WEBVTT
00:00:03.759 --> 00:00:35.679
Breakriscute Susurantur Nomina Kisest malus kissest noches venit timor venit timor shadows lengthen in the slow night names are whisper Who is evil?
00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:37.600
Who is guilty?
00:00:38.320 --> 00:00:39.840
Fear comes.
00:00:40.159 --> 00:00:41.520
Fear comes.
00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:46.240
Hello and welcome to Witches Truth, Trials and Terrors.
00:00:46.479 --> 00:00:49.439
When you hear the words witch hunt, what comes to mind?
00:00:49.679 --> 00:00:57.520
Millions of innocent women burned at the stake, pointy hats, black cats, medieval superstition, a Europe gripped by mass hysteria.
00:00:57.679 --> 00:01:02.240
The trouble is that much of what we think we know about the witch hunts isn't actually true.
00:01:02.479 --> 00:01:05.840
The famous claim that nine million women were executed?
00:01:06.079 --> 00:01:07.200
Almost certainly a myth.
00:01:07.439 --> 00:01:10.239
The idea that all witches were women, also wrong.
00:01:10.480 --> 00:01:16.879
Even the period we call the witch craze was shorter, patchier, and altogether stranger than most people realize.
00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:26.640
I'm John Briggs, and in this series my job is quite simple: to ask the questions you'd ask if you happen to find yourself in a pub with two of the world's leading experts on witchcraft.
00:01:26.879 --> 00:01:28.159
In fact, I have both of them.
00:01:28.239 --> 00:01:29.840
I don't have the pub, but I have them.
00:01:30.079 --> 00:01:40.879
One of them is my co-host, Robin Briggs, who's the Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College in Oxford University, and one of the historians who's done more than anyone to reshape our understanding of witchcraft and the people accused of it.
00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:42.400
The other guest today is Dr.
00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:54.319
Jan Makelson of Cardiff University, whose research explores witchcraft, demonology, and the curious ways that otherwise sensible human beings can end up believing some very strange things indeed.
00:01:54.560 --> 00:01:57.760
Together, we're going to separate the history from the Hollywood.
00:01:58.000 --> 00:01:59.280
Welcome to episode two.
00:01:59.760 --> 00:02:03.040
Everything you know about witch hunts is wrong.
00:02:03.280 --> 00:02:13.360
I mean, if we're exploding myths, then obviously the idea that witch hunting is medieval is uh is is the is an even bigger myth than than the figure of nine million.
00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:22.479
A local historian took the figure from a single town and then multiplied it up on the basis that all European towns must have had the same numbers.
00:02:22.879 --> 00:02:35.199
Cold weather is not necessarily a good thing, and it has real impacts on the livelihood of early modern villagers who had to bring in a harvest, and if the harvest failed, you know, witches could be held responsible.
00:02:35.680 --> 00:02:46.879
The leading court in France, the Parlement of Paris, hung three judges outside the town hall in Paris in 1641 for the murder of a suspected witch.
00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:50.719
Yeah, and let's start with a question that I think may upset a few people.
00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:58.240
If I stop ten people in the street and I asked them how many witches were executed in Europe, how wrong would they be?
00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:09.199
There is a lot of myth and supposition about witchcraft, and all of it is really tied together in sort of like one holistic package.
00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:13.039
The number of nine million, which you mentioned, is a very common figure.
00:03:13.280 --> 00:03:39.439
It predates World War II, but it's clearly taken on a sort of new meaning after sort of the horrors of the 20th century, where this idea emerges that witchcraft must have been like, say, the Holocaust, and this idea that it must have been systematic, people must have been living in fear, elites must have been behind all of it, and that inevitably gives legitimacy to a figure like nine million.
00:03:39.680 --> 00:03:47.199
What you know historians usually say is that the total number of victims of the early modern witch hunt is between 40 and 50,000.
00:03:47.280 --> 00:03:56.879
You know, the number may have been creeping up more towards 50 rather than 40 in the past decade or so, but it's considerably less than what people on the street might think.
00:03:56.960 --> 00:03:57.199
Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
00:03:57.280 --> 00:04:01.199
I it's still a a reasonably large number of people, though, isn't it?
00:04:01.439 --> 00:04:06.719
Uh Robin, in comparison to the population of the time, do we have a percentage?
00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:18.639
Well, my rough figure for the population of most of Europe which was affected is something eighty million, may maybe crept up to a bit nearer to a hundred million.
00:04:18.879 --> 00:04:25.040
So I I mean the the figure is very small compared with the total population.
00:04:25.279 --> 00:04:40.480
And indeed, of course, there were more people than that who lived at some stage during this, because that's just a moment in time, and so your chances of being executed as a witch were pretty low, one has to say, even in the hot spots.
00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:48.879
But there are just a few villages where extraordinary proportion of people were executed, but that I mean they they are really quite exceptional.
00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:53.279
But yes, I mean the the nine million figure is quite a story, really.
00:04:53.360 --> 00:04:56.000
I mean, it goes back to the early 19th century.
00:04:56.240 --> 00:05:10.959
And uh a local historian in Austria, I think it was, who took the figure from a single town, and I'm not sure whether he was right even about that figure, and then multiplied it up on the basis that all European towns must have had the same numbers.
00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:15.920
I I should say that um to be fair to him, at least at least he didn't say nine million women.
00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:18.720
I think he already knew that there were some men involved.
00:05:18.959 --> 00:05:38.959
And then most of the citations I've seen are to an 1880s book by an early American feminist writer, which is mainly actually quite an interesting expose of the what's called the white slave trade, as say, white women being recruited into prostitution and working in brothels and this sort of thing.
00:05:39.120 --> 00:05:43.439
And for some reason, this this lady took over this figure.
00:05:43.600 --> 00:05:49.839
And that's the place that usually seems to be cited in more recent works by feminist writers.
00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.000
So it's it had a long gestation.
00:05:52.079 --> 00:06:00.800
But it is, as Jan says, it's only really since the Second World War that somehow this alternative Holocaust notion has got going, I think.
00:06:00.879 --> 00:06:18.639
And when you start thinking about it, I mean, if if the Nazis with all the advantages of chemistry and so on could only manage to eliminate six million Jews and other unfortunate, to suppose that early modern uh uh uh Europeans could have eliminated nine million people is really completely fantastical.
00:06:18.720 --> 00:06:21.759
I mean, out of all imaginable possibilities.
00:06:22.399 --> 00:06:24.000
It doesn't add up, as you say.
00:06:24.399 --> 00:06:31.759
You you make the point, though, that witchcraft belief and witchcraft persecutions have largely separate histories.
00:06:31.839 --> 00:06:33.279
What do you mean by that?
00:06:33.680 --> 00:06:34.319
Well, there.
00:06:34.399 --> 00:06:42.480
I mean the the point is that witchcraft beliefs are not universal in human societies, but they're immensely widespread.
00:06:42.560 --> 00:06:51.680
I mean, there are not many societies in the past or the present that have been studied where you don't find some kind of witchcraft belief.
00:06:52.000 --> 00:07:06.240
And uh it's quite clear, I think, although the evidence is very scrappy, that that this was a w a widespread belief in Europe from the Roman Empire period, I mean, and and right through the Middle Ages.
00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:09.759
But there are almost no known persecutions.
00:07:09.920 --> 00:07:21.199
There are a handful of trials for sorcery, and then a few trials for heresy, which seems to involve certain kinds of behavior that m you know involve diabolism.
00:07:21.759 --> 00:07:31.920
But I mean, the actual prosecution of witches only starts around the year 1400 and is pretty much at an end by the late 17th century in most of Europe.
00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:41.360
But witchcraft belief carries on and clearly is still around under the surface in uh quite large parts of Europe.
00:07:41.839 --> 00:07:44.480
So, yeah, and what's behind this explosion then in that case?
00:07:44.639 --> 00:07:48.399
Why does it happen then and not 500 years earlier, for example?
00:07:49.199 --> 00:07:59.439
I mean, if we're exploding myths, then obviously the idea that witch hunting is medieval is the is is the is an even bigger myth than than the figure of nine million.
00:07:59.600 --> 00:07:59.839
Right?
00:07:59.920 --> 00:08:09.279
It's really rather striking that you know the peak of you know witch hunting happened around the year 1600 or or maybe just after that.
00:08:09.680 --> 00:08:22.079
So from that perspective, we have to what Robin knows already so suggest it's you know, separating witchcraft from from the actual witch hunting.
00:08:22.319 --> 00:08:29.279
And the belief is you know it goes back to time immemorial, is common to all sorts of different societies.
00:08:29.600 --> 00:08:55.919
And I would consider it plausible that you know hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people were actually stigmatized by the label of witch, but the actual number of people who were persecuted in a court of law um was considerably smaller than that, um and stands as as already mentioned at a figure of forty to fifty thousand executions and um perhaps a hundred thousand trials.
00:08:56.399 --> 00:09:15.600
Um and and that you know is actually sort of like a very time-specific moment, you know, sort of really picking up it towards the 1560s, fifteen seventies, sort of like reaching a peak somewhere between sixteen hundred and you know, sixteen thirty, and then sort of like dropping quite rapidly after that.
00:09:16.240 --> 00:09:25.519
So, but what is it that inspires the the the requirement to take these people and actually put them on trial, torture them potentially, and then execute them?
00:09:25.919 --> 00:09:31.759
Why is it then if these beliefs have been around in human society since the beginning of time, pretty much?
00:09:32.399 --> 00:09:39.919
Well, this is in some sense really one of the big puzzles for which we don't have um a completely convincing answer.
00:09:40.159 --> 00:09:49.279
The main thing to sort of say is that you know, for you know, witchcraft to be prosecutable, as it were, it needed to be a crime.
00:09:49.600 --> 00:09:58.159
And it's only in the 16th century that we see countries actually passing um a law against witchcraft.
00:09:58.320 --> 00:10:04.559
So in England and Scotland, you know, the witchcraft acts are date to 1562 and 1563.
00:10:05.120 --> 00:10:15.200
So before that, you know, there were occasional sort of like prosecutions in church courts and that sort of thing, but without sort of like the danger of a death penalty.
00:10:15.440 --> 00:10:30.320
Um, but of course, that in some sense just pushes back, you know, the question sort of like why was it at that particular sort of moment in time that these practices, these witchcraft practices were seen to be so threatening that they needed to be criminalized.
00:10:30.639 --> 00:10:48.799
And you know, historians have advanced a number of explanations, particularly sort of like the impact of the European reformations and um the sort of general sort of apocalyptic thinking of the time that the end of the world was near, that the devil as a result was you know ranging, you know, before the world ended.
00:10:49.039 --> 00:10:52.480
But at the same time, that doesn't quite explain everything.
00:10:52.559 --> 00:11:01.120
Um Wolfgang Beringer, like a famous German historian, has really made the point about the the impact of climate change at this particular moment in time.
00:11:01.279 --> 00:11:16.399
Um, but whatever the circumstances are, is like you can sort of like really see, particularly in the 1580s and 1590s, which is a period that I've done a lot of work on, you can sort of really see a rising trend where sort of like the number of persecutions is picking up year on year.
00:11:16.480 --> 00:11:22.559
So there's definitely a peak that that is happening towards the end of the 16th century and into the early 17th.
00:11:22.960 --> 00:11:25.600
You say climate change, what was going on that we should be aware of?
00:11:25.679 --> 00:11:28.159
Because I mean, of course, that's what we're concerned with right now.
00:11:28.639 --> 00:11:47.679
Yeah, it's it's it's in some sense the very opposite as to the world that we live in now, because now we live in an age of rising temperatures, but in the early modern period, and particularly around the year 1600, uh, you know, people were confronting a period called the the mini ice age.
00:11:47.919 --> 00:11:54.960
So then that had all sorts of other different consequences, of course, uh than what we're facing today.
00:11:55.120 --> 00:12:02.240
We have harvest failures, you know, sort of like there's stories of it still snowing in July in some places.
00:12:02.399 --> 00:12:08.960
Um there are stories of the Thames freezing over, which is something that we couldn't possibly imagine sort of like happening today.
00:12:09.120 --> 00:12:10.960
Um I'm I'm Dutch by origin.
