Witches have become characters of legend, superstition and terror represented in movies,
books and images as horrible beings, people who offered their bodies and souls to the
devil to obtain supernatural abilities in exchange for becoming his faithful followers.
Generally associated with death, disease and curses, they were persecuted, tortured and
burned at the stake for their alleged evil acts for more than 3 centuries.
Approximately 80,000 to 100,000 people worldwide were put on trial on charges of witchcraft,
at least half of whom suffered immensely and 80% of whom were women and in most cases innocent.
Today we will feel the embracing heat of the flames and suffer the painful tortures that
the supposed witches of the Middle Ages endured as we accompany them in their agony, Welcome
to Copernicus’s Galaxy.
Which country burned the most witches in the Middle Ages?
Between 1300 and 1850, thousands of people, mostly women, were tried and executed under
the crime of witchcraft in different countries throughout Europe.
An unfounded accusation was enough to receive a visit from the inquisitors of the Catholic
Church and to have to spend a bitter ordeal in their custody at the very least.
Although it is true that the so-called "Black Legend" has condemned the members of the Holy
Inquisition as unjust, irrational and violent, lumping them all into a single institution
without distinguishing them by country, it is also true that none of these groups were
exempt from cases where dozens of people were executed in the name of the church, raising
the number of victims to between 40 and 60 thousand, not counting those who were lynched
to death by their own neighbors outside the law.
It seems that Germany had already earned the label of genocidal hundreds of years before
Hitler existed.
This country and its inquisition became so obsessed with witch hunting that between the
XVII and XVIII centuries, they executed 50% of the total victims in all of Europe, around
25 and 30 thousand people.
Although not all were burned alive, since on many occasions it was customary to behead
them before throwing them to the stake.
Being accused of witchcraft during this period, especially in the cities of Bamberg, Mainz,
Eichstätt and Würzburg, was the worst thing that could happen to you.
The alleged witches were found guilty even before presenting any evidence.
The accusations which were products of envy, suspicion, hatred or dispute towards someone
were the norm, being one of the causes of the growing tension between Catholic and Reformed
groups and the political fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire.
A letter written by a witness to an acquaintance in 1629 describes how 7 year old boys or promising
students were executed for alleged contact with the devil.
According to the textual words of the letter "There are children of three and four years
old, up to 300, who are said to have had dealings with the devil ...", the worst part is that
the naivety of the German settlers of that time took all these irrational accusations
as true.
Fortunately, the anger and excessive violence of the inhabitants of other countries was
much less and more controlled, contrary to popular belief.
In Spain, a Holy Inquisition was created, regulated by strict rules that forced them
to investigate any accusation and discarding any confession obtained under torture, achieving
one of the lowest execution rates, with only 3,000 executions throughout all these centuries.
This being because the Spanish Holy Inquisition was more interested in attracting new believers
or converting them to their religion than in the torture and execution of heretics and
witches.
However, there were also episodes of massive persecution such as the well-known witches
of Zugarramurdi, a town in Navarre that witnessed a process where thirty people were condemned
in an auto de fe in 1609, of which 11 were executed, although in the end only 6 of them
were burned since the others had died in prison.
Dreadful trials for women accused of witchcraft
As we clarified in the previous text, the processes varied depending on the country
in which they took place and were not always carried out by the Holy Inquisition or with
a totally formal character within the law.
There were trials where the accusations were popular and uncorroborated, even some in Switzerland
accusing and imprisoning children until the inquisitors in Rome released them.
In cases outside the jurisdiction of the Inquisition or in countries where hysteria and violence
ruled, the accused often went through painful and humiliating trials.
The suspected witch was arrested because of rumors about the nature of their actions or
because of a confession extracted under torture from another alleged witch who gave random
names to the executioners in order to stop their suffering.
While preparations were being made for the following stages to be carried out, the prisoners
were confined to dungeons and towers that functioned as prisons.
These were located mostly in the walls that delimited the city, being known as "Witches
Towers" despite the fact that any prisoner could be taken there, a place where many times
they were victims of mistreatment.
Once everything was ready, the prisoner was taken to the place where the interrogation
and possible torture would be carried out.
Normally the person in charge of obtaining the confessions of the accused would go through
3 different phases if necessary, starting with a peaceful interrogation where he was
incited to speak voluntarily, if this was not the case, the next step consisted of an
explanation and sample of the torture instruments that included mainly thumbscrews, the wheel,
the rack and the Spanish boot with the intention of intimidating the prisoner before moving
on to the painful phase where these methods would be used.
Unfortunately for the witches, because they were accused of an "exceptional crime" the
rules were not respected, and the torture phases could last much longer than allowed
and be repeated on numerous occasions.
The suspect was subjected to the following acts, a witches' test that completely lacked
logical sense, just like the crimes attributed to the accused, and that were strictly prohibited
by the official processes, however, they were widely used as a valid argument in court.
From the famous "water test" where if you sank you were innocent, although many drowned,
to the "fire test" that claimed you would be free of guilt if by divine help you did
not receive severe burns when walking on hot iron, to the "weight test" where weighing
less than an average cat would make you worthy of the stake...
something impossible, but as expected, there was no shortage of altered scales.
In the end, a confession was necessary, true or false, regardless of whether it was a case
of witchcraft, something easy to obtain for all those who applied torture in the interrogations.
The witches were forced to give names of others, since it was believed that they would know
who the other suspects would be.
Obviously any name could come out of the prisoner’s mouth under these circumstances, creating
a chain effect where the alleged witches never ended.
With all the necessary elements on the table, a condemnation was dictated to be executed
in a determined time, to burn the men and women accused of pacting with the Devil.
