47 Fun Facts About Witchcraft History

The popular 'nine million witches' myth began with a 1784 essay arguing which Enlightenment writer's estimate was too low?

Voltaire: the essayist scaled up 30 death sentences in one town's archive to all of Europe, yet historians now put executions at 40,000 to 60,000.

Most accused witches were women, but in which country were nearly all executed witches men?

Iceland: openly practised magic there had come to be associated with men, so almost all of the 22 people executed for sorcery were men.

Which realm saw the most witch trials in early modern Europe?

Holy Roman Empire: in the prince-bishopric of Würzburg, a ruler bent on the Counter-Reformation had hundreds burned as witches.

Which Arthur Miller play dramatises the Salem witch trials as an allegory for McCarthyism?

The Crucible: Miller was later hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee himself and convicted of contempt for refusing to name names.

Who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum?

Heinrich Kramer wrote it after a bishop expelled him from Innsbruck over a witch trial there.

Which body condemned the Malleus Maleficarum for recommending illegal procedures?

The theology faculty of the University of Cologne condemned the book in 1490 for recommending unethical and illegal procedures, yet Kramer kept his post and his prestige.

Which pope issued Summis desiderantes affectibus, the 1484 bull backing two inquisitors against witchcraft along the Rhine?

Innocent VIII issued it on 5 December 1484, and the bull was later printed in full at the head of the Malleus Maleficarum, lending that handbook papal weight.

The medieval Canon Episcopi dismissed women's night rides with which pagan goddess as delusion?

Diana: the text, perhaps first recorded by Regino of Prüm, called such night rides a delusion, and Gratian later copied it into canon law.

Who was the first recorded person condemned for witchcraft in Ireland, in 1324?

Alice Kyteler fled before she could be punished, and her servant Petronilla de Meath, tortured into confessing, was flogged and burned at the stake.

Joan of Arc was burned at Rouen in 1431 after being convicted of what crime?

Heresy: her judges declared her a relapsed heretic after she went back to wearing men's clothes, and a 1456 retrial overturned the verdict.

The Trier witch trials of 1581–1593 were held in which present-day country?

Germany: the Trier hunts reached the top of society, and city officials and even a senior judge were among those executed.

Which Trier judge, who had presided over witch trials himself, was strangled and burned for witchcraft in 1589?

Dietrich Flade, said to have treated the accused mildly, was himself tortured into confessing, then strangled and burned.

In the Bible, the Witch of Endor summons the spirit of which prophet for King Saul?

Samuel: the spirit foretells that Saul and his army will fall to the Philistines, and they are defeated.

Johannes Junius, who smuggled a letter to his daughter from jail before his execution, held what office?

Mayor of Bamberg: Junius held out under thumbscrews and leg screws before confessing, then wrote that his confession was sheer lies.

What 1626 disaster across Franconia was blamed on sorcery as the region's mass witch trials began?

A crop-killing frost: it ruined the region's vines, and arrested suspects confessed that they had caused it.

Which Jesuit's 1631 Cautio Criminalis argued that torture creates witches where none exist?

Friedrich Spee drew on his experience as a confessor to accused witches at Würzburg, and had the book printed anonymously at Rinteln.

The Basque witch trials, in which some 7,000 people were accused, began in 1609 in which town?

Logroño's Inquisition tribunal burned several of the accused in 1610, but junior inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías found no real proof behind the confessions.

Which Scottish king attended the North Berwick witch trials of 1590?

James VI attended the North Berwick trials in person after storms on his voyage home with his bride, Anne of Denmark, were blamed on witches, and later wrote Daemonologie.

Which Shakespeare play is believed to draw on Daemonologie?

Macbeth: its witches are believed to borrow from the book, though one scholar saw no sign that Shakespeare used it at all.

Daemonologie is widely thought to have answered which sceptical 1584 book?

The Discoverie of Witchcraft, by Reginald Scot, argued that witchcraft did not exist and exposed how charlatans' seemingly miraculous tricks were done.

The Pendle witches, tried in 1612, lived around Pendle Hill in which English county?

Lancashire: the case began after a pedlar refused a local girl some pins and was then struck lame, which was blamed on her witchcraft.

Which nine-year-old's testimony helped convict her own family among the Pendle witches?

Jennet Device, aged nine, was a key witness, naming the guests at the Malkin Tower meeting as well as testifying against her mother, brother and sister.

Matthew Hopkins claimed which title, never actually granted by Parliament?

Witchfinder General: Hopkins claimed Parliament had commissioned him, and toured towns with a team of women who pricked suspects for the Devil's mark.

Matthew Hopkins was mainly active in which region of England?