00:12:11.200 --> 00:12:36.559
So if you look at the for the great Netherlandish artists of the of the period, you know, there are endless paintings of frozen rivers and people having you know sort of fares on them and ice skating, you know, and ice skating is a is of course a Dutch pastime, but in actual practice, you know, all of that cold weather is not necessarily a good thing, and it has real impacts on the livelihood of early modern villagers who had to bring in a harvest.
00:12:36.639 --> 00:12:40.159
And if the harvest failed, you know, witches could be held responsible.
00:12:40.320 --> 00:12:49.919
And one of the things we do sort of see in the period is also sort of like a rising concern about weather magic and the idea of witches sort of like brewing up storms and and that sort of thing.
00:12:50.320 --> 00:12:55.759
So these things all add in to the idea that something supernatural must be going on.
00:12:56.320 --> 00:13:05.919
Yes, and and when if we were thinking about the chronology, this is the the big wave of witch hunting, witch persecution.
00:13:06.159 --> 00:13:11.919
I think you know we we need these kinds of explanations, or quite a lot of others, which we'll perhaps come back to.
00:13:12.240 --> 00:13:18.159
But I think it is rather striking that uh persecution falters.
00:13:18.399 --> 00:13:32.960
It it starts in the beginning of the 15th century, and very quickly you get the development of virtually the full story of diabolical witchcraft, of sabbatts, and of uh a conspiracy to harm fertility.
00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:38.080
I mean, all this is there in 15th century trial documents.
00:13:38.159 --> 00:13:42.000
It's uh something that's emerged very strongly, but from recent research.
00:13:42.240 --> 00:13:48.720
But you know, the numbers are quite small, and large parts of Europe just don't have any trials at all.
00:13:48.879 --> 00:13:50.879
And it it doesn't it doesn't take off.
00:13:51.120 --> 00:14:09.919
However, I mean what we can see there, I think, is quite clearly uh the role of the church, particularly of the friars, who go out into backwoods regions of Europe, particularly, and and noticeably the Western Alps seem to be a focal point for this.
00:14:10.159 --> 00:14:22.320
And what they find, of course, are witchcraft beliefs of the traditional kind, but also certain stories about people who do strange things at night and so on.
00:14:22.399 --> 00:14:29.440
And they and they stick these together, I mean, and and create this diabolical conspiracy theory.
00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:36.559
And there are some enthusiasts for persecution we can identify at that at that period, but they they've actually run into trouble.
00:14:36.639 --> 00:14:51.759
I mean, and famously the Heinrich Kramer, the author of the Malius Malificarum, writes his book, partly because he's been given a fearful ticking off by the Bishop of Innsbruck and thrown out for irregular procedures identifying witches.
00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:55.120
So um it's a very puzzling pattern.
00:14:55.600 --> 00:14:59.919
But do we not have this famous character, Matthew Hopkin, who was the witch finder general?
00:15:00.559 --> 00:15:03.919
You've got characters whose job is to go and find these people.
00:15:04.080 --> 00:15:06.080
Is that is that real or is that myth?
00:15:06.480 --> 00:15:07.200
No, it's real.
00:15:07.360 --> 00:15:21.679
But I mean, Hopkins and his associate John Stern, and they operate partly together and partly separately, only get that opportunity because of the breakdown of ordinary legal proceedings at the end of the English Civil War.
00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:29.679
And I mean that comes after a period when the Royal Government in in England had virtually stopped the prosecution of witches.
00:15:29.840 --> 00:15:34.320
I mean, in the English system, the role of the assize judges is terribly important.
00:15:34.639 --> 00:15:38.080
There are other reasons also to do with the grand jury and so on.
00:15:38.159 --> 00:15:43.200
Well, in England prosecutions can get stopped before they ever reach the asises.
00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:49.600
But there's a kind of an opportunity which they take to operate as as witchfinders.
00:15:49.759 --> 00:15:58.159
Actually, I think they are very close in nature to uh a more substantial group of these people, particularly in the German lands.
00:15:58.320 --> 00:16:04.559
One doesn't want to say Germany at this period because there are hundreds of principalities and bishoprics and so on.
00:16:04.720 --> 00:16:08.320
I mean, Germany isn't a state in any normal sense.
00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:14.159
The German lands of the Holy Roman Empire are amazing patchwork quilt.
00:16:14.639 --> 00:16:25.200
But there, a number of rulers, particularly prince bishops, um, are faced with outbreaks of excitement about witchcraft in the locality.
00:16:25.440 --> 00:16:30.399
And one of the things they tend to do is to appoint a special commissioner to take charge.
00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:34.480
So these are people who have a much more official stance than Hopkins did.
00:16:34.720 --> 00:16:48.240
It looks as if actually some of those bishops, at least, or rulers, thought that the commissioners would control the thing, but commissioners tend to get very enthusiastic and to uh set off on a real witch hunt.
00:16:48.399 --> 00:16:49.919
So I mean there are a number of these people.
00:16:50.080 --> 00:16:58.159
It should be said that a small proportion of them were actually convicted and executed for offences committed in that role.
00:16:58.320 --> 00:17:00.080
I mean For being over enthusiastic.
00:17:00.559 --> 00:17:00.799
Yes.
00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:04.079
I mean, you know, again, it that would surprise people, I think.
00:17:04.319 --> 00:17:20.240
I mean, one of my favorite moments, admittedly not quite the same, is uh that the leading court in France, the Parlement of Paris, uh hung three judges outside the town hall in Paris in 1641 for the murder of a suspected witch.
00:17:20.640 --> 00:17:21.680
Good grief.
00:17:21.920 --> 00:17:25.440
I mean, that is not what not what popular understanding.
00:17:27.200 --> 00:17:34.319
Can were were there governments and judges who were actually trying to stop some of the madness in the studies that you you you've made?
00:17:34.480 --> 00:17:39.359
I mean, or or or was this you know, it seems to be a bandwagon that people kind of got onto.
00:17:39.759 --> 00:17:43.839
So I I would emphasize the importance of checks and balances in general.
00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:54.880
So you mentioned John, you know, the the case of Matthew Hopkins and John Stern, and and as Robin explained, they were given an opportunity because you know political control had basically collapsed in that territory.
00:17:55.200 --> 00:18:24.799
My own research is on the Basque witch hunt in the southwest of France in 1609, and there we sort of see something very similar to what Robin was just describing with the appointment of a sort of commissioner, you know, as happened in parts of Germany, is sort of you know, for a time-limited period, uh Henry IV, the King of France, appointed these two judges from Bordeaux, uh Pierre de Lancre and Jean d'Espagne, to go to the Basque country um with unchecked powers.
00:18:24.960 --> 00:18:38.000
And for six months, you know, they were well, they only ended up going for four months, but for six months, according to the decree, they were allowed to execute witches uh um, you know, as they saw fit, basically.
00:18:38.079 --> 00:18:43.279
And when you get when you give people that amount of power, then they're going to use that amount of power.
00:18:43.519 --> 00:19:04.799
Whereas what we normally sort of see, and and the Parlement of Paris, which is a supreme court that sort of has jurisdiction over most of the north of France, is that as soon as you introduce appeals processes like that, you know, you end up creating checks and balances, and it becomes much more difficult to um convict people of witchcraft.
00:19:05.519 --> 00:19:07.839
Let's look at the process of what would happen then.
00:19:07.920 --> 00:19:13.200
What would it take for somebody to be arrested, as it were, before being put on trial?
00:19:13.599 --> 00:19:19.440
Because there clearly were an awful lot of people who were suspected witches, but they never came to court, did they?
00:19:19.920 --> 00:19:41.599
What I think I'd emphasize here is sort of that if you prosecute people for witchcraft, then there is a mistaken belief sometimes that you know these persecutions happened, you know, because witches have money, but actually most people accused of witchcraft were really poor, and it actually cost communities money to prosecute witches.
00:19:42.000 --> 00:20:07.359
What happened in the Bas country that I worked on is that they tried to prosecute witches under the normal system, but it cost so much money because you know there were appeals processes, these witches had to be transported from the Basque country, which you know is on the border with Spain, they had to be transported to Bordeaux for trial at the Bordeaux Parlement, the appeals court there, and that was just an extraordinary expense.
00:20:07.440 --> 00:20:14.000
And it was at that point that the communities of the Bas country petitioned the king to sort of say, it's like, you know, you know, we need some more help.
00:20:14.079 --> 00:20:19.039
You know, could you please send us a judge who could cut through all of the sort of legal paperwork?
00:20:19.279 --> 00:20:20.559
So hang on, who would have paid?
00:20:20.799 --> 00:20:22.480
Who would have paid initially for that process?
00:20:22.640 --> 00:20:27.279
Where does the money come from to transport your supposed witch to Bordeaux?
00:20:27.680 --> 00:20:29.200
The the communities themselves.
00:20:29.440 --> 00:20:34.400
So the account books, and I mean that's one of the sources I found was the account books of the town.
00:20:34.480 --> 00:20:39.359
They, you know, a lot that the actual trial records have almost all of them been lost.
00:20:39.440 --> 00:20:46.880
So I sort of was able to reconstruct, you know, sort of a lot of the process simply by following, you know, sort of like the payments, basically.
00:20:46.960 --> 00:20:53.119
Um and then the c in the case of the Basque country, you also had the added problem that all of these Basque witches were speaking Basque.
00:20:53.200 --> 00:20:57.519
So you not only had to pay for the transport, you had to pay for interpreters and waiters.
00:20:58.160 --> 00:20:59.359
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:20:59.519 --> 00:21:04.720
So and and you know, all the while these people had to be put kept in in prison and they had to be fed.
00:21:04.880 --> 00:21:12.240
So it's you can sort of see how the cost implications of of a witch trial could be a real obstacle.
00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:29.119
And in in the case of the of the basque witch hunt, um, you know, it was to sort of cut through the the financial implications of uh of these witch hunting um that that uh a judge like Pier Dolanco was appointed to sort of like cut through all of that.
00:21:29.519 --> 00:21:37.359
But you can also see why, having paid that money, uh no result would have been extremely disappointing for the community.
00:21:38.319 --> 00:21:39.599
It's very annoying for them.
00:21:39.839 --> 00:21:44.799
I mean, and one sees I think that this there are some very clear examples of this.
00:21:44.880 --> 00:21:49.119
I mean, actually, there are a number of German examples.
00:21:49.359 --> 00:21:59.759
I mean, Alison Rowlands indeed studied one area where this um where there were official skepticism meant that I think it was very discouraging for people to go.
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:03.119
For the lengths of trying to bring a case.
00:22:03.359 --> 00:22:08.000
I mean, two examples I can give, which are very important, actually.
00:22:08.160 --> 00:22:18.960
I mean, one is um in in England, where you have this system of the grand jury, which is uh made up of fairly substantial freeholders, you have to find a true bill.
00:22:19.119 --> 00:22:25.039
Even if you get the suspect to the assizes, the judge is going to intervene.
00:22:25.279 --> 00:22:34.640
In effect, it looks as if people just stop bringing witchcraft cases in the 1620s and 30s because they know that they won't succeed.
00:22:34.799 --> 00:22:39.839
Um I'm not entirely clear, I have to admit, about the way that the costs are assigned in England.
00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:47.279
I mean, it is a sort of royal official system, and maybe it does just fall on, as it were, some sort of official funding.
00:22:47.359 --> 00:22:59.359
But in the French case, uh they're a bit slow to get it to be effective, but they introduce this formal appeal system so that you've got to send the papers and the accused up to Paris.
00:22:59.519 --> 00:23:03.359
So so again, I mean that's going to have to fall on local funding.
00:23:03.519 --> 00:23:16.400
And in fact, after 1625, so it's very early really, there are only three executions carried out by the the Paris Parlement, all of men who had allegedly signed a pact with the devil.
00:23:16.640 --> 00:23:22.720
You see, I mean th again, this all starts in most parts of Europe in very local courts.
00:23:23.039 --> 00:23:29.599
Courts where, you know, you would probably only have one or two legally trained people around at best.
00:23:30.160 --> 00:23:33.119
Um the level of advocacy is is low, in other words.
00:23:33.440 --> 00:23:35.759
Well well well advocacy doesn't really happen.
00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:55.039
I mean, in most of Europe, the process is one where evidence is presented, the suspect is invited to comment on it, to to explain themselves, and is confronted with the main witnesses, and could in theory argue against whatever was claimed.
