Witch Craze?: Beyond the Legends of Panic

Abstract

Historians have long been interested in the "witch craze" or Hexenwahn of premodern Europe. Though the author himself has written of "panic" and "frenzy" in earlier studies, he argues here that these terms have led to a distorted perspective which encourages attention to episodes of large-scale panic and overemphasizes torture and the devil. The distortion can be corrected by looking at places that avoided massive outbursts (the Palatinate, Rothenburg o.d. Tauber, Württemberg) and noting that even when there were many executions, trials could occur within the framework of processus ordinarius (Mecklenburg). Overall, most witch trials were routine, focusing on ordinary maleficium ,which was far more widespread than we thought a generation ago; England, with trials of individuals more than chain-reaction trials, and with little interest in diabolical witchcraft, is more typical than we thought.