How and why have historians disagreed about the early modern witch hunts? By Lauren Golding, Medieval Studies
Historians of the early modern witch-hunts have disagreed on many aspects of the witch-
trials. This essay will discuss some of the disagreements surrounding the identities of those
accused, and the underlying factors that rendered certain people more vulnerable to
accusations of witchcraft. These disagreements stem from misinterpreted evidence,
insufficient research, and in-depth analysis of specific themes and ideas, micro versus macro
studies, the application of different disciplines and approaches to the witch-trials, and the
pre-existing personal convictions of those studying them.
Contemporary beliefs surrounding witchcraft in the early modern world centred on
the ideas that witches made a pact with the Devil and worshipped him at witches’ sabbats,
and that they practiced maleficium , causing harm to others by magical means. Whilst it is
now widely regarded by historians that witches as described by contemporary sources did
not exist, some early scholars of witchcraft believed in the reality of witches. Among these
were writer and religious fanatic, Montague Summers, and Margaret Murray, a folklorist and
anthropologist, who both studied witchcraft in the early twentieth-century. Summers was
convinced of the existence of an organized cult of devil-worshippers who indeed attended
the witches’ sabbat, while Murray beli eved the witches to be practitioners of an ancient
fertility religion who worshipped a horned god, misinterpreted by Christians as Satan. 1
1 James Sharpe , Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England, 1550-1750 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 7-8; Malcolm Gaskill, Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 24-25; Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2006), pp. 17-18; Thomas A. Fudge, 'Traditions and Trajectories in the Historiography of European Witch Hunting', History Compass , 4. 3 (2006), pp. 488-527
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