00:23:55.119 --> 00:23:58.720
I mean, it doesn't happen very effectively, but at least formally this is done.
00:23:58.960 --> 00:24:01.279
And then um they're tortured.
00:24:01.599 --> 00:24:09.680
I mean in in my Lorraine example, there there is a a review by a central court, but it's simply to say you can torture them.
00:24:10.079 --> 00:24:10.400
Okay.
00:24:10.640 --> 00:24:14.240
I'm gonna I'm gonna pause you there because I want to talk about the torture in just a second.
00:24:14.400 --> 00:24:24.960
I want to just go back to this idea of what gets somebody from an argument between neighbors to actually appearing in court.
00:24:25.119 --> 00:24:30.160
What is the tipping point that occurs to ensure that happens, Jan.
00:24:31.519 --> 00:24:39.440
So this is one of the you know questions that we again don't really have uh an answer to, and part of the problem is the source material, right?
00:24:39.519 --> 00:24:42.240
Because the sources that survive are the legal trials.
00:24:42.319 --> 00:24:47.519
So we only as historians sort of start getting the source material once the trial happens.
00:24:47.759 --> 00:24:58.720
But one of the key things to sort of always emphasize is that when you read a lot of these trials, you know, witnesses, accusers are asked, How long have you suspected this person of witchcraft?
00:24:58.960 --> 00:25:02.240
And quite often the the response is really surprising.
00:25:02.400 --> 00:25:06.880
You know, it's never yesterday when I saw them perform a curse.
00:25:07.119 --> 00:25:12.400
You know, it's it's always going to be sort of like 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
00:25:12.480 --> 00:25:17.599
I've you know, we've in this community everyone has always suspected this person to be a witch.
00:25:17.759 --> 00:25:25.680
And then you know they will report stories of harm that they attribute to this person that may have happened five years ago or six years ago.
00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:39.599
Usually what happens if you read those trials closely is that you can sort of find one particular trigger event, you know, one child that falls ill inexplicably, and you know, that death being attributed to this accused person.
00:25:40.640 --> 00:25:46.880
But it's then really unclear as to why it was that trigger event and not an event that happened five years earlier.
00:25:47.359 --> 00:25:51.839
I suppose we have to remember that that the village gossip is all you really have, isn't it?
00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:55.359
There's no television, there's no no you know, there's no reading of books.
00:25:55.599 --> 00:26:00.799
You know, what happens in the village is on everybody's minds and it's talked about by everybody, correct?
00:26:01.200 --> 00:26:01.440
Yes.
00:26:01.680 --> 00:26:07.200
And remember that for several months of the year, the day is quite short and the night is long.
00:26:07.440 --> 00:26:08.720
And what do you do?
00:26:09.039 --> 00:26:19.440
And also, I mean, fuel is expensive and people tend to gather in groups in somebody's house, you know, with a fire and talk.
00:26:19.680 --> 00:26:36.000
I sometimes thought, you know, think of some huge spider web of of rumor and so on, where these things do spread from one village to another as well, because people move around, they go to market and so on, they talk to our but then this you know, this information gets back.
00:26:36.319 --> 00:26:39.680
I mean, entertainment is very limited.
00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.640
Obviously, these people sing and dance and they work at these evening sessions.
00:26:44.799 --> 00:26:53.119
I mean, people are spinning and doing things which you can do in your house to produce something which will generate a little bit of income.
00:26:53.279 --> 00:26:56.960
But it's ideal for spreading rumors, isn't it?
00:26:57.039 --> 00:26:57.200
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
00:26:57.279 --> 00:26:58.799
And and mud sticks, clearly.
00:26:58.880 --> 00:27:06.480
And and yeah, and you were talking about this idea that this person has been known to be possibly a witch for several years.
00:27:06.640 --> 00:27:13.279
And as youngsters grew up, the person that they'd get to recognize would have that stigma attached to them.
00:27:13.440 --> 00:27:22.160
And I suppose a bit like um, as they always say, the king thinks the world smells of fresh paint, because everywhere they go is everyone's been painting everything.
00:27:22.240 --> 00:27:29.519
Uh, here all you've got to rely on are the court documents, and there is no record of what's happened to bring somebody to court.
00:27:30.240 --> 00:27:37.359
When we get to the torture element We're at are we kind of just re-emphasizing the idea?
00:27:37.440 --> 00:27:44.559
Because I mean, under torture, for an awful lot of people, they'll just say yes to anything just to stop being tortured, surely.
00:27:45.279 --> 00:27:51.680
I I think that torture is sort of the second big ingredient that explains sort of regional variations, right?
00:27:51.759 --> 00:27:57.759
So, you know, the first thing we've emphasized is the importance of appeals processes in places like France.
00:27:57.920 --> 00:28:23.279
Um, uh you could also add Spain and then in a sort of different way, sort of like the English system as well, as explaining why you know these checks and balances introduced or into you know, sort of limited the number of persecutions in certain territories, whereas in these German lands, the Prince Bishopric's that Robin mentioned, you know, there were fewer checks and balances, and therefore it was much easier for a witch hunt to sort of spin out of control.
00:28:23.599 --> 00:28:27.680
And torture, in some sense, sort of like you know, is the at a bit there, right?
00:28:27.839 --> 00:28:32.799
Because if you can torture without any constraint, then anyone is going to confess.
00:28:32.880 --> 00:28:37.839
And there are these horrible examples of people, you know, sort of like who've had limbs broken.
00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:55.200
There is a famous letter surviving by a mayor, Johannes Unius, who was the mayor of Bamberg, who sort of you know tried to write a letter to his daughter explaining why he confessed under torture uh to being a witch, because he just basically had no choice.
00:28:55.359 --> 00:29:03.759
And in a in a Prince Bishopric like Bamberg, you know, where the judges could basically continue to torture you until you confess, that sort of makes sense.
00:29:04.079 --> 00:29:14.960
But you know, the Paris Parlement that Robin already mentioned as a sort of contrast, no one uh tortured by the Paris Parlement ever confessed.
00:29:15.200 --> 00:29:20.160
And that sort of shows that if you sort of use torture properly, normally there were meant to be limits.
00:29:20.319 --> 00:29:25.440
Normally you're only allowed to torture someone once or you know, at most you know, two or three times.
00:29:25.599 --> 00:29:31.920
And then the accused was meant to repeat their confession freely after the torture had ended.
00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:37.279
So there was space, even if you confessed on the torture, to then retract, as it were, afterwards.
00:29:37.519 --> 00:29:45.839
Whereas if there is no limit, then you know, sort of like what what what hope in hell do you have to escape the outcome?
00:29:46.079 --> 00:30:04.559
So the way in which the torture as adds to the different legal systems, I think, sort of really helps explain why you see so much witch hunting, for instance, in Germany or in Scotland, which are these weaker states, um, and and a lot less in places like France and England and Spain.
00:30:04.880 --> 00:30:06.720
Yes, that must that must be right.
00:30:06.960 --> 00:30:22.640
I should perhaps explain that, of course, you you rather need torture under the legal systems in continental Europe as opposed to England, where you know the trial by jury provides system that doesn't need torture in a sense.
00:30:22.880 --> 00:30:30.880
But the legal requirement for capital sentences was two complete accepted witness statements.
00:30:31.359 --> 00:30:36.400
And of course, you couldn't have witness statements proving that people have been at the Sabbath.
00:30:36.480 --> 00:30:43.920
The only people who could have testified to that were other witches who, by definition, weren't allowed, but uh you couldn't bring them into a court.
00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:46.079
And so i you've got to get a confession.
00:30:46.319 --> 00:30:56.160
And it's interesting that in my Lorraine case, I mean, yes, you know, 80% are convicted and executed, but others uh do withstand the torture.
00:30:56.319 --> 00:30:59.200
It was, on the whole, carried out according to the rules.
00:30:59.359 --> 00:31:11.440
And uh in that case you were renvoyé jusqu'à rappel, you're sent home until you're recalled, which leaves it open to the local authorities to say, we've got more evidence now, back you come, we'll do you again.
00:31:11.759 --> 00:31:32.799
So, I mean, I think what you have is uh during the the high period of persecution from the 1570s through to sometime 1630s or 40s, I mean, you have on the one hand, you have a pretty high level in quite a lot of Europe of village prosecutions, if I can put it that way.
00:31:32.960 --> 00:31:41.519
I mean, of individuals who somehow cross the line, uh do something that provokes the village to seek action.
00:31:41.759 --> 00:31:45.920
It can happen in two ways under the normal inquisitorial system.
00:31:46.079 --> 00:31:51.359
I mean, uh th this is a general term for the continental jurisdictional system.
00:31:51.599 --> 00:31:55.759
One is that somebody could actually make themselves the formal accuser.
00:31:56.079 --> 00:32:00.319
That's less common, but it does happen in significant numbers.
00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:05.599
Uh, and the other is that some local official can start the process.
00:32:05.839 --> 00:32:13.119
Um what we don't see, there's actually no evidence for, is what must have been informal pressures on some of these local people.
00:32:13.279 --> 00:32:26.480
I mean, that the man who is r running the area, as it were, or the small group, will be told, look, you know, we're really upset because we've got this awful witch, and come you please start proceedings.
00:32:26.559 --> 00:32:31.279
Um that must be what happened, but we actually never see it, you know, it's it isn't recorded.
00:32:31.359 --> 00:32:33.200
You don't put that down on paper.
00:32:33.359 --> 00:32:45.839
But within that, there is then a second level, which I'm not sure I would want to call witch hunting exactly, but it is a sort of witch hunting, which is that you get your first candidate in, as it were.
00:32:46.079 --> 00:32:50.960
Sometimes they do accuse more than one at the start, but quite often there's one.
00:32:51.599 --> 00:32:58.720
And you torture them, they confess, and then you say, and who did you see at the Sabbath?
00:32:59.839 --> 00:33:02.160
And that's a crucial question.
00:33:02.400 --> 00:33:08.319
And it varies, but in some of those German cases they name lots of people, but or are forced to.
00:33:08.480 --> 00:33:19.599
But more typically, they would name two or three other local suspects, people from their village who they know that they or other people also suspect.
00:33:19.920 --> 00:33:21.759
And so those people are hauled in.
00:33:21.920 --> 00:33:33.920
So you get three or four trials, sometimes as many as ten, you know, but it very rarely gets beyond ten, of people who, once they're on trial, you see that they've also been suspected.
00:33:34.079 --> 00:33:36.160
They may also be family members and so on.
00:33:36.240 --> 00:33:41.599
But so you use the torture and the story of the Sabbath to identify others.
00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:47.839
So I think putting those together, that would account for the majority of your cases.
00:33:48.079 --> 00:33:50.240
But oh, I don't know.
00:33:50.400 --> 00:34:06.160
I mean, 15,000 perhaps, even more would be in the big panics, which we've already mentioned, where this mechanism is used almost without control, where more and more people are pulled in.
00:34:06.799 --> 00:34:16.239
The first of those really is at Trier, I think, in Western Germany, starting in the late 1580s and running into the early 1590s.
00:34:16.400 --> 00:34:18.639
Um, not entirely clear why it stops.
00:34:18.719 --> 00:34:24.159
I mean, the Archbishop does get concerned, having originally been involved in starting it.
00:34:24.320 --> 00:34:34.159
But anyway, through the next period, there are a number of others, and the biggest of all come around late 1620s, beginning of the 1630s.
00:34:34.639 --> 00:34:37.280
But it is this it is this 80-year period, isn't it?
00:34:37.519 --> 00:34:45.440
1570 to 1650, where we see everything that popular culture has latched on to as being the witch hunt.
00:34:45.840 --> 00:34:51.440
And and Jan, Germany, as Robin has just been saying, was quite a hotspot and where some of this originated.
00:34:51.599 --> 00:34:52.239
Why was that?
00:34:52.400 --> 00:34:55.679
Why was the German land, as you put it, rather than Germany?
00:34:55.760 --> 00:34:56.880
I shall be correct.
00:34:57.119 --> 00:35:00.000
But why was that the area where this took off?
00:35:00.159 --> 00:35:02.480
Because that's the area you've started most of.
00:35:04.559 --> 00:35:08.559
So Germany, you know, as Robin already mentioned, you know, didn't exist at a time.
