alliance between a person and the devil that would undermine and threaten the Christian foundation of society. The Perrissona Gappit case tried in Switzerland in 1465 is noted for the thoroughness of the surviving record. The skeptical Canon Episcopi retained many supporters, and still seems to have been supported by

39952-405: The service of their deity. She also claimed that in some cases, these individuals had to sign a covenant or were baptized into the faith. At the same time, she claimed that the religion was largely passed down hereditary lines. Murray described the religion as being divided into covens containing thirteen members, led by a coven officer who was often termed the "Devil" in the trial accounts, but who

40179-417: The state. Most legal systems include agents acting on behalf of the state, and some definitions add non-state armed groups , organized crime , or private individuals working in state-monitored facilities ( such as hospitals ). The most expansive definitions encompass anyone as a potential perpetrator. Although torture is usually classified as more severe than cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment (CIDT),

40406-507: The subject of witchcraft were published in the journal Folklore between Murray's in 1917 and Rossell Hope Robbins ' in 1963. However, she also highlighted that when regional studies of British folklore were published in this period by folklorists like Theo Brown , Ruth Tongue , or Enid Porter , none adopted the Murrayite framework for interpreting witchcraft beliefs, thus evidencing her claim that Murray's theories were widely ignored by scholars of folklore. Murray did not respond directly to

40633-614: The subsequent use of witches as scapegoats for consequences of climatic changes. The Little Ice Age, lasting from about 1300 to 1850, is characterized by temperatures and precipitation levels lower than the 1901–1960 average. Historians such as Wolfgang Behringer, Emily Oster, and Hartmut Lehmann argue that these cooling temperatures brought about crop failure, war, and disease, and that witches were subsequently blamed for this turmoil. Historical temperature indexes and witch trial data indicate that, generally, as temperature decreased during this period, witch trials increased. Additionally,

40860-446: The sun, or acid . Forced ingestion of water , food , or other substances, or injections are also used as torture. Electric shocks are often used to torture, especially to avoid other methods that are more likely to leave scars. Asphyxiation , of which waterboarding is a form, inflicts torture on the victim by cutting off their air supply. Psychological torture includes methods that involve no physical element as well as forcing

41087-435: The surviving Witch Cult. The first of these was Gerald Gardner , who claimed to have discovered a coven of such witches - the New Forest Coven , in 1939. Gardner said that he was concerned that the religion would die out, and so initiated more members into it through his Bricket Wood coven . The tradition that he started became Gardnerian Wicca . The New Forest witch Sybil Leek made a similar claim, stating that she followed

41314-447: The theological faculty at the University of Paris in their decree from 1398. It was never officially repudiated by a majority of bishops within the papal lands, nor even by the Council of Trent , which immediately preceded the peak of the trials. But in 1428, the Valais witch trials , lasting six to eight years, started in the French-speaking lower Valais and eventually spread to German-speaking regions. This time period also coincided with

41541-443: The theory further. Michelet, a liberal who despised both the Roman Catholic Church and absolute monarchies, claimed that the Witch Cult had been practiced by the peasants in opposition to Roman Catholicism, which was practiced by the upper classes. He wrote that the witches had been mostly women (he greatly admired the feminine sex, once claiming that it was the superior of the two), and that they had been great healers, whose knowledge

41768-499: The theory, taking in an influence from Sir James Frazer 's The Golden Bough , an anthropological book that made the claim that societies all over the world sacrificed their kings to the deities of nature. In her book, she claimed that this practice had continued into medieval England, and that, for instance, the death of William II was really a ritual sacrifice. She also claimed that a number of important figures who died violent deaths, such as Archbishop Thomas Becket , were killed as

41995-426: The theory. It rested on highly selective use of evidence from the trials, thereby heavily misrepresenting the events and the actions of both the accused and their accusers. It also mistakenly assumed that claims made by accused witches were truthful, and not distorted by coercion and torture. Further, despite claims the 'witch cult' was a pre-Christian survival, there is no evidence of such a 'pagan witch cult' throughout

42222-463: The threshold at which treatment can be classified as torture is the most controversial aspect of its definition; the interpretation of torture has broadened over time. Another approach, preferred by scholars such as Manfred Nowak and Malcolm Evans , distinguishes torture from CIDT by considering only the torturer's purpose, and not the severity. Other definitions, such as that in the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture , focus on

42449-466: The torturer's aim "to obliterate the personality of the victim". Torture was legally and morally acceptable in most ancient, medieval, and early modern societies. There is archaeological evidence of torture in Early Neolithic Europe, about 7,000 years ago. Torture is commonly mentioned in historical sources on Assyria and Achaemenid Persia . Societies used torture both as part of the judicial process and as punishment, although some historians make

