Why we're still living in the age of the witch hunt

The gruesome mass executions of the early modern era may have abated, but that doesn't mean the persecution of so-called witches has come to an end

- MARION GIBSON

The ‘age of the witch hunts’. It’s a phrase that historians like me love to use – and many readers will, no doubt, have a good idea what it means. From the mid-15th to the mid-18th centuries, tens of thousands of witches were put on trial across Europe and the Americas. Witches were thought to cast murderous spells on their neighbours, plot magical treason and hold heretical sabbaths where they worshipped the devil and sacrificed babies. They stood accused of nurturing demonic familiars, firing off love spells, damaging crops and participating in orgies. And they paid a terrible price. Between 1450 and 1750, an estimated 40,000–60,000 people were put to death for their imaginary crimes.

But what happened next? What trajectory did witch hunts follow beyond the mid-18th century? The ‘age of the witch hunts’ may often be used as a shorthand for a grisly 300-year period when the persecution of witchcraft was at its height, but it doesn’t occupy a neatly defined date range with concrete start and end points.

Witch hunts didn’t disappear the moment the calendar reached 1750.