00:35:08.639 --> 00:35:10.400
It was the Holy Roman Empire.
00:35:10.559 --> 00:35:15.360
But the Empire was very weak, very um removed from things.
00:35:15.440 --> 00:35:33.360
Um de facto, rather than thinking of the Holy Empire as a single sort of political entity, we should think of it as uh basically a patchwork of hundreds, maybe thousands, of actual mini-states, some of them as small as a monastery with some land attached.
00:35:33.519 --> 00:35:36.239
Uh in other cases it could be quite big.
00:35:36.320 --> 00:35:54.880
You know, you know, Bavaria was already sort of a duchy at that time, but for the most part, you know, these were very small territories with very little oversight, which is why it sort of links back to you know the general point is that you know, the more Jackson balances, you know, the the fewer witch hunting you'd see.
00:35:55.119 --> 00:36:00.559
And I think in addition to that, you have these prince-bishoprics, which Robin mentioned.
00:36:00.719 --> 00:36:05.119
There, the the local bishop was also a territorial ruler.
00:36:05.280 --> 00:36:19.679
And these rulers, you know, because they were bishops, they might have religious reasons for you know sort of favoring persecution of witches, because witches were obviously also heretics and devil worshippers and um and and that sort of thing.
00:36:19.760 --> 00:36:24.400
They weren't just sort of like, you know, a concern because they were hurting people.
00:36:24.800 --> 00:36:34.719
But these bishops were also quite often quite weak rulers, because the one thing that a bishop can't do is pass on their bishopric to a son, right?
00:36:34.800 --> 00:36:46.559
I mean, at least formally, actually rarely in practice in the 16th century, but at least formally, sort of like bishops were meant to be celibate men, you know, and they're they were usually elected, usually by a cathedral chapter.
00:36:46.719 --> 00:37:00.079
So these bishops were therefore, you know, possibly devout, but they were also quite often weak rulers and therefore also didn't necessarily always have the authority to sort of step in and prevent a witch hunt from happening.
00:37:00.320 --> 00:37:07.440
So these bishoprics really are the hotspots, and those are places like Trier, Cologne is another famous one.
00:37:07.599 --> 00:37:12.480
Um, I mentioned Bamburg earlier, there's Wurzburg, so there in Eichstadt is another one.
00:37:12.559 --> 00:37:26.000
So there so if you were to draw a list of sort of like the top ten hotspots um in in Europe for witch hunting, my my guess would be that you know seven or eight of them would probably be um these small territories in Germany.
00:37:26.400 --> 00:37:35.840
And uh and and I think that that's where you could probably get closest to the myth of of you know of of of being a being Banax.
00:37:36.239 --> 00:37:39.760
But it's but it's not, you know, these are very small pockets.
00:37:40.400 --> 00:37:49.599
The majority of Europe really, you know, I don't think had any sort of real witchcraft fears to sort of speak of.
00:37:49.679 --> 00:37:55.440
And and Wales, for instance, where I'm from, you know, saw five executions across the entire early modern period.
00:37:55.679 --> 00:38:02.400
So if you were living in Wales, I don't think you were ever in fear of death for they simply weren't trying in Wales, quite clearly.
00:38:03.519 --> 00:38:17.039
One of the other aspects, I suppose, to this is is is once you start the ball rolling with trials, then people notice and it gathers momentum because people go, well, if they're doing that, we should have a go as well with so-and-so.
00:38:17.280 --> 00:38:19.440
I reckon, I've always reckoned she's a witch.
00:38:20.159 --> 00:38:21.119
Is that what happens?
00:38:21.199 --> 00:38:23.039
Is people people feed off it?
00:38:23.360 --> 00:38:24.159
I think it is.
00:38:24.320 --> 00:38:34.719
I think there is there are good reasons for thinking that the news of trials and executions in one place could stimulate it elsewhere, although it could work the other way.
00:38:34.960 --> 00:38:40.960
I mean, again, you know, you just can't rely on on there being any automatic connection of that sort.
00:38:41.039 --> 00:38:44.239
But I I do think, yes, that people people learn to do it.
00:38:44.480 --> 00:38:47.440
I mean, that is bound to be true to some extent.
00:38:47.840 --> 00:39:00.960
I I would also just sort of add that, and this happens in the Basque witch hunt that I studied, is that once these witch hunts spiral out of control, partly through these Sabbath stories, right, where people sort of say, Oh, I saw so-and-so at the Sabbath.
00:39:01.599 --> 00:39:06.880
What tends to also happen is that these accusations then sort of move up the food chain.
00:39:07.039 --> 00:39:13.280
So in Bamberg, for instance, we saw Johannes Yunius, you know, a mayor of the city being accused.
00:39:13.519 --> 00:39:22.639
And it's usually when elites start getting accused themselves that they actually press into action, being it's like, hmm, maybe this witch hunting was not such a good idea.
00:39:22.800 --> 00:39:36.880
And then that's what we sort of see happen in the past country in in the Bayonne, where you know, once you know the mother of the deputy mayor is is accused of witchcraft, you know, then it's sort of really time for Pierre Delancre to pack his bags and go home.
00:39:37.199 --> 00:39:43.199
So the role of elites is important, I think, also in trying to bring these witch hunts to a close.
00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:48.639
The other thing I'd emphasize again is the financial aspect is that sometimes communities just literally run out of money.
00:39:48.880 --> 00:39:59.119
And that's sort of something you see with Matthew Hopkins, for instance, in the great East Anglia witch hunt, is sort of that, you know, sort of like yeah, all of these people, Matthew Hopkins needed to be paid.
00:39:59.280 --> 00:40:04.880
Um, the the the witch prickers he was using, sort of like all of that required payment.
00:40:04.960 --> 00:40:09.440
And sometimes these communities just ran out of money and had to stop witch hunting as a result.
00:40:10.159 --> 00:40:18.880
Uh we haven't talked, um, and we must do before we close, um, about this aspect of of witches not just being women.
00:40:19.119 --> 00:40:22.639
We will talk about that in more detail in future episodes.
00:40:22.800 --> 00:40:28.239
But yeah, and would would would people be shocked to discover that many witches were actually men?
00:40:29.199 --> 00:40:31.920
I think I think the picture is really mixed across Europe.
00:40:32.079 --> 00:40:41.760
So if you just focus just on, say, England, then the picture of witches being almost entirely women, you know, sort of I would say actually broadly holds.
00:40:41.840 --> 00:40:46.480
Like there, the figure is in the high 80s, 80%, you know, sort of 80%.
00:40:47.760 --> 00:40:48.719
I'm not entirely sure.
00:40:49.199 --> 00:40:56.960
So in some places, you know, sort of like the witch hunt was heavily gendered female, but there is actually a lot of regional variety.
00:40:57.199 --> 00:41:00.880
The figure for France is well been known as well, is more 50-50.
00:41:01.039 --> 00:41:10.239
And then actually, like where when you sort of move towards Normandy, um, you get to a territory where a majority of um the accused were men.
00:41:10.559 --> 00:41:21.440
Same is true for parts of Austria, famously, sort of like parts of um Northern Europe, so Iceland in particular, has a majority of male victims.
00:41:21.599 --> 00:41:28.639
Um there these are not what we might think of as warlocks or the female equivalent, as it were, of witches.
00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:31.840
These are people accused of witchcraft, correct, Robin?
00:41:32.159 --> 00:41:33.039
It is, yes.
00:41:33.280 --> 00:41:47.039
I mean, I had a very sort of central kind of example in my work on Lorraine, where 28% of the accused were men, and they suffered in exactly the same proportions as women.
00:41:47.119 --> 00:41:50.800
I mean, there was no difference in who got off and number who got off.
00:41:50.960 --> 00:41:57.440
There were a few rather subtle distinctions you could perhaps draw between the men and the women, but they weren't very strong.
00:41:57.679 --> 00:42:11.360
And I did a calculation, I was rather proud of, where I uh tried to sum up the things they were accused of, and had a graph showing, you know, babies and uh animals and so on.
00:42:11.599 --> 00:42:14.639
And I mean, there was remarkably little difference.
00:42:14.800 --> 00:42:15.840
I it stunned me.
00:42:15.920 --> 00:42:19.840
I thought there would be a far bigger um gender difference there.
00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:23.920
I mean, well, we're going to talk, we'll talk about gender in another session and so on.
00:42:24.079 --> 00:42:25.519
But yes, this is very important.
00:42:25.599 --> 00:42:37.679
And it it tends to stun people when I mean I've had innumerable conversations over dinner tables and so on, because when people find, I'm sure Jan has found this too, they that you know about witches, they want to know.
00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:43.679
And and and one of the things that startles the most, is I say, well, yes, about a quarter of them were men, you know.
00:42:43.840 --> 00:42:46.639
And you know, that is not expected at all.
00:42:46.960 --> 00:42:53.760
I mean, there there's no reason to suppose the men were accused for any other reasons than the women were.
00:42:53.920 --> 00:42:59.519
I mean, they too are thought to have damaged their neighbors and the community.
00:42:59.920 --> 00:43:09.039
Um and interestingly, well, I won't go on about it now, because I think we need to have gender as a separate issue, but it will be, and it will be up for discussion as well.
00:43:09.199 --> 00:43:13.039
So we will draw a close to our our myth bashing.
00:43:13.440 --> 00:43:18.320
Yeah, if I if I can just also just say that, you know, age is another factor that's worth worth mentioning, right?
00:43:18.480 --> 00:43:21.679
If we're doing myth bust if we're doing myth busting.
00:43:21.840 --> 00:43:32.639
Um because when people think about a witch, they don't just think about witches being women, they think of them as being old crones, basically, sort of like you know, 60, 70 years old.
00:43:32.800 --> 00:43:37.440
And actually, you know, the the the statistics are much less robust.
00:43:37.840 --> 00:43:45.840
It's much, you know, age is not always as close, and historians have not been as good as at counting age as they've been at counting gender.
00:43:46.159 --> 00:44:02.239
But you know, the figures really are you know, you know, point to uh a great variety, and yes, probably the majority of them would be 40 plus, but that does not necessarily make people into old crones, of course, like speaking as someone in their early 40s.
00:44:02.320 --> 00:44:03.840
I'm not an old crone yet.
00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:07.119
Um 40 was not the new 60, then are that?
00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:08.639
No, no, I don't think so.
00:44:08.800 --> 00:44:19.360
So I think that's another sort of point that's worth sort of saying is sort of that the that when we're thinking about the stereotype of the witch, we don't only think about the witch as being female, but also as extremely old, haggard looking.
00:44:19.519 --> 00:44:22.400
And and that certainly is not the case.
00:44:22.880 --> 00:44:30.000
So we have discovered that the story most of us think we know about the witch hunts isn't quite the story the historical evidence tells.
00:44:30.239 --> 00:44:35.840
Behind every accusation was a real person, a neighbor, a widow, a healer, a troublemaker.
00:44:36.079 --> 00:44:45.920
Sometimes a man, more often a woman, and somewhere along the line, an ordinary member of a community became somebody that their neighbors feared enough to call a witch.
00:44:46.159 --> 00:44:46.639
Why?
00:44:46.880 --> 00:44:49.280
Why were women more vulnerable than men?
00:44:49.440 --> 00:44:51.920
Why did some communities turn on their own?
00:44:52.000 --> 00:44:57.039
And how much of the portrayal of witches in mainstream culture is actually true?
00:44:57.199 --> 00:44:59.280
That is what we'll be exploring next time.
00:44:59.440 --> 00:45:02.159
My thanks to Robin Briggs and to Dr.
00:45:02.320 --> 00:45:03.519
Jan McKilson.
00:45:03.920 --> 00:45:07.679
Join us next time for episode three of Witches Truth, Trials and Terrors.
00:45:07.760 --> 00:45:08.639
I'm John Briggs.
00:45:08.719 --> 00:45:09.519
Thank you for listening.
00:45:09.679 --> 00:45:15.760
And if your neighbor turns out to be a witch, statistically speaking, there's a one in four chance he's called Nigel.
00:45:15.920 --> 00:45:16.719
Goodbye.
00:45:48.000 --> 00:45:49.440
Who is evil?
00:45:49.679 --> 00:45:51.440
Who is guilty?
00:45:52.159 --> 00:45:55.280
Fear comes, fear comes.
