Witchcraft, women and the Malta inquisition tribunal

Abstract

Anthropologists and historians have demonstrated that nearly all pre-modern societies believe in witch-craft and make some attempts to control witches. It was only in early modem Europe and the English colony in Massachusetts, however that these beliefs led to largescale hunts and mass executions. Most scholars of witchcraft studies agree - though most records have been lost or destroyed - that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people were officially tried and between 50,000 and 100,000 executed for witchcraft. Given the much smaller size of the population of Europe in comparison to today, these numbers are impressive. Several studies on particular areas where the witch craze reigned as in A. Macfarlane's Essex trials, Heningsen's Basque witch craze, and more recently, Behringer's Bavarian witchcraft persecutions have shown, that probably in the whole of pre-industrial Europe, 'popular magic' reigned supreme.