The European Witch-Hunt

Goodare, Julian

doi:10.4324/9781315560458

Cited by 32 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…There was significant temporal and regional variation in what exactly people believed about witchcraft (Blécourt, 2013). Even so, in consonance with several current witchcraft experts, we maintain that the term can still be helpful (Dillinger, 2018;Goodare, 2016;Levack, 2016). Ideas about witchcraft very often did cluster together during a particular time period and retained a certain degree of coherence and stability.…”

Section: What the Witch-hunts Weresupporting

confidence: 67%

“…In early modern Europe (1430-1750), tens of thousands of people were killed for the alleged crime of diabolical witchcraft (Goodare, 2016;Levack, 2016). What makes these persecutions a particularly interesting topic to study is that we now know that witches did not exist.…”

Section: What the Witch-hunts Werementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In short, historians and social scientists have looked for the hidden beneficiaries of witch-hunts in different directions. However, what these explanations all share is that many experts have rejected them over the past decades (Behringer, 2008;Briggs, 1996b;Dillinger, 2018;Goodare, 2016;Levack, 2016;Scarre, 1987;Thurston, 2007). Various hypotheses highlighted relevant aspects of the trials, such as the overrepresentation of women, interactions between popular and elite cultures, or the social dimensions of village accusations.…”

Section: The Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But if this were the case, the hidden agenda should have become apparent in the course of the persecutions. However, this was not borne out either (Behringer, 2008;Briggs, 1996b;Dillinger, 2018;Goodare, 2016;Levack, 2016). If there was a systematic agenda, or a systematic function, we should expect the persecutions to display certain regular patterns, targeting certain classes of individuals rather than others.…”

Section: The Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many experts state that we should take the historical actors a lot more seriously in what they actually thought and said. Witch-hunting was not a means to an end, but, rather, an end in itself (Briggs, 1996b;Dillinger, 2018;Goodare, 2016). Wolfgang Behringer, a German expert familiar with the historical sources, describes the persecution of witches as an effort that was time-consuming and unpleasant.…”

Section: The Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

‘Viral’ Hunts? A Cultural Darwinian Analysis of Witch Persecutions

Hofhuis

Boudry

2019

Cultural Science Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The theory of Darwinian cultural evolution is gaining currency in many parts of the socio-cultural sciences, but it remains contentious. Critics claim that the theory is either fundamentally mistaken or boils down to a fancy re-description of things we knew all along. We will argue that cultural Darwinism can indeed resolve long-standing socio-cultural puzzles; this is demonstrated through a cultural Darwinian analysis of the European witch persecutions. Two central and unresolved questions concerning witch-hunts will be addressed. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, a remarkable and highly specific concept of witchcraft was taking shape in Europe. The first question is: who constructed it? With hindsight, we can see that the concept contains many elements that appear to be intelligently designed to ensure the continuation of witch persecutions, such as the witches' sabbat, the diabolical pact, nightly flight, and torture as a means of interrogation. The second question is: why did beliefs in witchcraft and witchhunts persist and disseminate, despite the fact that, as many historians have concluded, no one appears to have substantially benefited from them? Historians have convincingly argued that witch-hunts were not inspired by some hidden agenda; persecutors genuinely believed in the threat of witchcraft to their communities. We propose that the apparent 'design' exhibited by concepts of witchcraft resulted from a Darwinian process of evolution, in which cultural variants that accidentally enhanced the reproduction of the witch-hunts were selected and accumulated. We argue that witch persecutions form a prime example of a 'viral' socio-cultural phenomenon that reproduces 'selfishly', even harming the interests of its human hosts.

show abstract

Section: What the Witch-hunts Weresupporting

confidence: 67%

Section: What the Witch-hunts Werementioning

confidence: 99%