Cards (49)

  • The Witch craze of the 16th and 17th Century
  • TIMELINE
    1. Year(s)
    2. Event
  • An Inquisition against heresy was established by the Roman Catholic Church

    1230s
  • Pope Alexander IV accepted that sorcery and communication with demons was a kind of heresy
    1258
  • Pope John XII issued several bulls identifying sorcery with heresy and pacts with the devil

    1316 - 1334
  • Black Death swept through Europe, adding to the willingness of people to see conspiracies against Christendom
    1340s
  • Errores Gazaziorum, a papal bull, identified witchcraft and heresy with the Cathars

    about 1450
  • William Caxton, Printing Revolution

    1476
  • Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull, allowing the inquisition to persecute witchcraft as heresy

    1484
  • The Malleus Maleficarum was published

    1486
  • Many historians point to this period as one in which witchcraft trials -- and Protestantism -- were rising
    1500-60
  • Martin Luther's 95 Thesis: Start of Reformation
    1517
  • Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, by Emperor Charles V, and affecting the whole Holy Roman Empire, declared that harmful witchcraft should be punished by death by fire; witchcraft that resulted in no harm was to be "punished otherwise."
    1532
  • English law made witchcraft a secular crime with the Witchcraft Act
    1542
  • Copernicus publishes On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres
    1543
  • Publication of De Praestiglis Daemonum by Johann Weyer, a physician to the Duke of Cleves. The second English (and Scottish) Witchcraft Act was passed.
    1563
  • Many historians consider this the period with the largest number of witchcraft cases, with the period of 1610 - 1630 being a peak within this period
    1580 - 1650
  • Discoverie of Witchcraft was published by Reginald Scot, expressing scepticism of witchcraft claims

    1584
  • North Berwick Hunts
    1590-91
  • National Scottish Hunts
    1590-97
  • James VI's Demonologie published, Boy of Burton case

    1597
  • A Discovery of the Fraudulent Practices of John Darrell published by Samuel Harsnett
    1599
  • Act of James I expanded punishable offenses related to witchcraft
    1604
  • Francis Bacon's Of The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human published

    1605
  • Kepler's Astronomia Nova published
    1609
  • The Pendle witch trials in Lancashire, England
    1612
  • A handbook for English judges on pursuing witches was published
    1618
  • Wurzburg and Bamberg witch hunts
    1626-31
  • Cologne hunts
    1626-34
  • Galileo Galilei publishes Dialogue Concerning Two Chief World Systems
    1632
  • The Pendle Swindle

    1634
  • René Descartes Discourse on Methods (1637)

    1637
  • East Anglia Hunts
    1645-47
  • Another Scottish Hunt
    1649-50
  • Thomas Hobbes publishes The Leviathan
    1651
  • Thomas Ady's A Candle in the Dark published

    1656
  • Royal Society formed
    1660
  • Last major Scottish hunt
    1661-62
  • The Demon Drummer case

    1662
  • John Webster's The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, 1677
    1677