How one of humanity’s most important inventions fuelled deadly witch hunts in Europe - Early books and influence of nearby cities created perfect conditions for persecution of women, study says.

The witch hunts in Central Europe took off in the late 15th century and lasted for almost 300 years, resulting in the prosecution of roughly 90,000 people, with nearly 45,000 executions.

The European witch hunts were most intense from approximately 1450 to 1750, a period marked by religious upheaval and social instability. Key factors contributing to these trials included: ...

No wonder the history of the original European witch hunts of the late 16th and early 17th centuries has become politicized. By the early 1900s, they were seen as outbreaks of hysteria fostered by ...

This explosion of trials, popularly known as the “witch craze,” has puzzled historians for years. The belief in witchcraft had existed since medieval times, but never before had there been such a ...

While this story is about witch hunts, it’s also about controlling women’s bodies for the creation of a labor market — and the creation of a peasant class in post feudal Europe. Federici: By ...

President Trump’s defense of the former president of Brazil was the latest example of him invoking a term he has frequently ...

Learn why witch hunts across Scotland and Europe ended in the 18th Century. BBC Bitesize Scotland History article for learners at Third Level Curriculum for Excellence.

In the prologue to 1994’s Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts, author Anne Llewellyn Barstow observes, “The longer I have worked on these sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ...

The advent of the printing press fuelled the spread of misinformation and the emergence of witch trials across Europe in the second half of the 15th century, according to a new study.. Researchers ...