On some occasions the law considered decapitating or strangling them first, as a pious example.
What painful punishments were applied to witches?
There were dozens of punishments and tortures, each one more horrifying, painful and creative
than the last, designed with the sole intention of causing gigantic suffering to obtain whatever
they wanted, whether it was a confession, to humiliate the accused or end their life
slowly.
But if we’re talking about witches, these become even more grotesque.
The devices and punishments designed especially for them were even more fearsome than the
crimes they were accused of.
According to several texts of the time that talked about what witches were, why they should
be hunted, punished, killed and how the executions should be carried out, they misogynistically
described how women were the main suspects, because they were physically, spiritually
and morally weak which made it easier for the Devil to deceive them, especially if they
were poor.
They were to be treated with special severity.
The laws did not apply to their trials and, quoting the words of the inquisitor "Henry
Institoris" in his work entitled "Malleus Maleficarum": "Because of the oath given to
the devil, all the works of witches, even the good ones in themselves, must be considered
as evil"... in short, you were not judged by your actions, but by what you were.
Following these ideas, punishments were created that had special emphasis on causing pain
to women or superstitions about their characteristics, especially emphasizing the latter, the accused
were subjected to tests where supposedly a higher power would decide whether they were
guilty or innocent.
One of the most used was the water test, where it was believed that witches, not having souls,
weighed less than the rest of mortals, so when introduced into a lake, completely immobilized,
they should float if they were followers of Satan, and if they sank in the water it was
confirmed that they were normal people, but it would be too late to help this person when
trying to get them out of the lake since most died from drowning.
The tortures were even worse as they seemed to be mostly oriented to provoke immense agony
rather than to obtain a confession.
For example, "El Desgarrador" was used to tear the mammary glands out of the body, destroying
all the contiguous tissues in the most painful way imaginable.
It was used cold or red-hot, placing it on the mammary tissues and turning slowly while
the executioner pulled them with force until they were torn from the body, in case they
survived the torment and decided not to execute the alleged witch, they would live marked
for life and without the possibility of breastfeeding their future children.
Finally, comes the well-known sentence for all those accused of making a pact with the
devil, the stake.
The stake was legislated by the Catholic Church as the ultimate punishment for heresy, killing
several sentenced persons by smoke intoxication before the flames burned their bodies or,
in the case of an individual execution, feeling how the fire charred their entire body.
Salem: The most famous witch hunt in history
It was not the largest witch hunt and much less the cruelest.
It took place in a county where this type of process was very sporadic, spreading the
accusations of witchcraft over several years and the causes were not very different from
those that occurred in Europe, across the ocean...
so, why are the Salem trials the ones we remember the most?
The answer is not clear, but it can be deduced that it was partly due to the great influence
that the case had on authors such as Arthur Miller in his work "The Witches of Salem"
and the future adaptations that these tragic events have inspired.
Today we dress up as witches with the desire to have fun, but at that time, a simple accusation
would be your sentence.
The imagination and playfulness of a couple of girls, coupled with the mass hysteria of
a largely Puritan population was the perfect combination for disaster.
In late 1691, the Reverend Samuel Parris along with his children, Thomas, Elizabeth, Susannah,
his niece Abigail Williams, and a slave named Tituba, who cared for the children, moved
to Salem.
The problem started with the mysterious stories that Tituba told the girls and the voodoo
rituals she performed, typical of her homeland, which made Betty Parris and Abigail Williams'
imaginations begin to break out of the puritanical morals that had been instilled in them.
Soon after, the two girls began to show strange behaviors, convulsions in public, senseless
words and phrases, sudden crying and what they called "bestial behaviors."
They were joined by Ann Putnam, daughter of one of the richest families in that community.
This put a population prone to religious fanaticism and superstition on alert, generating declarations
among the inhabitants who claimed to have seen the girls dancing in a satanic way in
the forest and screaming strangely.
To avoid the gallows, the girls accused Tituba of initiating them into satanic rites.
Tituba in turn, to save herself from the horrible tortures to which she would be subjected,
invented a story that she offered as a public confession: "I have seen the devil in the
forest.
Sometimes he takes the form of a very tall man with black hair, or a black dog, or a
pig, and I have seen a yellow bird kiss the finger of another witch, and Betty, Abigail,
Ann Putnam, Sarah Osborne, Sarah Good are in the service of Satan!
And I have seen the names of other neighbors in the book of Evil".
After this, everything got worse . The first ones executed were Sarah Osborne, an old woman
who had earned the hatred of her neighbors, and Sarah Good, who was a pauper.
More accusations, imprisonments and executions began to appear, some neighbors used them
to take revenge or solve problems they had among themselves, with accusations that lacked
foundation, from bewitched oxen, to having married 3 times...
By the end of 1693, more than 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, 19 sentenced to death,
14 of which were women and 5 men, and one more was crushed to death while being tortured
to confess.
Contrary to popular belief, the Salem witches were not burned at the stake, in fact their
lives ended with a rope around their necks, for the stake was a frequent sentence in Europe
where witchcraft cases were heard by an ecclesiastical court, while in England and its colonies they
were tried as any other capital crime, whose maximum punishment was hanging.
Such a display of violence and ignorance brought with it a series of injustices that ended
up taking the lives of thousands of people, mostly women...
All this is a sample and a clear warning of how taking any belief to the extreme makes
us irrational.
There are still cases in the world where some people are persecuted and executed on the
basis of absurd beliefs... who knows, maybe tomorrow they will persecute you and we will
be here telling everyone about it, at Copernicus's Galaxy.