42676-579: The torturers were desensitized to violence by being exposed to physical or psychological abuse during training which can be a deliberate tactic to create torturers. Even when not explicitly ordered by the government to torture, perpetrators may feel peer pressure due to competitive masculinity. Elite and specialized police units are especially prone to torturing, perhaps because of their tight-knit nature and insulation from oversight. Although some torturers are formally trained, most are thought to learn about torture techniques informally. Torture can be

42903-419: The total number of executions for witchcraft ranges from 40,000 to 60,000 (not including unofficial lynchings of accused witches, which went unrecorded but are nevertheless believed to have been somewhat rare in the Early Modern period ). It would also have been the case that various individuals would have died as a result of the unsanitary conditions of their imprisonment, but again this is not recorded within

43130-483: The underworld, whom Christian persecutors identified with the Devil , and whose followers held nocturnal rites at the witches' Sabbath . The theory was pioneered by two German scholars, Karl Ernst Jarcke and Franz Josef Mone, in the early nineteenth century, and was adopted by French historian Jules Michelet , American feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage , and American folklorist Charles Leland later that century. The hypothesis received its most prominent exposition when it

43357-412: The victim and in some cultures, humiliate their family and society. Cultural and individual differences affect how the victim perceives different torture methods. Torture is one of the most devastating experiences that a person can undergo. Torture aims to break the victim's will and destroy the victim's agency and personality. Torture survivor Jean Améry argued that it was "the most horrible event

43584-427: The victim's religious or national identity), and the use of animals such as dogs to frighten or injure a prisoner. Positional torture works by forcing the person to adopt a stance, putting their weight on a few muscles, causing pain without leaving marks, for example standing or squatting for extended periods. Rape and sexual assault are universal torture methods and frequently instill a permanent sense of shame in

43811-403: The victims , especially when they feel guilty about their actions. Torture has corrupting effects on the institutions and societies that perpetrate it. Torturers forget important investigative skills because torture can be an easier way than time-consuming police work to achieve high conviction rates, encouraging the continued and increased use of torture. Public disapproval of torture can harm

44038-448: The wider population came to reject it, resulting in the trials. This theory exonerated the Christian Church of blame by asserting that they had been acting on the wishes of the population, while at the same time not accepting the literal intervention of the Devil in human affairs which liberal rationalists disbelieved. In 1832, Felix Mendelssohn adopted similar ideas when composing his orchestral piece, Die Erste Walpurgisnacht , in which

44265-469: The winter and summer solstices, and Easter. She asserted that the "General Meeting of all members of the religion" were known as Sabbaths, while the more private ritual meetings were known as Esbats. Murray claimed that these Esbats were nocturnal rites that began at midnight, and that they were "primarily for business, whereas the Sabbath was purely religious." At Esbats, magical rites were performed both for malevolent and benevolent ends. She also asserted that

44492-541: The witch-cult in 1899 or 1900, after being introduced to it through Allan Bennett , a Golden Dawn friend of his. Lidell continued his claim by saying that the coven's High Priestess expelled Crowley for being "a dirty minded, evilly disposed, vicious little monster". No substantiating evidence has, however, been produced for this. From the 1960s Carlo Ginzburg documented the beliefs of a number of early modern groups of sorcerers, seers and healers. He claimed they were rooted in pre-Christian paganism, and credited Murray with

44719-410: The witches' use of animals, which she divided into "divining familiars" used in divination and "domestic familiars" used in other magic rites. Murray asserted that paganism had survived the Christianization process in Britain, although that it came to be "practised only in certain places and among certain classes of the community." She believed that folkloric stories of fairies in Britain were based on

44946-476: The witches: blood-sacrifice, in which neophytes write their names in blood, the sacrifice of animals, the sacrifice of a non-Christian child to procure magical powers, and the sacrifice of the witches' god by fire to ensure fertility. She interpreted accounts of witches' shapeshifting into various animals as being representative of a rite in which the witches dressed as specific animals which they took to be sacred. She asserted that accounts of familiars were based on

45173-405: The work of the Dominican Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century helped lay the groundwork for a shift in Christian doctrine, by which certain Christian theologians eventually began to accept the possibility of collaboration with devil(s), resulting in a person obtaining certain real supernatural powers. Christians as a whole were not of the belief that magic in its entirety is demonic, for members of

45400-399: The years of 1500–1700 (by region) include: Holy Roman Empire: 50,000 Poland: 15,000 Switzerland: 9,000 French Speaking Europe: 10,000 Spanish and Italian peninsulas: 10,000 Scandinavia: 4,000. Various suggestions have been made that the witch trials emerged as a response to socio-political turmoil in the Early Modern world. One form of this is that the prosecution of witches was a reaction to

45627-467: Was a very rare charge in the witch trials. After 1334 the political dimension of witchcraft accusations disappeared, while the charges remained mild. The large majority of trials until 1375 were in France and Germany. The number of witch trials rose after 1375, when many municipal courts adopted inquisitorial procedure and penalties for false accusations were abolished. Prominent centres of witch prosecutions were France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. In Italy

