Witch Hunts
Malleaus maleficarum
The Catholic Inquisition published a book that was probably the bloodiest work in the history of humanity: the “Malleaus maleficarum”, “the witches’ hammer”, had indoctri...
THE PENDLE WITCHES
On August 20th 1612 ten people convicted of witchcraft at the Summer Assize held in Lancaster Castle went to the gallows on the moors above the town. Among their number were two men and a woman in her...
Rebecca Nurse Salem: The Tragic Fate of an Innocent Woman
Rebecca Nurse is a prominent figure in the history of the Salem Witch Trials. She was born in 1621 in Great Yarmouth, England, and later immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with her family in 1...
Elizabeth Cogan Holley Kendall: Executed in the Salem Witch Trials of 1590-1643
Elizabeth Cogan Holley Kendall was one of the many victims of the infamous Salem witch trials that took place in Massachusetts in 1692. She was born in 1590 and was executed in 1643, accused of witchc...
Bury St. Edmonds Witches
Bury St. Edmonds Witches Of the various witch trials of Suffolk, England, conducted in Bury St. Edmonds during the 17th century, two episodes stand out. In 1645, 68 witches went to their deaths on the...
Guazzo, Francesco-Maria (17th century)
Guazzo, Francesco-Maria (17th century) Italian friar who became well known as a demonologist and opponent of witches. Francesco-Maria Guazzo is best known as the author of Compendium Maleficarum (Hand...
Mathew Hopkins
Hopkins, Matthew (?–1647?) England’s most notorious professional witch-hunter, who brought about the condemnations and executions of at least 230 allegedwitches, more than all other witch-hunters comb...
Fairy Witch of Clonmel (1894)
Fairy Witch of Clonmel (1894) A young woman named Bridget Cleary, of Clonmel, County Tipperary, who was tortured and burned to death because her husband believed the fairies had spirited her away and ...
Hibbins, Ann (d. 1656)
Hibbins, Ann (d. 1656) Prominent Boston woman convicted of witchcraft and executed. Her chief crime as a witch seemed to have been a bad temper, which was disliked by her neighbors. Ann Hibbins was ma...
Graves, William (17th century)
Graves, William (17th century) Connecticut man accused of witchcraft over a dispute with his daughter and son-in-law. Though no legal action was taken against William Graves, his case indicates how ea...
Bamberg Witches
At the center of the worst witch tortures and trials in Germany was Bamberg, a small state ruled by Gottfried Johann Georg II Fuchs von Dornheim. The Hexenbischof (Witch Bishop) von Dornheim, as he wa...
Hawkins, Jane (17th century)
Hawkins, Jane (17th century) Massachusetts midwife and healer expelled on suspicions of witchcraft in the delivery of a deformed, stillborn fetus. The witchcraft accusations were mixed with a religiou...
The burning alive of Father Louis Gaufridi
The burning alive of Father Louis Gaufridi for bewitchment of the nuns at Aix in 1611 formed the legal precedent for the conviction and execution of Urbain Grandier at Loudun more than 20 years later....
Gruber, Bernardo (17th century)
German trader accused of sorcery by Pueblo Indians in northern New Mexico. Bernardo Gruber was imprisoned. He escaped but died a strange death. In 1668, Gruber arrived in New Mexico with a pack train ...
Arras witches (1459–1460)
A mass witch hunt in Arras, northern France. The accused were brutally tortured and promised their lives, then burned at the stake. The incident roused the ire of the duke of Burgundy, and eventually ...
Ladder
Widely held superstitions that it is bad luck to walk beneath a ladder are related in part to fears about witches, especially during the witch hunt times in colonial America. Not all witches were burn...
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