Maleficium: Witchcraft and Witch-Hunting in the West

2017 | History & Politics

In 1998 a petition was presented to the then Home Secretary Jack Straw asking for the witches of Pendle, Lancashire (executed in 1612) to be pardoned. It was decided their convictions should stand! The remarkable and chilling story of the Pendle witches is a perfect example of why the witch-hunts of the 15th-18th centuries were not simply some act of communal madness or viciousness. The county of Lancashire was known as an area 'fabled for its theft, violence and sexual laxity'; Catholicism still had a strong influence there; two families accused each other and members of both were hanged. Several of the confessions were genuine - witchcraft was a way of making a living. The witches were accused of plotting to blow up Lancaster Castle, this seven years after the Gunpowder Plot and the published record of the trials was dedicated to Thomas Knyvet, the man credited with apprehending Guy Fawkes. Author Gordon Napier examines the extraordinary swirl of forces at work that led here to the hangman's noose and elsewhere to the fire. In the Bavarian village of Burgrain, for example, over 600 women were tortured and consigned to the flames.

More than a thousand people including children were executed in Bavaria between 1626 and 1631. Who were the witch-hunters? Where did they get their ideas? Did witch-hunts mask politically motivated persecutions? Were there witches? Were witches a secret society, or a surviving shamanic religion? Through primary source research, Gordon Napier examines the evidence.

Gordon Napier (Author)