00:00:03.759 --> 00:00:35.679
Breakriscute Susurantur Nomina Kisest malus kissest noches venit timor venit timor shadows lengthen in the slow night names are whisper Who is evil?
00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:37.600
Who is guilty?
00:00:38.320 --> 00:00:39.840
Fear comes.
00:00:40.159 --> 00:00:41.520
Fear comes.
00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:46.240
Hello and welcome to Witches Truth, Trials and Terrors.
00:00:46.479 --> 00:00:49.439
When you hear the words witch hunt, what comes to mind?
00:00:49.679 --> 00:00:57.520
Millions of innocent women burned at the stake, pointy hats, black cats, medieval superstition, a Europe gripped by mass hysteria.
00:00:57.679 --> 00:01:02.240
The trouble is that much of what we think we know about the witch hunts isn't actually true.
00:01:02.479 --> 00:01:05.840
The famous claim that nine million women were executed?
00:01:06.079 --> 00:01:07.200
Almost certainly a myth.
00:01:07.439 --> 00:01:10.239
The idea that all witches were women, also wrong.
00:01:10.480 --> 00:01:16.879
Even the period we call the witch craze was shorter, patchier, and altogether stranger than most people realize.
00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:26.640
I'm John Briggs, and in this series my job is quite simple: to ask the questions you'd ask if you happen to find yourself in a pub with two of the world's leading experts on witchcraft.
00:01:26.879 --> 00:01:28.159
In fact, I have both of them.
00:01:28.239 --> 00:01:29.840
I don't have the pub, but I have them.
00:01:30.079 --> 00:01:40.879
One of them is my co-host, Robin Briggs, who's the Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College in Oxford University, and one of the historians who's done more than anyone to reshape our understanding of witchcraft and the people accused of it.
00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:42.400
The other guest today is Dr.
00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:54.319
Jan Makelson of Cardiff University, whose research explores witchcraft, demonology, and the curious ways that otherwise sensible human beings can end up believing some very strange things indeed.
00:01:54.560 --> 00:01:57.760
Together, we're going to separate the history from the Hollywood.
00:01:58.000 --> 00:01:59.280
Welcome to episode two.
00:01:59.760 --> 00:02:03.040
Everything you know about witch hunts is wrong.
00:02:03.280 --> 00:02:13.360
I mean, if we're exploding myths, then obviously the idea that witch hunting is medieval is uh is is the is an even bigger myth than than the figure of nine million.
00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:22.479
A local historian took the figure from a single town and then multiplied it up on the basis that all European towns must have had the same numbers.
00:02:22.879 --> 00:02:35.199
Cold weather is not necessarily a good thing, and it has real impacts on the livelihood of early modern villagers who had to bring in a harvest, and if the harvest failed, you know, witches could be held responsible.
00:02:35.680 --> 00:02:46.879
The leading court in France, the Parlement of Paris, hung three judges outside the town hall in Paris in 1641 for the murder of a suspected witch.
00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:50.719
Yeah, and let's start with a question that I think may upset a few people.
00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:58.240
If I stop ten people in the street and I asked them how many witches were executed in Europe, how wrong would they be?
00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:09.199
There is a lot of myth and supposition about witchcraft, and all of it is really tied together in sort of like one holistic package.
00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:13.039
The number of nine million, which you mentioned, is a very common figure.
00:03:13.280 --> 00:03:39.439
It predates World War II, but it's clearly taken on a sort of new meaning after sort of the horrors of the 20th century, where this idea emerges that witchcraft must have been like, say, the Holocaust, and this idea that it must have been systematic, people must have been living in fear, elites must have been behind all of it, and that inevitably gives legitimacy to a figure like nine million.
00:03:39.680 --> 00:03:47.199
What you know historians usually say is that the total number of victims of the early modern witch hunt is between 40 and 50,000.
00:03:47.280 --> 00:03:56.879
You know, the number may have been creeping up more towards 50 rather than 40 in the past decade or so, but it's considerably less than what people on the street might think.
00:03:56.960 --> 00:03:57.199
Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
00:03:57.280 --> 00:04:01.199
I it's still a a reasonably large number of people, though, isn't it?
00:04:01.439 --> 00:04:06.719
Uh Robin, in comparison to the population of the time, do we have a percentage?
00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:18.639
Well, my rough figure for the population of most of Europe which was affected is something eighty million, may maybe crept up to a bit nearer to a hundred million.
00:04:18.879 --> 00:04:25.040
So I I mean the the figure is very small compared with the total population.
00:04:25.279 --> 00:04:40.480
And indeed, of course, there were more people than that who lived at some stage during this, because that's just a moment in time, and so your chances of being executed as a witch were pretty low, one has to say, even in the hot spots.
00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:48.879
But there are just a few villages where extraordinary proportion of people were executed, but that I mean they they are really quite exceptional.
00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:53.279
But yes, I mean the the nine million figure is quite a story, really.
00:04:53.360 --> 00:04:56.000
I mean, it goes back to the early 19th century.
00:04:56.240 --> 00:05:10.959
And uh a local historian in Austria, I think it was, who took the figure from a single town, and I'm not sure whether he was right even about that figure, and then multiplied it up on the basis that all European towns must have had the same numbers.
00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:15.920
I I should say that um to be fair to him, at least at least he didn't say nine million women.
00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:18.720
I think he already knew that there were some men involved.
00:05:18.959 --> 00:05:38.959
And then most of the citations I've seen are to an 1880s book by an early American feminist writer, which is mainly actually quite an interesting expose of the what's called the white slave trade, as say, white women being recruited into prostitution and working in brothels and this sort of thing.
00:05:39.120 --> 00:05:43.439
And for some reason, this this lady took over this figure.
00:05:43.600 --> 00:05:49.839
And that's the place that usually seems to be cited in more recent works by feminist writers.
00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.000
So it's it had a long gestation.
00:05:52.079 --> 00:06:00.800
But it is, as Jan says, it's only really since the Second World War that somehow this alternative Holocaust notion has got going, I think.
00:06:00.879 --> 00:06:18.639
And when you start thinking about it, I mean, if if the Nazis with all the advantages of chemistry and so on could only manage to eliminate six million Jews and other unfortunate, to suppose that early modern uh uh uh Europeans could have eliminated nine million people is really completely fantastical.
00:06:18.720 --> 00:06:21.759
I mean, out of all imaginable possibilities.
00:06:22.399 --> 00:06:24.000
It doesn't add up, as you say.
00:06:24.399 --> 00:06:31.759
You you make the point, though, that witchcraft belief and witchcraft persecutions have largely separate histories.
00:06:31.839 --> 00:06:33.279
What do you mean by that?
00:06:33.680 --> 00:06:34.319
Well, there.
00:06:34.399 --> 00:06:42.480
I mean the the point is that witchcraft beliefs are not universal in human societies, but they're immensely widespread.
00:06:42.560 --> 00:06:51.680
I mean, there are not many societies in the past or the present that have been studied where you don't find some kind of witchcraft belief.
00:06:52.000 --> 00:07:06.240
And uh it's quite clear, I think, although the evidence is very scrappy, that that this was a w a widespread belief in Europe from the Roman Empire period, I mean, and and right through the Middle Ages.
00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:09.759
But there are almost no known persecutions.
00:07:09.920 --> 00:07:21.199
There are a handful of trials for sorcery, and then a few trials for heresy, which seems to involve certain kinds of behavior that m you know involve diabolism.
00:07:21.759 --> 00:07:31.920
But I mean, the actual prosecution of witches only starts around the year 1400 and is pretty much at an end by the late 17th century in most of Europe.
00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:41.360
But witchcraft belief carries on and clearly is still around under the surface in uh quite large parts of Europe.
00:07:41.839 --> 00:07:44.480
So, yeah, and what's behind this explosion then in that case?
00:07:44.639 --> 00:07:48.399
Why does it happen then and not 500 years earlier, for example?
00:07:49.199 --> 00:07:59.439
I mean, if we're exploding myths, then obviously the idea that witch hunting is medieval is the is is the is an even bigger myth than than the figure of nine million.
00:07:59.600 --> 00:07:59.839
Right?
00:07:59.920 --> 00:08:09.279
It's really rather striking that you know the peak of you know witch hunting happened around the year 1600 or or maybe just after that.
00:08:09.680 --> 00:08:22.079
So from that perspective, we have to what Robin knows already so suggest it's you know, separating witchcraft from from the actual witch hunting.
00:08:22.319 --> 00:08:29.279
And the belief is you know it goes back to time immemorial, is common to all sorts of different societies.
00:08:29.600 --> 00:08:55.919
And I would consider it plausible that you know hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people were actually stigmatized by the label of witch, but the actual number of people who were persecuted in a court of law um was considerably smaller than that, um and stands as as already mentioned at a figure of forty to fifty thousand executions and um perhaps a hundred thousand trials.
00:08:56.399 --> 00:09:15.600
Um and and that you know is actually sort of like a very time-specific moment, you know, sort of really picking up it towards the 1560s, fifteen seventies, sort of like reaching a peak somewhere between sixteen hundred and you know, sixteen thirty, and then sort of like dropping quite rapidly after that.
00:09:16.240 --> 00:09:25.519
So, but what is it that inspires the the the requirement to take these people and actually put them on trial, torture them potentially, and then execute them?
00:09:25.919 --> 00:09:31.759
Why is it then if these beliefs have been around in human society since the beginning of time, pretty much?
00:09:32.399 --> 00:09:39.919
Well, this is in some sense really one of the big puzzles for which we don't have um a completely convincing answer.
00:09:40.159 --> 00:09:49.279
The main thing to sort of say is that you know, for you know, witchcraft to be prosecutable, as it were, it needed to be a crime.
00:09:49.600 --> 00:09:58.159
And it's only in the 16th century that we see countries actually passing um a law against witchcraft.
00:09:58.320 --> 00:10:04.559
So in England and Scotland, you know, the witchcraft acts are date to 1562 and 1563.
00:10:05.120 --> 00:10:15.200
So before that, you know, there were occasional sort of like prosecutions in church courts and that sort of thing, but without sort of like the danger of a death penalty.
00:10:15.440 --> 00:10:30.320
Um, but of course, that in some sense just pushes back, you know, the question sort of like why was it at that particular sort of moment in time that these practices, these witchcraft practices were seen to be so threatening that they needed to be criminalized.
00:10:30.639 --> 00:10:48.799
And you know, historians have advanced a number of explanations, particularly sort of like the impact of the European reformations and um the sort of general sort of apocalyptic thinking of the time that the end of the world was near, that the devil as a result was you know ranging, you know, before the world ended.
00:10:49.039 --> 00:10:52.480
But at the same time, that doesn't quite explain everything.
00:10:52.559 --> 00:11:01.120
Um Wolfgang Beringer, like a famous German historian, has really made the point about the the impact of climate change at this particular moment in time.
00:11:01.279 --> 00:11:16.399
Um, but whatever the circumstances are, is like you can sort of like really see, particularly in the 1580s and 1590s, which is a period that I've done a lot of work on, you can sort of really see a rising trend where sort of like the number of persecutions is picking up year on year.
00:11:16.480 --> 00:11:22.559
So there's definitely a peak that that is happening towards the end of the 16th century and into the early 17th.
00:11:22.960 --> 00:11:25.600
You say climate change, what was going on that we should be aware of?
00:11:25.679 --> 00:11:28.159
Because I mean, of course, that's what we're concerned with right now.
00:11:28.639 --> 00:11:47.679
Yeah, it's it's it's in some sense the very opposite as to the world that we live in now, because now we live in an age of rising temperatures, but in the early modern period, and particularly around the year 1600, uh, you know, people were confronting a period called the the mini ice age.
00:11:47.919 --> 00:11:54.960
So then that had all sorts of other different consequences, of course, uh than what we're facing today.
00:11:55.120 --> 00:12:02.240
We have harvest failures, you know, sort of like there's stories of it still snowing in July in some places.
00:12:02.399 --> 00:12:08.960
Um there are stories of the Thames freezing over, which is something that we couldn't possibly imagine sort of like happening today.
00:12:09.120 --> 00:12:10.960
Um I'm I'm Dutch by origin.
