In the Elizabethan Era, when was the practice of witchcraft made illegal, and by whom!?Www@QuestionHome@Com
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Position:Home>History> Please help:)? When did the practice of witchcraft become illegal?Question: Please help:)!? When did the practice of witchcraft become illegal!? In the Elizabethan Era, when was the practice of witchcraft made illegal, and by whom!?Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: In 1562 an anti-witchcraft Iaw was passed by the English parliament under Elizabeth I!. It was an act 'agaynst Conjuracions Inchauntmentes and Witchecraftes!.' This act wasn't actually repealed until 1983, although nobody had been charged under it for about 250 years!.Www@QuestionHome@Com "Witchcraft" was illegal dating back to the introduction of Christianity into the Isles & the outlawing of Pagan rites & rituals!.Www@QuestionHome@Com in 17th century by some priests by buring alive the witchesWww@QuestionHome@Com Witchcraft laws began to form in the mid 1400's, around the time of the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses (~1455) Brief history: Mid 1400's - Many adherents of Catharism, fleeing a papal inquisition launched against their alleged heresies, had migrated into Germany and the Savoy!. Torture inflicted on heretics suspected of magical pacts or demon-driven sexual misconduct led to alarming confessions!. Defendants admitted to flying on poles and animals to attend assemblies presided over by Satan appearing in the form of a goat or other animal!. Some defendants told investigators that they repeatedly kissed Satan's anus as a display of their loyalty!. Others admitted to casting spells on neighbors, having sex with animals, or causing storms!. The distinctive crime of witchcraft began to take shape!. 1484 - Pope Innocent announced that satanists in Germany were meeting with demons, casting spells that destroyed crops, and aborting infants!. The pope asked two friars, Heinrich Kramer (a papal inquisitor of sorcerers from Innsbruck) and Jacob Sprenger, to publish a full report on the suspected witchcraft!. Two years later, the friars published Malleus maleficarum ("Hammer of Witches") which put to rest the old orthodoxy that witches were powerless in the face of God to a new orthodoxy that held Christians had an obligation to hunt down and kill them!. The Malleus told frightening tales of women who would have sex with any convenient demon, kill babies, and even steal penises!. (The friars asked, "What is to be thought of those witches who collect!.!.!.as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members and eat oats and corn!?") Over the next forty years, the Malleus would be reprinted thirteen times and come to help define the crime of witchcraft!. Much of the book offered hints to judges and prosecutors, such as the authors' suggestion to strip each suspect completely and inspect the body to see whether a mole was present that might be a telltale sign of consort with demons, and to have the defendants brought into court backwards to minimize their opportunities to cast dangerous spells on officials!. Early to mid 1500's - Outbreaks of witchcraft hysteria, with subsequent mass executions, began to appear in the early 1500s!. Authorities in Geneva, Switzerland burned 500 acccused witches at the stake in 1515!. Nine years later in Como, Italy, a spreading spiral of witchcraft charges led to as many as 1000 executions!. The Reformation divided Europe between Protestant regions and those loyal to the Pope, but Protestants took the crime of witchcraft no less seriously--and arguably even more so--than Catholics!. Germany, rife with sectarian strife, saw Europe's greatest execution rates of witches--higher than those in the rest of the Continent combined!. Witch hysteria swept France in 1571 after Trois-Echelles, a defendant accused of witchcraft from the court of Charles IX, announced to the court that he had over 100,000 fellow witches roaming the country!. Judges responding to the ensuing panic by eliminating for those accused of witchcraft most of the protections that other defendants enjoyed!. Jean Bodin in his 1580 book, On the Demon-Mania of Sorcerers, opened the door to use of testimony by children against parents, entrapment, and instruments of torture!. Over the 160 years from 1500 to 1660, Europe saw between 50,000 and 80,000 suspected witches executed!. About 80% of those killed were women!. Execution rates varied greatly by country, from a high of about 26,000 in Germany to about 10,000 in France, 1,000 in England, and only four in Ireland!. The lower death tolls in England and Ireland owe in part to better procedural safeguards in those countries for defendants!.Www@QuestionHome@Com |