An engraving of about 1610 of witches gathering for a sabbath, the kind of picture that fed fears behind the trials
Witches Preparing for Sabbath, ca. 1610
Marked Pendle

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The witch trials

In early modern Europe and its colonies, tens of thousands of people, most of them women, were tried as witches, and many were executed. Historians still argue over why the trials happened where and when they did.

Place
Pendle · Bamberg · Salem · North BerwickEurope, The Americas
Laid out as
A theme across timeOne idea followed through the eras it crosses.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IWhat people believed
  2. IIThe Hammer of Witches
  3. IIIPendle, 1612
  4. IVMatthew Hopkins
  5. VSalem, 1692
  6. VIWhy did it stop?

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Heinrich Kramer
  • Alizon Device
  • Matthew Hopkins
  • Tituba
  • Rebecca Nurse

Objects

  • The Malleus Maleficarum
  • Trial records

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1450 to 1750. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?