European Witch Craze Essay

There were many different factors that contributed to the European witchcraze, one of which included the religious changes of the period. Before a judgment is to be made on how responsible these religious changes were for the European witchcraze, we must first take into account all of the other aspects which could also have some responsibility for the European witchcraze. Some of these aspects include: Intellectual changes, legal changes, religious changes, social & economic changes and warfare.

Religion was a very important part of life in the early modern period. It would be extremely unusual for a person to consider themselves not a part of the accepted religion of their State. One of the reasons behind this reliance on religion was …show more content…
These social and economic factors include things such as: taxes and inflation, climate change / harvest failure, disputes and rebellions and unattached women. Taxes and inflation were due to the legal changes leading to increased taxes. This then further lead to more charity being requested by people, especially from the elderly. Seeing as denying people charity often results in ‘refusal-guilt’ then there were many more witch accusations because people needed to blame someone for their guilt. Preferably the witch who they had refused. The disputes and rebellions also contributed to the Witchcraze because this lead to many men dying and only women remaining. This however links to religious changes because it was then believed by people that rebellions were caused by people’s minds being controlled by the Devil. This believe was greatly enforced by the Church and also the Bible; Samuel, 15:23: “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft”. It could be considered that social and economic factors were only partly responsible for the European Witchcraze as they were also greatly influenced and justified by religion and the changes of the views of witchcraft that the religious changes brought with …show more content…
During the European Witchcraze period there was the 30 years war, which was the worse war in German history, with one third of the German population having died during it. Due to this great warfare there was much chaos and hysteria in villages. This chaos and hysteria greatly influenced the behaviour which I have previously described in the social and economic factors. It was also common for witchcraft accusations to be used as a weapon of war; with different leaders accusing each other of witchcraft. They had political motives. Because of the fact that the wars were mainly caused by religious changes religion would be considered as responsible for the warfare factors which contributed to the European