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Witch-hunt

A witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. Practicing evil spells or incantations was proscribed and punishable in early human civilizations in the Middle East. In medieval Europe, witch-hunts often arose in connection to charges of heresy from Christianity. An intensive period of witch-hunts occurring in Early Modern Europe and to a smaller extent Colonial America, took place from about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Counter Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 executions.[a][1] The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In other regions, like Africa and Asia, contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, and official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon today.

"Witch hunt" and "Witch trial" redirect here. For other uses, see Witch hunt (disambiguation) and Witch trial (disambiguation).

In current language, "witch-hunt" metaphorically means an investigation that is usually conducted with much publicity, supposedly to uncover subversive activity, disloyalty, and so on, but with the real purpose of harming opponents.[2] It can also involve elements of moral panic,[3] as well as mass hysteria.[4]

Amersfoort and Utrecht witch trials

Asten witch trial (in Dutch)

Basque witch trials

Bideford witch trial

Bredevoort witch trials

Derenburg witch trials

Islandmagee witch trial

Liechtenstein witch trials

North Berwick witch trials

Northern Moravia witch trials

Orkney witch trials

Pendle witches

Ramsele witch trial

Roermond witch trial

Salem witch trials

Spa witch trial

St Osyth Witches

Torsåker witch trials

Trier witch trials

as part of the Christianization of the Sámi people

Vardø witch trials

Wiesensteig witch trial

Witches of Warboys

Würzburg witch trial

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Behringer, Wolfgang. Witches and Witch Hunts: A Global History. Malden Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2004.

Briggs, K.M. Pale Hecate's Team, an Examination of the Beliefs on Witchcraft and Magic among Shakespeare's Contemporaries and His Immediate Successors. New York: The Humanities Press, 1962.

Briggs, Robin. 'Many reasons why': witchcraft and the problem of multiple explanation, in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Studies in Culture and Belief, ed. Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts, Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Burns, William E. Witch hunts in Europe and America: an encyclopedia (2003)

Cohn, Norman. (1975), Revised Edition: Europe's Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Europe's Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt

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Federici, Silvia

Golden, William, ed. Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition (4 vol. 2006) 1270pp; 758 short essays by scholars.

Goode, Erich; Ben-Yahuda, Nachman (1994). . Cambridge, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-18905-3.

Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance

Gouges, Linnea de, Witch hunts and State Building in Early Modern Europe (2018)

Klaits, Joseph. Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985

Levack, Brian P. The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661–1662, The , Vol. 20, No, 1. (Autumn, 1980), pp. 90–108.

Journal of British Studies

Levack, Brian P. The witch hunt in early modern Europe, 3rd ed., London and New York: Longman, 2006.

Macfarlane, Alan. Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A regional and Comparative Study. New York and Evanston: Harper & Row Publishers, 1970.

Midlefort, Erick H.C. Witch Hunting in Southeastern Germany 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundation. California: Stanford University Press, 1972.  0-8047-0805-3

ISBN

Monter, William (1972). "The Historiography of European Witchcraft: Progress and Prospect". Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 2 (4): 435–451. :10.2307/202315. JSTOR 202315.

doi

Oberman, H. A., J. D. Tracy, Thomas A. Brady (eds.), Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Visions, Programs, Outcomes (1995)  90-04-09761-9

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Oldridge, Darren (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader (2002)  0-415-21492-0

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Poole, Robert. The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories (2002)  0-7190-6204-7

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Purkiss, Diane. "A Holocaust of One's Own: The Myth of the Burning Times." Chapter in The Witch and History: Early Modern and Twentieth Century Representatives New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 7–29.

Robisheaux, Thomas. The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. (2009)  978-0-393-06551-0

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Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World, Random House, 1996.  0-394-53512-X

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David W. Thompson, "Sister Witch: The Life of Moll Dyer" (2017 Solstice Publishing)  978-1973105756

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Thurston, Robert. The Witch Hunts: A History of the Witch Persecutions in Europe and North America. Pearson/Longman, 2007.

Purkiss, Diane. The Bottom of the Garden, Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things. Chapter 3 Brith and Death: Fairies in Scottish Witch-trials New York: New York University Press, 2000, pp. 85–115.

West, Robert H. Reginald Scot and Renaissance Writings. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984.

Willumsen, Liv Helene. The Witchcraft Trials in Finnmark, Northern Norway. Bergen: Skald, 2010.  978-82-7959-152-8

ISBN

Willumsen, Liv Helene. Witches of the North:Scotland and Finnmark. Leiden: Brill, 2013.  9789004252912. E-ISBN 9789004252929

ISBN

Winkler, Albert (2023) "Judicial Murder: The Witch-Craze in Germany and Switzerland," Swiss American Historical Society Review, Vol. 59: No. 1, Available at:

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol59/iss1/2

1913 Catholic Encyclopedia entry on "Witchcraft"

Douglas Linder (2005),

A Brief History of Witchcraft Persecutions before Salem