Dates

• 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