00:03:31.520However, the area, which is now Germany, had by far the most number of deaths due to the accusations of witchcraft.
00:03:37.460The witch trials of Trier ran for more than 10 years, from 1581 to 1593,
00:03:41.940and saw at least 368 executions, though numbers as high as 1,000 have been suggested.
00:03:47.580The Witch Trials of Fulda resulted in the death of about 250 people between 1603 and 1606.
00:03:54.180The Bamberg Witch Trials had an even higher death toll, with over 900 deaths being recorded between 1626 and 1632.
00:04:01.640And the Versberg Witch Trials of 1625 to 1631 had as many as 157 executions, but estimates go as high as 900.
00:04:10.240These four were merely the largest group trials and executions of the period.
00:04:13.720Many smaller trials were held throughout rural areas with a smaller number of accusations and executions.
00:04:20.120The greatest number of executions for the crime of witchcraft occurred in the area which is now Germany during this period,
00:04:25.720with modern data estimating that 42% of witchcraft trials that ended in death took place in this area.
00:04:31.840The exact number of people executed during the European witch hunting craze is unknown, though estimates run to the tens of thousands.
00:04:37.980Modern wisdom has more or less come to the conclusion that accusations were usually linked to cases of bad weather,
00:04:43.720In the case of the trials in Bamberg, which began in 1626, these began soon after a bad frost destroyed the harvest for the entire region, leading locals to believe that witches had caused their destroyed crops.
00:04:55.800John Langans, the mayor of a town right outside Bamberg, wrote this in his journal in 1626.
00:05:01.400The 27th of May, the grapevines all over Franconia in both bishoprics of Bamberg and Wersberg were destroyed by frost, as well as the deer corn, which had faded already.
00:05:10.820Everywhere around zeal, everything was destroyed by frost, which had never happened in people's memory.0.95
00:05:16.040An intense pleading and begging started among the common rabble,
00:05:19.000asking why the authorities went on tolerating that the sorcerers and witches are damaging even the crops.0.94
00:05:24.260Therefore, his princely highness was alerted to punish such evil, and therefore the witch persecution started this year.
00:05:30.100The widespread accusations of witchcraft during these centuries fit alongside the timeline of the Little Ice Age,
00:05:35.760which was a weather phenomenon that pelted villages with freak frosts, floods, hailstorms,
00:05:40.060and plagues of mice and caterpillars. Witch hunts tended to correspond with these ecological
00:05:44.540disasters and crop failures. People love to find a scapegoat for their problems, whether it's
00:05:49.400immigrants in the 21st century, Jews in the 20th, or witches in the 17th. The period of the European0.92
00:05:55.620witch trials, which saw the largest number of fatalities, seems to have occurred between 1560
00:05:59.900and 1670. This period saw more than 40,000 deaths. An estimated 75 to 85 percent of those accused in
00:06:07.700the early modern witch trials were women, and there is certainly evidence of this misogyny in
00:06:12.040the contemporary commentary of the time. Nicolas Remy was a French magistrate who claimed in his
00:06:17.180book to have overseen the execution of more than 800 witches and the torture or persecution of a
00:06:21.960similar number. He published his book Demonolatry in 1595, and it soon became one of the most
00:06:27.420recognized handbooks for witch hunters in parts of Europe. In it, he writes, it is not unreasonable0.96
00:06:32.660that this scum of humanity should be drawn chiefly from the feminine sex, and the devil uses them so0.99
00:06:38.740because he knows that women love carnal pleasures, and he means to bind them to his allegiance by1.00
00:06:43.400such agreeable provocations. So in Europe, the weather turned sour and the misogyny ran rampant,
00:06:49.600but what happened in the New World? Well, the Little Ice Age had similar impacts in the New
00:06:54.240England area as well. The starving time at Jamestown, which happened in the winter of 1607,
00:06:59.200was related to this, as was the ongoing droughts and crop failures of most of the early settlements
00:07:03.920in the colonies. The settlers had arrived during one of the most drastic droughts of the past 800
00:07:08.480years, based on tree ring studies, which in addition to explaining some of the tensions
00:07:12.780among settlers, also explained some of the conflicts which occurred between the English
00:07:16.560settlers and the natives. Food scarcity, bad weather, malaria, and many other problems plagued
00:07:21.900settlers constantly, and undoubtedly played into the New England witch trial insanity as well.