00:12:11.200 --> 00:12:36.559
So if you look at the for the great Netherlandish artists of the of the period, you know, there are endless paintings of frozen rivers and people having you know sort of fares on them and ice skating, you know, and ice skating is a is of course a Dutch pastime, but in actual practice, you know, all of that cold weather is not necessarily a good thing, and it has real impacts on the livelihood of early modern villagers who had to bring in a harvest.
00:12:36.639 --> 00:12:40.159
And if the harvest failed, you know, witches could be held responsible.
00:12:40.320 --> 00:12:49.919
And one of the things we do sort of see in the period is also sort of like a rising concern about weather magic and the idea of witches sort of like brewing up storms and and that sort of thing.
00:12:50.320 --> 00:12:55.759
So these things all add in to the idea that something supernatural must be going on.
00:12:56.320 --> 00:13:05.919
Yes, and and when if we were thinking about the chronology, this is the the big wave of witch hunting, witch persecution.
00:13:06.159 --> 00:13:11.919
I think you know we we need these kinds of explanations, or quite a lot of others, which we'll perhaps come back to.
00:13:12.240 --> 00:13:18.159
But I think it is rather striking that uh persecution falters.
00:13:18.399 --> 00:13:32.960
It it starts in the beginning of the 15th century, and very quickly you get the development of virtually the full story of diabolical witchcraft, of sabbatts, and of uh a conspiracy to harm fertility.
00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:38.080
I mean, all this is there in 15th century trial documents.
00:13:38.159 --> 00:13:42.000
It's uh something that's emerged very strongly, but from recent research.
00:13:42.240 --> 00:13:48.720
But you know, the numbers are quite small, and large parts of Europe just don't have any trials at all.
00:13:48.879 --> 00:13:50.879
And it it doesn't it doesn't take off.
00:13:51.120 --> 00:14:09.919
However, I mean what we can see there, I think, is quite clearly uh the role of the church, particularly of the friars, who go out into backwoods regions of Europe, particularly, and and noticeably the Western Alps seem to be a focal point for this.
00:14:10.159 --> 00:14:22.320
And what they find, of course, are witchcraft beliefs of the traditional kind, but also certain stories about people who do strange things at night and so on.
00:14:22.399 --> 00:14:29.440
And they and they stick these together, I mean, and and create this diabolical conspiracy theory.
00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:36.559
And there are some enthusiasts for persecution we can identify at that at that period, but they they've actually run into trouble.
00:14:36.639 --> 00:14:51.759
I mean, and famously the Heinrich Kramer, the author of the Malius Malificarum, writes his book, partly because he's been given a fearful ticking off by the Bishop of Innsbruck and thrown out for irregular procedures identifying witches.
00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:55.120
So um it's a very puzzling pattern.
00:14:55.600 --> 00:14:59.919
But do we not have this famous character, Matthew Hopkin, who was the witch finder general?
00:15:00.559 --> 00:15:03.919
You've got characters whose job is to go and find these people.
00:15:04.080 --> 00:15:06.080
Is that is that real or is that myth?
00:15:06.480 --> 00:15:07.200
No, it's real.
00:15:07.360 --> 00:15:21.679
But I mean, Hopkins and his associate John Stern, and they operate partly together and partly separately, only get that opportunity because of the breakdown of ordinary legal proceedings at the end of the English Civil War.
00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:29.679
And I mean that comes after a period when the Royal Government in in England had virtually stopped the prosecution of witches.
00:15:29.840 --> 00:15:34.320
I mean, in the English system, the role of the assize judges is terribly important.
00:15:34.639 --> 00:15:38.080
There are other reasons also to do with the grand jury and so on.
00:15:38.159 --> 00:15:43.200
Well, in England prosecutions can get stopped before they ever reach the asises.
00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:49.600
But there's a kind of an opportunity which they take to operate as as witchfinders.
00:15:49.759 --> 00:15:58.159
Actually, I think they are very close in nature to uh a more substantial group of these people, particularly in the German lands.
00:15:58.320 --> 00:16:04.559
One doesn't want to say Germany at this period because there are hundreds of principalities and bishoprics and so on.
00:16:04.720 --> 00:16:08.320
I mean, Germany isn't a state in any normal sense.
00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:14.159
The German lands of the Holy Roman Empire are amazing patchwork quilt.
00:16:14.639 --> 00:16:25.200
But there, a number of rulers, particularly prince bishops, um, are faced with outbreaks of excitement about witchcraft in the locality.
00:16:25.440 --> 00:16:30.399
And one of the things they tend to do is to appoint a special commissioner to take charge.
00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:34.480
So these are people who have a much more official stance than Hopkins did.
00:16:34.720 --> 00:16:48.240
It looks as if actually some of those bishops, at least, or rulers, thought that the commissioners would control the thing, but commissioners tend to get very enthusiastic and to uh set off on a real witch hunt.
00:16:48.399 --> 00:16:49.919
So I mean there are a number of these people.
00:16:50.080 --> 00:16:58.159
It should be said that a small proportion of them were actually convicted and executed for offences committed in that role.
00:16:58.320 --> 00:17:00.080
I mean For being over enthusiastic.
00:17:00.559 --> 00:17:00.799
Yes.
00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:04.079
I mean, you know, again, it that would surprise people, I think.
00:17:04.319 --> 00:17:20.240
I mean, one of my favorite moments, admittedly not quite the same, is uh that the leading court in France, the Parlement of Paris, uh hung three judges outside the town hall in Paris in 1641 for the murder of a suspected witch.
00:17:20.640 --> 00:17:21.680
Good grief.
00:17:21.920 --> 00:17:25.440
I mean, that is not what not what popular understanding.
00:17:27.200 --> 00:17:34.319
Can were were there governments and judges who were actually trying to stop some of the madness in the studies that you you you've made?
00:17:34.480 --> 00:17:39.359
I mean, or or or was this you know, it seems to be a bandwagon that people kind of got onto.
00:17:39.759 --> 00:17:43.839
So I I would emphasize the importance of checks and balances in general.
00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:54.880
So you mentioned John, you know, the the case of Matthew Hopkins and John Stern, and and as Robin explained, they were given an opportunity because you know political control had basically collapsed in that territory.
00:17:55.200 --> 00:18:24.799
My own research is on the Basque witch hunt in the southwest of France in 1609, and there we sort of see something very similar to what Robin was just describing with the appointment of a sort of commissioner, you know, as happened in parts of Germany, is sort of you know, for a time-limited period, uh Henry IV, the King of France, appointed these two judges from Bordeaux, uh Pierre de Lancre and Jean d'Espagne, to go to the Basque country um with unchecked powers.
00:18:24.960 --> 00:18:38.000
And for six months, you know, they were well, they only ended up going for four months, but for six months, according to the decree, they were allowed to execute witches uh um, you know, as they saw fit, basically.
00:18:38.079 --> 00:18:43.279
And when you get when you give people that amount of power, then they're going to use that amount of power.
00:18:43.519 --> 00:19:04.799
Whereas what we normally sort of see, and and the Parlement of Paris, which is a supreme court that sort of has jurisdiction over most of the north of France, is that as soon as you introduce appeals processes like that, you know, you end up creating checks and balances, and it becomes much more difficult to um convict people of witchcraft.
00:19:05.519 --> 00:19:07.839
Let's look at the process of what would happen then.
00:19:07.920 --> 00:19:13.200
What would it take for somebody to be arrested, as it were, before being put on trial?
00:19:13.599 --> 00:19:19.440
Because there clearly were an awful lot of people who were suspected witches, but they never came to court, did they?
00:19:19.920 --> 00:19:41.599
What I think I'd emphasize here is sort of that if you prosecute people for witchcraft, then there is a mistaken belief sometimes that you know these persecutions happened, you know, because witches have money, but actually most people accused of witchcraft were really poor, and it actually cost communities money to prosecute witches.
00:19:42.000 --> 00:20:07.359
What happened in the Bas country that I worked on is that they tried to prosecute witches under the normal system, but it cost so much money because you know there were appeals processes, these witches had to be transported from the Basque country, which you know is on the border with Spain, they had to be transported to Bordeaux for trial at the Bordeaux Parlement, the appeals court there, and that was just an extraordinary expense.
00:20:07.440 --> 00:20:14.000
And it was at that point that the communities of the Bas country petitioned the king to sort of say, it's like, you know, you know, we need some more help.
00:20:14.079 --> 00:20:19.039
You know, could you please send us a judge who could cut through all of the sort of legal paperwork?
00:20:19.279 --> 00:20:20.559
So hang on, who would have paid?
00:20:20.799 --> 00:20:22.480
Who would have paid initially for that process?
00:20:22.640 --> 00:20:27.279
Where does the money come from to transport your supposed witch to Bordeaux?
00:20:27.680 --> 00:20:29.200
The the communities themselves.
00:20:29.440 --> 00:20:34.400
So the account books, and I mean that's one of the sources I found was the account books of the town.
00:20:34.480 --> 00:20:39.359
They, you know, a lot that the actual trial records have almost all of them been lost.
00:20:39.440 --> 00:20:46.880
So I sort of was able to reconstruct, you know, sort of a lot of the process simply by following, you know, sort of like the payments, basically.
00:20:46.960 --> 00:20:53.119
Um and then the c in the case of the Basque country, you also had the added problem that all of these Basque witches were speaking Basque.
00:20:53.200 --> 00:20:57.519
So you not only had to pay for the transport, you had to pay for interpreters and waiters.
00:20:58.160 --> 00:20:59.359
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:20:59.519 --> 00:21:04.720
So and and you know, all the while these people had to be put kept in in prison and they had to be fed.
00:21:04.880 --> 00:21:12.240
So it's you can sort of see how the cost implications of of a witch trial could be a real obstacle.
00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:29.119
And in in the case of the of the basque witch hunt, um, you know, it was to sort of cut through the the financial implications of uh of these witch hunting um that that uh a judge like Pier Dolanco was appointed to sort of like cut through all of that.
00:21:29.519 --> 00:21:37.359
But you can also see why, having paid that money, uh no result would have been extremely disappointing for the community.
00:21:38.319 --> 00:21:39.599
It's very annoying for them.
00:21:39.839 --> 00:21:44.799
I mean, and one sees I think that this there are some very clear examples of this.
00:21:44.880 --> 00:21:49.119
I mean, actually, there are a number of German examples.
00:21:49.359 --> 00:21:59.759
I mean, Alison Rowlands indeed studied one area where this um where there were official skepticism meant that I think it was very discouraging for people to go.
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:03.119
For the lengths of trying to bring a case.
00:22:03.359 --> 00:22:08.000
I mean, two examples I can give, which are very important, actually.
00:22:08.160 --> 00:22:18.960
I mean, one is um in in England, where you have this system of the grand jury, which is uh made up of fairly substantial freeholders, you have to find a true bill.
00:22:19.119 --> 00:22:25.039
Even if you get the suspect to the assizes, the judge is going to intervene.
00:22:25.279 --> 00:22:34.640
In effect, it looks as if people just stop bringing witchcraft cases in the 1620s and 30s because they know that they won't succeed.
00:22:34.799 --> 00:22:39.839
Um I'm not entirely clear, I have to admit, about the way that the costs are assigned in England.
00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:47.279
I mean, it is a sort of royal official system, and maybe it does just fall on, as it were, some sort of official funding.
00:22:47.359 --> 00:22:59.359
But in the French case, uh they're a bit slow to get it to be effective, but they introduce this formal appeal system so that you've got to send the papers and the accused up to Paris.
00:22:59.519 --> 00:23:03.359
So so again, I mean that's going to have to fall on local funding.
00:23:03.519 --> 00:23:16.400
And in fact, after 1625, so it's very early really, there are only three executions carried out by the the Paris Parlement, all of men who had allegedly signed a pact with the devil.
00:23:16.640 --> 00:23:22.720
You see, I mean th again, this all starts in most parts of Europe in very local courts.
00:23:23.039 --> 00:23:29.599
Courts where, you know, you would probably only have one or two legally trained people around at best.
00:23:30.160 --> 00:23:33.119
Um the level of advocacy is is low, in other words.
00:23:33.440 --> 00:23:35.759
Well well well advocacy doesn't really happen.
00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:55.039
I mean, in most of Europe, the process is one where evidence is presented, the suspect is invited to comment on it, to to explain themselves, and is confronted with the main witnesses, and could in theory argue against whatever was claimed.
