Accused of Witchcraft

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2021

⏱️ 49 minutes

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Summary

Not all suspicions of witchcraft led to a formal accusation, and not all such accusations led to trials and execution. During the entire early modern period, the large, Lutheran duchy of Württemberg in southwestern Germany - where there were some 600 accusations - only 350 went to trial, 197 of which ended with burning at the stake. So what does this tell us about how people understood themselves and each other, the psychology and emotions of those accused, and how they tried to defend themselves?

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Laura Kounine, who has been studying how the community, church, and agents of the law sought to identify witches, and the ways in which ordinary men and women fought for their lives in an attempt to avoid execution.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You might have noticed that witchcraft is a theme I return to in this podcast.
0:10.4	So far we've had witches in the rain and a teenage werewolf in the basket.
0:15.3	I make no apology for this, I'm going to keep on doing it.
0:18.4	Because I think witch trials are fascinating, both in themselves and what they tell us about
0:23.4	life in the 16th and 17th centuries.
0:26.6	So today we're going to examine witchcraft in early modern Germany.
0:30.5	And the approach we have today is to see what trials of a ledge which is can tell us about
0:36.3	the psychology and emotions of those who were accused.
0:41.3	And the interesting thing here is that it's possible to learn a great deal about these
0:45.6	subjects when we focus on areas that had comparatively few cases.
0:56.6	My guest today is Dr. Laura Kunin.
1:06.4	Laura is senior lecturer in early modern history at the University of Sussex.
1:11.1	With Michael Osslin she edited the book Emotions in the History of Witchcraft and she's the
1:16.0	author of Imagining the Witch.
1:19.7	Emotions, gender and selfhood in early modern Germany.
1:24.2	I think you might be thinking about buying one or both of those after you've heard this.
1:31.2	Laura thank you for joining me today.
1:33.8	I love talking about witchcraft and I am really interested in your work because it takes
1:39.8	such a different angle on the question because the question we tend to ask of witchcraft
1:44.2	trials is why they happen to this really important question.
1:48.1	But you set out to ask some different questions.
1:54.1	What did you want to know as you started out on this work?
	...

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