Witches didn't exist, and yet thousands of people were executed for the crime of witchcraft. Why? The belief in magic and witchcraft has existed in every recorded human culture; this podcast looks at how people explained the inexplicable, turned random acts of nature into conscious acts of mortal or supernatural beings, and how desperate communities took revenge against the suspected perpetrators.
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Witches didn't exist, and yet thousands of people were executed for the crime of witchcraft. Why? The belief in magic and witchcraft has existed in every recorded human culture; this podcast looks at how people explained the inexplicable, turned random acts of nature into conscious acts of mortal or supernatural beings, and how desperate communities took revenge against the suspected perpetrators.
The Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, did not exist in a vacuum. How could this man, who had no formal authority, tour South-East England and not only execute hundreds of 'witches', but find cheering crowds and grateful magistrates waiting for him? Today's episode will examine the possible reasons why the Hopkins witch craze was so exceptional in its scale and brutality.
This episode primarily made use of the following texts:
- Gaskill, Malcolm, ‘Witchcraft Trials in England’, in Levack, B. P. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America (Oxford, 2013)
- Levack, Brian, ‘State-Building and Witch-Hunting’, in Oldridge, Darren (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader, 2002
- Elmer, Peter,Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England, (Oxford, 2016)
- Jackson, Louise, ‘Witches, Wives and Mothers: Witchcraft Persecution and Women’s Confessions in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Oldridge, Darren (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader, 2002
For a full bibliography, please see the website: www.thehistoryofwitchcraft.co.uk
The Recorded History Podcast Network: www.recordedhistory.net
Friends of the show, Pontifacts: https://pontifacts.podbean.com/
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The History of Witchcraft
Witches didn't exist, and yet thousands of people were executed for the crime of witchcraft. Why? The belief in magic and witchcraft has existed in every recorded human culture; this podcast looks at how people explained the inexplicable, turned random acts of nature into conscious acts of mortal or supernatural beings, and how desperate communities took revenge against the suspected perpetrators.