East Anglia: it began in Manningtree, Essex, where Hopkins said he overheard women discussing their meetings with the Devil, and 23 women were accused.

In the water ordeal used in witch-hunts, what did it mean if the accused floated?

Guilt: floaters were tried as witches, and legend even claimed Hopkins died by his own swimming test, though his burial record says otherwise.

A 'witch's teat' was believed to be used to feed what?

Familiars or imps: in return for the blood they sucked, these spirits were believed to serve the witch and aid her magic.

Despite the popular image of the stake, how were convicted witches in England usually executed?

Hanged: English law made witchcraft a felony, and convicted witches normally went to the gallows rather than the fire.

About how many people are estimated to have been executed for witchcraft in England?

About 500 people were executed for witchcraft in England, where torture was unlawful, so witch-hunters kept suspects awake for nights to force confessions.

Which political leader formally apologised in 2022 to those accused under Scotland's 1563 Witchcraft Act?

Nicola Sturgeon apologised on International Women's Day, answering a campaign by the Witches of Scotland group, which also sought pardons and a memorial.

Which Dornoch woman is called the last person legally executed for witchcraft in the British Isles?

Janet Horne was accused of turning her daughter into a pony for the Devil to shoe, and in 1727 she was tarred and burned at Dornoch.

The Witchcraft Act 1735 made it a crime to do what?

Claiming magical powers became the crime instead: the act ended executions for witchcraft and treated would-be sorcerers and spirit-summoners as frauds.

Which Scottish medium was the last person imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act 1735?

Helen Duncan, a Scottish medium, was jailed for nine months in 1944; her 'ectoplasm' was shown to be cheesecloth, and Churchill called the prosecution obsolete tomfoolery.

The medium jailed under the Witchcraft Act claimed a spirit had revealed the secret sinking of which warship?

HMS Barham: the navy kept its November 1941 sinking from the public until January 1942, so her séance claim drew official suspicion.

Salem Village, where the 1692 witchcraft accusations began, is known today as which Massachusetts town?

Danvers: the village had long feuded with Salem Town over land and church rights, and it was finally separated from Salem in 1752.

Which Salem trial judge later publicly repented?

Samuel Sewall stood before his congregation on a public fast day in 1697 while the minister read out his apology for the trials.

After refusing to stand trial at Salem, how was Giles Corey put to death?

He was pressed under stones: rather than agree to a trial, Corey is said to have answered his tormentors only with 'More weight'.

Tituba, one of the first accused at Salem, was enslaved by which minister?

Samuel Parris: the accusations began among the girls of his household, including his daughter Betty, and Tituba's confession gave them credence.

What kind of testimony did doubting clergymen finally discredit, ending the Salem trials?

Spectral evidence: after Boston ministers warned the Devil could take an innocent person's shape, Governor Phips let the court fall, and the executions stopped.

Which Boston minister defended the Salem trials in Wonders of the Invisible World?

Cotton Mather published The Wonders of the Invisible World in 1693 to justify the trials; he later championed smallpox inoculation after learning of it from Onesimus, an enslaved African in his household.

In 1675, 71 people were beheaded in a single day in which Swedish parish?

Torsåker: a local vicar, Laurentius Hornæus, led the trials there, part of a Swedish witch panic that had begun in 1668.

The Steilneset Memorial commemorates the victims of witch trials in which Norwegian region?

Finnmark: accused women at Vardø confessed to raising storms and sinking boats, and the memorial remembers 91 people condemned there.

Anna Göldi, called Switzerland's last witch, was executed in 1782 in which canton?

Glarus: officially she was executed for 'poisoning', because her employer said she had magically put needles in his daughter's bread and milk.

Who is often called the last person condemned to death for witchcraft in England, in 1712?

Jane Wenham of Walkern was condemned to death, but the sentence was never carried out.

Which ancient set of laws let an accused man clear himself by leaping into a river?

The Code of Hammurabi: if the river took him, his accuser won his house, but if he came out unhurt, the accuser was put to death.

In 331 BCE, at least 170 women were condemned in which city for causing an epidemic by poison-magic?

Rome: Livy reports 170 women found guilty of poisoning, yet admits he would gladly believe the story false.

Who was the first person recorded as executed for witchcraft in England's American colonies, in 1647?

Alse Young was hanged at Hartford, Connecticut, on 26 May 1647, the first recorded witchcraft execution in the American colonies; Connecticut's legislature exonerated her and others in 2023.

Which country's northern 'witch camps' have long sheltered women accused of witchcraft?

Ghana: many women sent to its camps are older widows, and relatives are believed to accuse some of them in order to seize a dead husband's property.