45854-412: Was a witch, and after the latter fled in fear of his life he was outlawed as a traitor. The king subsequently set up royal commissions to hunt down witches in his realm, recommending torture in dealing with suspects, and in 1597 wrote a book about the menace witches posed to society entitled Daemonologie . The Pendle witch trials of 1612 are some of the most prominent in English history, resulting in

46081-436: Was accountable to a "Grand Master". According to Murray, the records of the coven were kept in a secret book, with the coven also disciplining its members, to the extent of executing those deemed traitors. Describing this witch-cult as "a joyous religion", she claimed that the two primary festivals that it celebrated were on May Eve and November Eve, although that other dates of religious observation were 1 February and 1 August,

46308-408: Was adopted by British Egyptologist Margaret Murray , who presented her version of it in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921), before further expounding it in books such as The God of the Witches (1931) and her contribution to the Encyclopædia Britannica . Although the "Murrayite theory" proved popular among sectors of academia and the general public in the early and mid-twentieth century, it

46535-440: Was banned in 1905 along with flogging and lingchi ( dismemberment ) as a means of execution, although torture in China continued throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Torture was widely used by colonial powers to subdue resistance and reached a peak during the anti-colonial wars in the twentieth century. An estimated 300,000 people were tortured during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), and

46762-449: Was because it "appealed to so many of the emotional impulses of the age", including "the notion of the English countryside as a timeless place full of ancient secrets", the literary popularity of Pan, the widespread belief that the majority of British had remained pagan long after the process of Christianisation, and the idea that folk customs represented pagan survivals. At the same time, Hutton suggested, it seemed more plausible to many than

46989-436: Was believed that witnessing the invisible force of witchcraft was impossible: "half proofes are to be allowed, and are good causes of suspicion". The sole identifier of a witch was the Devil's mark. A scar, given to a witch by the devil, that could be anywhere on the body. However, in order to find this scar, it had to be through thorough examination. This lack of a recognizable feature led to flexibility. This flexibility enabled

47216-410: Was carried out in secret, it could not be an effective deterrent. In the twentieth century, well-known examples include the Khmer Rouge and anti-communist regimes in Latin America, who tortured and murdered their victims as part of forced disappearance . Authoritarian regimes often resort to indiscriminate repression because they cannot accurately identify potential opponents. Many insurgencies lack

47443-412: Was criticised by scholars like Jessie Weston for making unsubstantiated leaps with the evidence. Returning to London, she began to work on the concept of witchcraft. Her first published work on the subject was an article in the academic journal Folklore in 1917, which she followed with a second in 1920. Further articles on the subject appeared in the journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute and

47670-468: Was executed in 1811 in Prussia , not technically for witchcraft, but for arson. In Poland, the Doruchów witch trials occurred in 1783, and two additional women were executed for sorcery. They were tried by a legal court, but with dubious legitimacy. Despite the official ending of the trials for witchcraft, there would still be occasional and unofficial witch-hunts and killings of those who were accused of practicing witchcraft in parts of Europe, such as

47897-425: Was never accepted by specialists in the witch trials, who publicly disproved it through in-depth research during the 1960s and 1970s. Contemporary experts in European witchcraft beliefs view the 'pagan witch cult' theory as pseudohistorical . There is now an academic consensus that those accused and executed as witches were not followers of any witch religion, pagan or otherwise. Critics highlight several flaws with

48124-541: Was nevertheless highly critical; he asserted that Murray's "knowledge of European history, even of English history, was superficial and her grasp of historical method was non-existent." Furthermore, he added that her ideas were "firmly set in an exaggerated and distorted version of the Frazerian mould." That same year, the Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade , writing in the History of Religions journal, described Murray's work as "hopelessly inadequate" and full of "numberless and appalling errors". He added that from

48351-426: Was not Germanic in origin, but had instead been practised by slaves who had come in contact with the Greek cults of Hecate and Dionysus on the north coast of the Black Sea . According to Mone, these slaves adopted these cults and fused them with their own pagan faiths to form witchcraft, a religion that venerated a goat-like god, celebrated nocturnal orgies and practised poisoning and malevolent magic. This horrified

48578-468: Was not a best seller; in its first thirty years, only 2,020 copies were sold. However, it led many people to treat Murray as an authority on the subject; in 1929, she was invited to provide the entry on "Witchcraft" for the Encyclopædia Britannica , and used it to present her interpretation of the subject as if it were universally accepted in scholarship. It remained in the encyclopedia until being replaced in 1968. Murray followed this book with The God of

