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In Europe from 1480 to 1700, over 100,000 people were tried as witches, mainly
to do with the fact that religion compelled people to look for things that do not exist,
suspicion of someone being a witch, or because scientists also believed in witches. This,
in turn, divides the documents into three main categories. The first group, is suspicion
using Testimonies of accused witches and eyewitnesses, the second is the religious
opinions on witches and the last major category is, the scientific opinions. However,
First off, the witch hunts were started by suspicions that people had created about
certain individuals. In the category of suspicion, the first document is the, testimony of a
the accused person being a mid-wife but, mainly to do with the torture applied to the
suspect. Torture can make anyone say anything you want them to; therefore making the
confession questionable, but at the same time this helps demonstrate the drastic measures
that people would go through to find these imaginary beings. However, in three more
documents the people show the innocence of the accused. First, there is an, eyewitness to
the persecution in Trier (doc 2); the eyewitness says that the witch trials were to make the
people in office more money that’s why it happened in town to town. On the other hand
the witch trials started to become part of the culture, therefore forging a poem, written in
1621, that shows that the witches are not real however, we make people into witches
ourselves. And last, there is a letter from am accused person Johannes Junius (doc 7), in
which he tells about the torture applied if one were to deny being a witch. On the other
side of the argument, there are the mislead individuals, for example Thomas Ady (doc 3),
Gloucestershire (doc 4), England, 1563, in which they accuse someone of being a witch
simply because the person helped to cure illness. Then the last article is Roger North (doc
6), brother of the Chief Justice in Exeter, England in 1683, whom states “this judge hath
no religion, for he does not believe in witches. This shows that religion really had a huge
However, religion does play a major role in the search for witches. This can be
represented through two groups of religious leaders and religious people. First, there are
two Dominican monks (doc 1), that wrote a handbook used in the Inquisition, whom
wrote that women are more vulnerable to the evil because God formed women through a
bent rib. This helps demonstrate how pious these people were and how they basically
interpreted the bible as it was written. Next is from the diary of a young, Protestant boy
(doc 5), late 16th century. Before any analysis of the words one can assume that if he can
read and write he is probably not a poor boy, most likely upper class. However, he writes
that he is scared of hell; this shows also how people probably felt, giving reason to the
Inquisition of witches. On the other hand, there are the Religious leaders, which are Pope
Innocent VIII (doc 2), the witch bull, 1484, Martin Luther (doc 3), and John Calvin (doc
4); all of which state that there are witches out there and the people need to find them, in
order to purge the land of their evil. This might also be the main cause for the Witch trial
because major religious figures are telling their people that there, are in fact witches
amongst them.
Then there are scientific opinions on witches and they seem to contradict one
another, showing that the study of witches was not uniform. To begin with, there is W.
Fulhecke (Doc 1) who states that witches actually exist, in which his basis of evidence is
that when they are evil they succumb to disease and malice; therefore he thinks that there
are in fact witches among the people. On the contrary, there is Johan Wier (Doc 2), a
Belgian physician, whom states that there are not witches but, the devil does affect people
whom are not Christian, mainly women. By this said, we can assume that there was no
concrete evidence of witches and their supernatural powers, so that witch hunts were of
the imagination. This is because they are old and their minds are easy to trick, so, people
should not throw suspect in dungeons because the devil and evil spirits can reach them
there and make them confess things they haven’t really done. Through evidence one can
see that it is not the devil but in fact the torture that makes the suspect confess. However,
shown in the chart (doc 1) many of the convicted were poor people, mostly whom of
which were females in middle-age or older. Thus, the three major causes for persecution