00:23:55.119 --> 00:23:58.720
I mean, it doesn't happen very effectively, but at least formally this is done.
00:23:58.960 --> 00:24:01.279
And then um they're tortured.
00:24:01.599 --> 00:24:09.680
I mean in in my Lorraine example, there there is a a review by a central court, but it's simply to say you can torture them.
00:24:10.079 --> 00:24:10.400
Okay.
00:24:10.640 --> 00:24:14.240
I'm gonna I'm gonna pause you there because I want to talk about the torture in just a second.
00:24:14.400 --> 00:24:24.960
I want to just go back to this idea of what gets somebody from an argument between neighbors to actually appearing in court.
00:24:25.119 --> 00:24:30.160
What is the tipping point that occurs to ensure that happens, Jan.
00:24:31.519 --> 00:24:39.440
So this is one of the you know questions that we again don't really have uh an answer to, and part of the problem is the source material, right?
00:24:39.519 --> 00:24:42.240
Because the sources that survive are the legal trials.
00:24:42.319 --> 00:24:47.519
So we only as historians sort of start getting the source material once the trial happens.
00:24:47.759 --> 00:24:58.720
But one of the key things to sort of always emphasize is that when you read a lot of these trials, you know, witnesses, accusers are asked, How long have you suspected this person of witchcraft?
00:24:58.960 --> 00:25:02.240
And quite often the the response is really surprising.
00:25:02.400 --> 00:25:06.880
You know, it's never yesterday when I saw them perform a curse.
00:25:07.119 --> 00:25:12.400
You know, it's it's always going to be sort of like 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
00:25:12.480 --> 00:25:17.599
I've you know, we've in this community everyone has always suspected this person to be a witch.
00:25:17.759 --> 00:25:25.680
And then you know they will report stories of harm that they attribute to this person that may have happened five years ago or six years ago.
00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:39.599
Usually what happens if you read those trials closely is that you can sort of find one particular trigger event, you know, one child that falls ill inexplicably, and you know, that death being attributed to this accused person.
00:25:40.640 --> 00:25:46.880
But it's then really unclear as to why it was that trigger event and not an event that happened five years earlier.
00:25:47.359 --> 00:25:51.839
I suppose we have to remember that that the village gossip is all you really have, isn't it?
00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:55.359
There's no television, there's no no you know, there's no reading of books.
00:25:55.599 --> 00:26:00.799
You know, what happens in the village is on everybody's minds and it's talked about by everybody, correct?
00:26:01.200 --> 00:26:01.440
Yes.
00:26:01.680 --> 00:26:07.200
And remember that for several months of the year, the day is quite short and the night is long.
00:26:07.440 --> 00:26:08.720
And what do you do?
00:26:09.039 --> 00:26:19.440
And also, I mean, fuel is expensive and people tend to gather in groups in somebody's house, you know, with a fire and talk.
00:26:19.680 --> 00:26:36.000
I sometimes thought, you know, think of some huge spider web of of rumor and so on, where these things do spread from one village to another as well, because people move around, they go to market and so on, they talk to our but then this you know, this information gets back.
00:26:36.319 --> 00:26:39.680
I mean, entertainment is very limited.
00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.640
Obviously, these people sing and dance and they work at these evening sessions.
00:26:44.799 --> 00:26:53.119
I mean, people are spinning and doing things which you can do in your house to produce something which will generate a little bit of income.
00:26:53.279 --> 00:26:56.960
But it's ideal for spreading rumors, isn't it?
00:26:57.039 --> 00:26:57.200
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
00:26:57.279 --> 00:26:58.799
And and mud sticks, clearly.
00:26:58.880 --> 00:27:06.480
And and yeah, and you were talking about this idea that this person has been known to be possibly a witch for several years.
00:27:06.640 --> 00:27:13.279
And as youngsters grew up, the person that they'd get to recognize would have that stigma attached to them.
00:27:13.440 --> 00:27:22.160
And I suppose a bit like um, as they always say, the king thinks the world smells of fresh paint, because everywhere they go is everyone's been painting everything.
00:27:22.240 --> 00:27:29.519
Uh, here all you've got to rely on are the court documents, and there is no record of what's happened to bring somebody to court.
00:27:30.240 --> 00:27:37.359
When we get to the torture element We're at are we kind of just re-emphasizing the idea?
00:27:37.440 --> 00:27:44.559
Because I mean, under torture, for an awful lot of people, they'll just say yes to anything just to stop being tortured, surely.
00:27:45.279 --> 00:27:51.680
I I think that torture is sort of the second big ingredient that explains sort of regional variations, right?
00:27:51.759 --> 00:27:57.759
So, you know, the first thing we've emphasized is the importance of appeals processes in places like France.
00:27:57.920 --> 00:28:23.279
Um, uh you could also add Spain and then in a sort of different way, sort of like the English system as well, as explaining why you know these checks and balances introduced or into you know, sort of limited the number of persecutions in certain territories, whereas in these German lands, the Prince Bishopric's that Robin mentioned, you know, there were fewer checks and balances, and therefore it was much easier for a witch hunt to sort of spin out of control.
00:28:23.599 --> 00:28:27.680
And torture, in some sense, sort of like you know, is the at a bit there, right?
00:28:27.839 --> 00:28:32.799
Because if you can torture without any constraint, then anyone is going to confess.
00:28:32.880 --> 00:28:37.839
And there are these horrible examples of people, you know, sort of like who've had limbs broken.
00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:55.200
There is a famous letter surviving by a mayor, Johannes Unius, who was the mayor of Bamberg, who sort of you know tried to write a letter to his daughter explaining why he confessed under torture uh to being a witch, because he just basically had no choice.
00:28:55.359 --> 00:29:03.759
And in a in a Prince Bishopric like Bamberg, you know, where the judges could basically continue to torture you until you confess, that sort of makes sense.
00:29:04.079 --> 00:29:14.960
But you know, the Paris Parlement that Robin already mentioned as a sort of contrast, no one uh tortured by the Paris Parlement ever confessed.
00:29:15.200 --> 00:29:20.160
And that sort of shows that if you sort of use torture properly, normally there were meant to be limits.
00:29:20.319 --> 00:29:25.440
Normally you're only allowed to torture someone once or you know, at most you know, two or three times.
00:29:25.599 --> 00:29:31.920
And then the accused was meant to repeat their confession freely after the torture had ended.
00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:37.279
So there was space, even if you confessed on the torture, to then retract, as it were, afterwards.
00:29:37.519 --> 00:29:45.839
Whereas if there is no limit, then you know, sort of like what what what hope in hell do you have to escape the outcome?
00:29:46.079 --> 00:30:04.559
So the way in which the torture as adds to the different legal systems, I think, sort of really helps explain why you see so much witch hunting, for instance, in Germany or in Scotland, which are these weaker states, um, and and a lot less in places like France and England and Spain.
00:30:04.880 --> 00:30:06.720
Yes, that must that must be right.
00:30:06.960 --> 00:30:22.640
I should perhaps explain that, of course, you you rather need torture under the legal systems in continental Europe as opposed to England, where you know the trial by jury provides system that doesn't need torture in a sense.
00:30:22.880 --> 00:30:30.880
But the legal requirement for capital sentences was two complete accepted witness statements.
00:30:31.359 --> 00:30:36.400
And of course, you couldn't have witness statements proving that people have been at the Sabbath.
00:30:36.480 --> 00:30:43.920
The only people who could have testified to that were other witches who, by definition, weren't allowed, but uh you couldn't bring them into a court.
00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:46.079
And so i you've got to get a confession.
00:30:46.319 --> 00:30:56.160
And it's interesting that in my Lorraine case, I mean, yes, you know, 80% are convicted and executed, but others uh do withstand the torture.
00:30:56.319 --> 00:30:59.200
It was, on the whole, carried out according to the rules.
00:30:59.359 --> 00:31:11.440
And uh in that case you were renvoyé jusqu'à rappel, you're sent home until you're recalled, which leaves it open to the local authorities to say, we've got more evidence now, back you come, we'll do you again.
00:31:11.759 --> 00:31:32.799
So, I mean, I think what you have is uh during the the high period of persecution from the 1570s through to sometime 1630s or 40s, I mean, you have on the one hand, you have a pretty high level in quite a lot of Europe of village prosecutions, if I can put it that way.
00:31:32.960 --> 00:31:41.519
I mean, of individuals who somehow cross the line, uh do something that provokes the village to seek action.
00:31:41.759 --> 00:31:45.920
It can happen in two ways under the normal inquisitorial system.
00:31:46.079 --> 00:31:51.359
I mean, uh th this is a general term for the continental jurisdictional system.
00:31:51.599 --> 00:31:55.759
One is that somebody could actually make themselves the formal accuser.
00:31:56.079 --> 00:32:00.319
That's less common, but it does happen in significant numbers.
00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:05.599
Uh, and the other is that some local official can start the process.
00:32:05.839 --> 00:32:13.119
Um what we don't see, there's actually no evidence for, is what must have been informal pressures on some of these local people.
00:32:13.279 --> 00:32:26.480
I mean, that the man who is r running the area, as it were, or the small group, will be told, look, you know, we're really upset because we've got this awful witch, and come you please start proceedings.
00:32:26.559 --> 00:32:31.279
Um that must be what happened, but we actually never see it, you know, it's it isn't recorded.
00:32:31.359 --> 00:32:33.200
You don't put that down on paper.
00:32:33.359 --> 00:32:45.839
But within that, there is then a second level, which I'm not sure I would want to call witch hunting exactly, but it is a sort of witch hunting, which is that you get your first candidate in, as it were.
00:32:46.079 --> 00:32:50.960
Sometimes they do accuse more than one at the start, but quite often there's one.
00:32:51.599 --> 00:32:58.720
And you torture them, they confess, and then you say, and who did you see at the Sabbath?
00:32:59.839 --> 00:33:02.160
And that's a crucial question.
00:33:02.400 --> 00:33:08.319
And it varies, but in some of those German cases they name lots of people, but or are forced to.
00:33:08.480 --> 00:33:19.599
But more typically, they would name two or three other local suspects, people from their village who they know that they or other people also suspect.
00:33:19.920 --> 00:33:21.759
And so those people are hauled in.
00:33:21.920 --> 00:33:33.920
So you get three or four trials, sometimes as many as ten, you know, but it very rarely gets beyond ten, of people who, once they're on trial, you see that they've also been suspected.
00:33:34.079 --> 00:33:36.160
They may also be family members and so on.
00:33:36.240 --> 00:33:41.599
But so you use the torture and the story of the Sabbath to identify others.
00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:47.839
So I think putting those together, that would account for the majority of your cases.
00:33:48.079 --> 00:33:50.240
But oh, I don't know.
00:33:50.400 --> 00:34:06.160
I mean, 15,000 perhaps, even more would be in the big panics, which we've already mentioned, where this mechanism is used almost without control, where more and more people are pulled in.
00:34:06.799 --> 00:34:16.239
The first of those really is at Trier, I think, in Western Germany, starting in the late 1580s and running into the early 1590s.
00:34:16.400 --> 00:34:18.639
Um, not entirely clear why it stops.
00:34:18.719 --> 00:34:24.159
I mean, the Archbishop does get concerned, having originally been involved in starting it.
00:34:24.320 --> 00:34:34.159
But anyway, through the next period, there are a number of others, and the biggest of all come around late 1620s, beginning of the 1630s.
00:34:34.639 --> 00:34:37.280
But it is this it is this 80-year period, isn't it?
00:34:37.519 --> 00:34:45.440
1570 to 1650, where we see everything that popular culture has latched on to as being the witch hunt.
00:34:45.840 --> 00:34:51.440
And and Jan, Germany, as Robin has just been saying, was quite a hotspot and where some of this originated.
00:34:51.599 --> 00:34:52.239
Why was that?
00:34:52.400 --> 00:34:55.679
Why was the German land, as you put it, rather than Germany?
00:34:55.760 --> 00:34:56.880
I shall be correct.
00:34:57.119 --> 00:35:00.000
But why was that the area where this took off?
00:35:00.159 --> 00:35:02.480
Because that's the area you've started most of.
00:35:04.559 --> 00:35:08.559
So Germany, you know, as Robin already mentioned, you know, didn't exist at a time.