48805-425: Was not printed until 1561. Jacquier describes a number of trials he personally witnessed, including one of a man named Guillaume Edelin , against whom the main charge seems to have been that he had preached a sermon in support of the Canon Episcopi claiming that witchcraft was merely an illusion. Edelin eventually recanted this view, most likely under torture. The most important and influential book which promoted

49032-405: Was officially a crime in Papua New Guinea from 1971 until 2013. Peculiar standards applied to witchcraft allowing certain types of evidence "that are now ways relating Fact, and done many Years before". There was no possibility to offer alibi as a defense because witchcraft did not require the presence of the accused at the scene. Witnesses were called to testify to motives and effects because it

49259-408: Was only reliably placed below 100,000 in scholarship of the 1970s. There were many regional differences in the manner in which the witch trials occurred. The trials themselves emerged sporadically, flaring up in some areas but neighbouring areas remaining largely unaffected. In general, there seems to have been less witch-phobia in Spain and the papal lands of Italy in comparison to France and

49486-478: Was pardoned after her conviction and set free. The last execution for witchcraft in England took place in 1716, when Mary Hicks and her daughter Elizabeth were hanged. Janet Horne was executed for witchcraft in Scotland in 1727. The Witchcraft Act 1735 ( 9 Geo. 2 . c. 5) put an end to the traditional form of witchcraft as a legal offense in Britain. Those accused under the new act were restricted to those that pretended to be able to conjure spirits (generally being

49713-429: Was partly because of her "imposing credentials" as a member of staff at UCL, a position that lent her theory greater legitimacy in the eyes of many readers. He further suggested that the Murrayite view was attractive to many as it confirmed "the general picture of pre-Christian Europe a reader of Frazer or [Robert] Graves would be familiar with". Similarly, Hutton suggested that the cause of the Murrayite theory's popularity

49940-550: Was printed 13 times between 1486 and 1520, and — following a 50-year pause that coincided with the height of the Protestant reformations — it was printed again another 16 times (1574–1669) in the decades following the important Council of Trent which had remained silent with regard to Kramer's theological views. It inspired many similar works, such as an influential work by Jean Bodin , and was cited as late as 1692 by Increase Mather , then president of Harvard College. The increased demonization of witches blossomed in relation with

50167-451: Was sent to recuperate in Glastonbury , Somerset , where she became interested in Glastonbury Abbey and the folklore surrounding it which connected it to the legendary figure of King Arthur and to the idea that the Holy Grail had been brought there by Joseph of Aramathea . Pursuing this interest, she published the paper "Egyptian Elements in the Grail Romance" in the journal Ancient Egypt , although few agreed with her conclusions and it

50394-406: Was shown by his polemics against censorship. By the time that historians rejected his work, it was already firmly entrenched in the popular image of witchcraft. Witch trials were still uncommon in the 15th century when the concept of diabolical witchcraft began to emerge. The study of four chronicles concerning events in Valais , the Bernese Alps and the nearby region of Dauphiné has supported

50621-441: Was simply the first point." He added that although he rejected her ideas, there was a "kernel of truth" in Murray's thesis. Some historians have viewed Ginzburg's ideas as being related to Murray's; Hungarian historian Gábor Klaniczay stated that "Ginzburg reformulated Murray's often fantastic and very inadequately documented thesis about the reality of the witches' Sabbath" and thus the publication of I Benandanti in 1966 "reopened

50848-514: Was the basis of much of modern medicine. He believed that they worshiped the god Pan , who had become equated with the Christian figure of the Devil over time. When Michelet's La Sorcière was first published in France, it was, according to historian Ronald Hutton , "greeted with silence from French literary critics, apparently because they recognized that it was not really history". In 1893, an American suffragist, Matilda Joslyn Gage , published Woman, Church and State , in which she claimed that in

51075-429: Was the first time that an international body—the European Commission on Human Rights —found that a state practiced torture and it, along with Ireland v. United Kingdom , formed much of the basis for the definition of torture in international law. In the early 1970s, Amnesty International launched a global campaign against torture, exposing its widespread use despite international prohibition and eventually leading to

51302-591: Was the witches' god, "manifest and incarnate", to whom the witches offered their prayers. She claimed that at the witches' meetings, the god would be personified, usually by a man or at times by a woman or an animal; when a human personified this entity, Murray claimed that they were usually dressed plainly, though they appeared in full costume for the witches' Sabbaths. Members joined the cult either as children or adults through what Murray called "admission ceremonies"; Murray asserted that applicants had to agree to join of their own free will, and agree to devote themselves to

51529-407: Was tried by ducking and jailed for allegedly being a witch. Rationalist historians in the 18th century came to the opinion that the use of torture had resulted in erroneous testimony. In 1712, Rabbi Hirsch Fränkel was convicted of witchcraft after completion of an inquisition by the Theological & Legal Faculties at the University of Aldorf. Rabbi Fränkel was a self-avowed Kabbalist, a follower

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