The Witchcraft Beliefs And The Witch-hunt In Early Modern Europe

From the 15th century to the 18th century, about 100,000 witchs have been tried in Europe, nearly 50,000 witchs were executed. These bloody trials have been the historical event what we call witch-hunt. To explain why the great European witch-hunt took place, historians have done a lot of research on its social context and legal foundations. However, social and legal factors are only necessary conditions of witch-hunt but not sufficient conditions of witch-hunt, not enough to arouse and sustained such a movement. From these points of view, it is difficult to fully explain the reasons of witch-hunt. This article trying to view witch-hunt from the point of view of intellectual foundations, namely,the witchcraft belief, analyse the cultural and psychological factors hidden behind such a belief, in order to get the new understanding of witch-hunt by adopt such a way.Apart from the foreword and conclusion, this paper consists of four parts. The first part is introduction, expounded the basic train of thought of this paper.In the second part, the two basic characteristics of early modern European witchcraft beliefs and the impact of the Reformation on the witchcraft beliefs of the elite culture be discussed. And explained why witchcraft was a crimes that must be severely punished. This is the cultural and psychological foundation of witch-hunt. This part provided a starting point for the ensuing discussion.In the third part, started from the analyses of neighbourhood and family relations of people, discussed the conflict model that presented in the daily lives of people, expounded how the witchcraft beliefs are transformed into the specific accuses by such conflicts, and established a basic model of witchcraft accuses, analysed and explained some phenomenons that seemed not to match this model. Some factors that can aggravated the people's fear and promoted witch-hunt also be discussed. In the fourth part, the impact on the European witchcraft beliefs of the process and results of the witch-hunt be discussed. The discussion of this part is divided into two parts, elaborated respectively the impact of the witch-hunt on the witchcraft beliefs of popular culture and elite culture, and analysed the relation between the decline of witchcraft beliefs and witch-hunt.