00:35:08.639 --> 00:35:10.400
It was the Holy Roman Empire.
00:35:10.559 --> 00:35:15.360
But the Empire was very weak, very um removed from things.
00:35:15.440 --> 00:35:33.360
Um de facto, rather than thinking of the Holy Empire as a single sort of political entity, we should think of it as uh basically a patchwork of hundreds, maybe thousands, of actual mini-states, some of them as small as a monastery with some land attached.
00:35:33.519 --> 00:35:36.239
Uh in other cases it could be quite big.
00:35:36.320 --> 00:35:54.880
You know, you know, Bavaria was already sort of a duchy at that time, but for the most part, you know, these were very small territories with very little oversight, which is why it sort of links back to you know the general point is that you know, the more Jackson balances, you know, the the fewer witch hunting you'd see.
00:35:55.119 --> 00:36:00.559
And I think in addition to that, you have these prince-bishoprics, which Robin mentioned.
00:36:00.719 --> 00:36:05.119
There, the the local bishop was also a territorial ruler.
00:36:05.280 --> 00:36:19.679
And these rulers, you know, because they were bishops, they might have religious reasons for you know sort of favoring persecution of witches, because witches were obviously also heretics and devil worshippers and um and and that sort of thing.
00:36:19.760 --> 00:36:24.400
They weren't just sort of like, you know, a concern because they were hurting people.
00:36:24.800 --> 00:36:34.719
But these bishops were also quite often quite weak rulers, because the one thing that a bishop can't do is pass on their bishopric to a son, right?
00:36:34.800 --> 00:36:46.559
I mean, at least formally, actually rarely in practice in the 16th century, but at least formally, sort of like bishops were meant to be celibate men, you know, and they're they were usually elected, usually by a cathedral chapter.
00:36:46.719 --> 00:37:00.079
So these bishops were therefore, you know, possibly devout, but they were also quite often weak rulers and therefore also didn't necessarily always have the authority to sort of step in and prevent a witch hunt from happening.
00:37:00.320 --> 00:37:07.440
So these bishoprics really are the hotspots, and those are places like Trier, Cologne is another famous one.
00:37:07.599 --> 00:37:12.480
Um, I mentioned Bamburg earlier, there's Wurzburg, so there in Eichstadt is another one.
00:37:12.559 --> 00:37:26.000
So there so if you were to draw a list of sort of like the top ten hotspots um in in Europe for witch hunting, my my guess would be that you know seven or eight of them would probably be um these small territories in Germany.
00:37:26.400 --> 00:37:35.840
And uh and and I think that that's where you could probably get closest to the myth of of you know of of of being a being Banax.
00:37:36.239 --> 00:37:39.760
But it's but it's not, you know, these are very small pockets.
00:37:40.400 --> 00:37:49.599
The majority of Europe really, you know, I don't think had any sort of real witchcraft fears to sort of speak of.
00:37:49.679 --> 00:37:55.440
And and Wales, for instance, where I'm from, you know, saw five executions across the entire early modern period.
00:37:55.679 --> 00:38:02.400
So if you were living in Wales, I don't think you were ever in fear of death for they simply weren't trying in Wales, quite clearly.
00:38:03.519 --> 00:38:17.039
One of the other aspects, I suppose, to this is is is once you start the ball rolling with trials, then people notice and it gathers momentum because people go, well, if they're doing that, we should have a go as well with so-and-so.
00:38:17.280 --> 00:38:19.440
I reckon, I've always reckoned she's a witch.
00:38:20.159 --> 00:38:21.119
Is that what happens?
00:38:21.199 --> 00:38:23.039
Is people people feed off it?
00:38:23.360 --> 00:38:24.159
I think it is.
00:38:24.320 --> 00:38:34.719
I think there is there are good reasons for thinking that the news of trials and executions in one place could stimulate it elsewhere, although it could work the other way.
00:38:34.960 --> 00:38:40.960
I mean, again, you know, you just can't rely on on there being any automatic connection of that sort.
00:38:41.039 --> 00:38:44.239
But I I do think, yes, that people people learn to do it.
00:38:44.480 --> 00:38:47.440
I mean, that is bound to be true to some extent.
00:38:47.840 --> 00:39:00.960
I I would also just sort of add that, and this happens in the Basque witch hunt that I studied, is that once these witch hunts spiral out of control, partly through these Sabbath stories, right, where people sort of say, Oh, I saw so-and-so at the Sabbath.
00:39:01.599 --> 00:39:06.880
What tends to also happen is that these accusations then sort of move up the food chain.
00:39:07.039 --> 00:39:13.280
So in Bamberg, for instance, we saw Johannes Yunius, you know, a mayor of the city being accused.
00:39:13.519 --> 00:39:22.639
And it's usually when elites start getting accused themselves that they actually press into action, being it's like, hmm, maybe this witch hunting was not such a good idea.
00:39:22.800 --> 00:39:36.880
And then that's what we sort of see happen in the past country in in the Bayonne, where you know, once you know the mother of the deputy mayor is is accused of witchcraft, you know, then it's sort of really time for Pierre Delancre to pack his bags and go home.
00:39:37.199 --> 00:39:43.199
So the role of elites is important, I think, also in trying to bring these witch hunts to a close.
00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:48.639
The other thing I'd emphasize again is the financial aspect is that sometimes communities just literally run out of money.
00:39:48.880 --> 00:39:59.119
And that's sort of something you see with Matthew Hopkins, for instance, in the great East Anglia witch hunt, is sort of that, you know, sort of like yeah, all of these people, Matthew Hopkins needed to be paid.
00:39:59.280 --> 00:40:04.880
Um, the the the witch prickers he was using, sort of like all of that required payment.
00:40:04.960 --> 00:40:09.440
And sometimes these communities just ran out of money and had to stop witch hunting as a result.
00:40:10.159 --> 00:40:18.880
Uh we haven't talked, um, and we must do before we close, um, about this aspect of of witches not just being women.
00:40:19.119 --> 00:40:22.639
We will talk about that in more detail in future episodes.
00:40:22.800 --> 00:40:28.239
But yeah, and would would would people be shocked to discover that many witches were actually men?
00:40:29.199 --> 00:40:31.920
I think I think the picture is really mixed across Europe.
00:40:32.079 --> 00:40:41.760
So if you just focus just on, say, England, then the picture of witches being almost entirely women, you know, sort of I would say actually broadly holds.
00:40:41.840 --> 00:40:46.480
Like there, the figure is in the high 80s, 80%, you know, sort of 80%.
00:40:47.760 --> 00:40:48.719
I'm not entirely sure.
00:40:49.199 --> 00:40:56.960
So in some places, you know, sort of like the witch hunt was heavily gendered female, but there is actually a lot of regional variety.
00:40:57.199 --> 00:41:00.880
The figure for France is well been known as well, is more 50-50.
00:41:01.039 --> 00:41:10.239
And then actually, like where when you sort of move towards Normandy, um, you get to a territory where a majority of um the accused were men.
00:41:10.559 --> 00:41:21.440
Same is true for parts of Austria, famously, sort of like parts of um Northern Europe, so Iceland in particular, has a majority of male victims.
00:41:21.599 --> 00:41:28.639
Um there these are not what we might think of as warlocks or the female equivalent, as it were, of witches.
00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:31.840
These are people accused of witchcraft, correct, Robin?
00:41:32.159 --> 00:41:33.039
It is, yes.
00:41:33.280 --> 00:41:47.039
I mean, I had a very sort of central kind of example in my work on Lorraine, where 28% of the accused were men, and they suffered in exactly the same proportions as women.
00:41:47.119 --> 00:41:50.800
I mean, there was no difference in who got off and number who got off.
00:41:50.960 --> 00:41:57.440
There were a few rather subtle distinctions you could perhaps draw between the men and the women, but they weren't very strong.
00:41:57.679 --> 00:42:11.360
And I did a calculation, I was rather proud of, where I uh tried to sum up the things they were accused of, and had a graph showing, you know, babies and uh animals and so on.
00:42:11.599 --> 00:42:14.639
And I mean, there was remarkably little difference.
00:42:14.800 --> 00:42:15.840
I it stunned me.
00:42:15.920 --> 00:42:19.840
I thought there would be a far bigger um gender difference there.
00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:23.920
I mean, well, we're going to talk, we'll talk about gender in another session and so on.
00:42:24.079 --> 00:42:25.519
But yes, this is very important.
00:42:25.599 --> 00:42:37.679
And it it tends to stun people when I mean I've had innumerable conversations over dinner tables and so on, because when people find, I'm sure Jan has found this too, they that you know about witches, they want to know.
00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:43.679
And and and one of the things that startles the most, is I say, well, yes, about a quarter of them were men, you know.
00:42:43.840 --> 00:42:46.639
And you know, that is not expected at all.
00:42:46.960 --> 00:42:53.760
I mean, there there's no reason to suppose the men were accused for any other reasons than the women were.
00:42:53.920 --> 00:42:59.519
I mean, they too are thought to have damaged their neighbors and the community.
00:42:59.920 --> 00:43:09.039
Um and interestingly, well, I won't go on about it now, because I think we need to have gender as a separate issue, but it will be, and it will be up for discussion as well.
00:43:09.199 --> 00:43:13.039
So we will draw a close to our our myth bashing.
00:43:13.440 --> 00:43:18.320
Yeah, if I if I can just also just say that, you know, age is another factor that's worth worth mentioning, right?
00:43:18.480 --> 00:43:21.679
If we're doing myth bust if we're doing myth busting.
00:43:21.840 --> 00:43:32.639
Um because when people think about a witch, they don't just think about witches being women, they think of them as being old crones, basically, sort of like you know, 60, 70 years old.
00:43:32.800 --> 00:43:37.440
And actually, you know, the the the statistics are much less robust.
00:43:37.840 --> 00:43:45.840
It's much, you know, age is not always as close, and historians have not been as good as at counting age as they've been at counting gender.
00:43:46.159 --> 00:44:02.239
But you know, the figures really are you know, you know, point to uh a great variety, and yes, probably the majority of them would be 40 plus, but that does not necessarily make people into old crones, of course, like speaking as someone in their early 40s.
00:44:02.320 --> 00:44:03.840
I'm not an old crone yet.
00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:07.119
Um 40 was not the new 60, then are that?
00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:08.639
No, no, I don't think so.
00:44:08.800 --> 00:44:19.360
So I think that's another sort of point that's worth sort of saying is sort of that the that when we're thinking about the stereotype of the witch, we don't only think about the witch as being female, but also as extremely old, haggard looking.
00:44:19.519 --> 00:44:22.400
And and that certainly is not the case.
00:44:22.880 --> 00:44:30.000
So we have discovered that the story most of us think we know about the witch hunts isn't quite the story the historical evidence tells.
00:44:30.239 --> 00:44:35.840
Behind every accusation was a real person, a neighbor, a widow, a healer, a troublemaker.
00:44:36.079 --> 00:44:45.920
Sometimes a man, more often a woman, and somewhere along the line, an ordinary member of a community became somebody that their neighbors feared enough to call a witch.
00:44:46.159 --> 00:44:46.639
Why?
00:44:46.880 --> 00:44:49.280
Why were women more vulnerable than men?
00:44:49.440 --> 00:44:51.920
Why did some communities turn on their own?
00:44:52.000 --> 00:44:57.039
And how much of the portrayal of witches in mainstream culture is actually true?
00:44:57.199 --> 00:44:59.280
That is what we'll be exploring next time.
00:44:59.440 --> 00:45:02.159
My thanks to Robin Briggs and to Dr.
00:45:02.320 --> 00:45:03.519
Jan McKilson.
00:45:03.920 --> 00:45:07.679
Join us next time for episode three of Witches Truth, Trials and Terrors.
00:45:07.760 --> 00:45:08.639
I'm John Briggs.
00:45:08.719 --> 00:45:09.519
Thank you for listening.
00:45:09.679 --> 00:45:15.760
And if your neighbor turns out to be a witch, statistically speaking, there's a one in four chance he's called Nigel.
00:45:15.920 --> 00:45:16.719
Goodbye.
00:45:48.000 --> 00:45:49.440
Who is evil?
00:45:49.679 --> 00:45:51.440
Who is guilty?
00:45:52.159 --> 00:45:55.280
Fear comes, fear comes.
