Witches and scapegoats: how does the logic of accusation work?

Klaniczay, Gabor

In Early Modern Times it was believed that witches gained their malefic skills through an alliance with the devil. Fearful visions of the witch-Sabbath developed towards the end of the Middle Ages; previously the Catholic Church had regarded beliefs such as that witches could fly only as superstitions. All the negative stereotypes related to the idea of witchcraft were supplemented by the rhetorical topos of medieval antifeminism. However, the unexpected spread of witch-hunting during the era of the Reformation and the Wars of Religion may have been due to natural disasters, economic crises and social tensions of Early Modern Times. This lecture gives an evaluation of the A large number of XVI-XVII century Hungarian witch trials were initiated during the XVI and XVII centuries in Hungary. This lecture gives a statistical evaluation of these trials and also analyses a few case studies. But the escalating witch-panic, one of the peaks of which was in Szeged in 1728, led to even fiercer scapegoating and accusations. Ethnology, anthropology, psychology, sociology and the theory of religions are all essential in order to understand the historical mechanisms of scapegoating and witchcraft.

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