Assignment task:
Witch Hunts
- What are your feelings/ reaction towards it?
- How did the witch hunts impact women socially, politically, and economically?
- After viewing this video, what impact do you think a book like Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, would have had on the community?
Material:
1. Watch the video
YouTube Video: The Burning Times
2. Religious Persecution and Witch-Hunts
For well over 200 years following the Protestant Reformation, religious persecution and religious warfare were commonplace. Catholics persecuted Protestants, Protestants persecuted Catholics, and the Protestant sects maligned one another. Religious fanaticism transformed many Christians into foes who perceived the faith as a contest between God and Satan. Luther, Calvin, and many other learned people regarded Satan as a figure to be reckoned with daily-Luther is said to have thrown an inkpot at the Devil for disturbing his work. Indeed, the witch-hunts that infested Europe (and especially Germany) during the sixteenth century were fueled by the popular belief that the Devil was actively involved in human affairs.
Belief in witches' dates back to humankind's earliest societies; however, the practice of persecuting witches did not begin until the late fourteenth century. The first massive persecutions occurred at the end of the fifteenth century and reached their peak approximately one hundred years later. Two theologians published the Malleus Maleficarum (Witches' Hammer; 1484), an encyclopedia that described the nature of witches, their collusion with the Devil, and the ways by which they were to be recognized and punished. Since women were traditionally regarded as inherently susceptible to the Devil's temptations, they became the primary victims of this mass hysteria. Women-especially single, old, and eccentric women-constituted four-fifths of the witches executed between the fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Among Northern European artists, witches and witchcraft became favorite subjects. The witchcraft craze of this period dramatizes the prevailing gap between Christian humanism and rationalism on the one hand and barbarism and superstition on the other.