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[a] The number of witch trials in Europe known to have ended in executions is around 12,000. [70] There were an estimated 110,000 witchcraft trials in Europe between 1450 and 1750, with half of the cases seeing the accused being executed. [71] Witch hunts began to increase first in southern France and Switzerland, during the 14th and 15th ...
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.
In the Nordic countries, the late 17th century saw the peak of the trials in a number of areas: the Torsåker witch trials of Sweden (1674), where 71 people were executed for witchcraft in a single day, the peak of witch hunting in Swedish Finland, [41] and the Salzburg witch trials in Austria (where 139 people were executed from 1675 to 1690).
European witch-hunts and witch trials in the early modern period led to tens of thousands of executions. While magical healers and midwives were sometimes accused of witchcraft themselves, [8] [4] [9] [10] they made up a minority of those accused. European belief in witchcraft gradually dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment.
This has been described as the first of the great witch trials of Germany and the starting point of the continuing European witch hunt. The trial inspired to the popular book : Of the tricks of Demons, which were printed in six expanded editions in Latin between 1562 and 1583 and translated to French in 1565. It was recorded in 1563 in a ...
Switzerland, or at least a part of it, was the location of the first European mass witch trial: the Valais witch trials, which lasted between 1428 and 1459, long before the publication of Malleus Maleficarum (1486). This unleashed the first wave of witchcraft persecutions during and was followed by numerous witch trials in Wallis 1430, Fribourg ...
The Valais witch-hunt is the first of the systematic campaigns which would become much more widespread in the decades to come, initiating the period of witch trials in Europe. The persecutions started in French-speaking Lower Valais ( House of Savoy and prince-bishopric of Sion ) and spread to German-speaking Upper Valais and to nearby valleys ...
Those same years saw, in central Europe at least, the worst of all witch-persecutions, the climax of the European craze. Many of the witch-trials of the 1620s multiplied with the Catholic reconquest. In some areas the lord or bishop was the instigator, in others the Jesuits. Sometimes local witch-committees were set up to further the work.