00:07:26.960But it wasn't just the Little Ice Age at play. It was the entire culture of Puritan life.
00:07:31.480The Puritans effectively operated as a snitch culture, though I suppose they might more kindly0.93
00:07:36.220phrase it as being their brother's keeper. Puritans feared excessive individualism and
00:07:41.240lack of social unity, and there was little privacy to be had in these settlements.
00:07:45.500In New England in the 1600s, community conflict or stress had a direct relationship to accusations
00:07:50.900of witchcraft. The covenant with God that the Puritans believed they had forged meant that
00:07:55.520God would make them an example, as John Winthrop put it in 1630. They would be a city upon a hill,
00:08:01.360but if that covenant was broken, the entire community would suffer from God's wrath.
00:08:05.700Which, of course, means that if anything went wrong in their society, it had to mean that
00:08:09.420someone was breaking that covenant, and that person needed to be stopped. In addition to this,
00:08:14.160Puritans viewed themselves as God's chosen people and believed that with that position
00:08:17.960came the constant threat of the devil attacking them, trying to corrupt them and pull them away
00:08:22.260from God, which is why a belief in witchcraft, where someone makes a covenant with the devil
00:08:26.880because of promises of power and wealth, was so easy for them to believe in. The Salem witch trials
00:08:31.840are the most well-known in American history. This is largely because of the account written by Arthur
00:08:36.180Miller in The Crucible, which basically every American who took a high school English class
00:08:40.420has read. However, those trials are merely the last and largest of a long string of accusations
00:08:45.620throughout the Puritan colonies of New England in the 17th century.
00:08:49.360In the mid-1600s, prior to the Salem trials,
00:08:52.300there were 93 cases of formal accusations of witchcraft,
00:08:55.70050 in Massachusetts and 43 in Connecticut.
00:08:58.640A total of 16 people were put to death,
00:09:00.620while others were either acquitted or escaped before they could be executed.
00:09:04.560There were three typical outcomes to a witch trial in New England.
00:09:07.860The accused were acquitted and returned to normal life within the community,
00:09:11.660they fled to a different region, or were convicted and executed.
00:09:15.660Records show that most often people were acquitted of the charges against them.
00:09:19.980Although no one general profile fits all of the cases,
00:09:22.940women were the most often targeted, just as they had been in Europe.
00:09:26.440Often the targeted woman was known for her rebellious or disruptive behavior,
00:09:30.000or she had a reputation as a troublemaker because she went against the grain of the community by,0.96
00:09:34.820for example, refusing to attend church.
00:09:37.440If a woman had been unpleasant or angry with someone and that person fell ill,
00:09:41.320the woman might be accused of cursing them.
00:09:42.960Same if someone's livestock died or their crops did poorly.
00:09:46.580Women who were midwives were often accused, especially if a baby died in childbirth or was born somehow malformed.
00:09:52.800Accusations of witchcraft also served to reinforce the social hierarchy.
00:09:57.000Women who spoke out against the church or disobeyed their husbands because they were dissatisfied with their lot in life
00:10:01.900were showing pride and disdain for the social order mandated by God, which automatically made them suspect.0.99
00:10:08.420This is another feature of why, within the Puritan witch trials, women were the primary focus of accusations.
00:10:14.680Only about 20% of accused witches during this period were male,
00:10:18.200and most of them were considered guilty simply because of their association with suspected witches who were women.
00:10:23.880There was also a difference in how cases of accusation of witchcraft played out, depending upon the gender of the accused.
00:10:29.600In cases where a man or woman confessed to witchcraft, women were more commonly believed and executed,
00:10:35.080Well, men were often rebuked for lying and charged with the fine.
00:10:38.400Because, of course, a man couldn't actually be a witch.
00:16:33.200The reason for how out of control the Salem Witch Trials got was simply because of a legal loophole of sorts.
00:16:39.480The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 happened at the worst possible time.
00:16:44.360The charter of the colony had been temporarily suspended from 1684 to 1691 due to some political and religious friction between the colony and England.