brian p levack the witch hunt in early modern europe

This new court was known as inquisitorial courts. When the thirteenth century came into being, a new technique, which gave more human judgment in the criminal process, was adopted in Western European secular courts. This system was known as the accusatorial system and existed predominantly in northwestern Europe. Levack states that before the thirteenth-century European courts used a system of criminal procedure that made all crimes difficult to prosecute. As the reader first opens the legal foundations of witch-hunting, one finds that historically it was a judicial process from discovery to elimination. These women were referred to as striae, which was one of the many Latin terms for witches. The belief in “flying night witches” was shared by many cultures in the modern world. The belief for this was contributed to by the assumption that witches took flight from their homes to go to nocturnal meetings without their absence from home being detected. They were also accused of being an organization known for its cannibalistic practices of infanticide incest.Īnother component of this cumulative concept was the belief in the flight of witches. Many believed that these witches observed a nocturnal Sabbath where they worshipped the devil and paid their homage to him. Some would barter their soul to the devil in exchange for a gift or a taste of well-being.

There was a strong belief then that witches made pacts with the devil. The cumulative concept of witchcraft pointed immediately to the devil, the source of the magic and the one most witches adored. The intellectual foundations of the hunts were attributed to the witch’s face-to-face pact with the devil and the periodic meetings of witches to engage in practices considered to be barbaric and heinous. The cause of most of these hunts is the multi-causal approach, which sees the emergence of new ideas about witches and changes in the criminal law statutes.īoth point to major religious changes and a lot of social tension among society. Sometimes professional witch-hunters carried on the task, but judicial authorities performed most.

The hunts were not prisoner escapee type hunts but rather a hunt that involved the identification of individuals who were believed to be engaged in a secret activity. The causes of witch-hunting have been sometimes in publications portrayed differently from reality. Levack focuses mainly on the circumstances from which the witch-hunts emerged, as this report will examine.

The book offers a solid, reasonable interpretation of the accusation, prosecution, and execution for witchcraft in Europe between 14. The Witch-Hunt in Modern Europe by Brian Levack proved to be an interesting as well as insightful look at the intriguing world of the European practice of witchcraft and witch-hunts.

Brian p levack the witch hunt in early modern europe