HIST 421 Lecture 15: Lecture 15 - Witch Hunts
Document Summary
Economics and politics come into play into the witch hunts. The importance of the law for enabling witch craft and prosecutions to begin with. He points out that you can"t have a crime if you don"t have a definition of the crime. It was important to have legal definitions of witchcraft in order to have them prosecuted and discusses how these came about for ecclesiastical and lay courts. This considerable amount of time is gradually what exactly what heretical magic was defined. He references many of the texts that he excerpted in his book on the sourcebook such as the decree by pope alexander iv and subsequent definitions including more by the university of. Paris in 1939 all of which tended to define witchcraft as heretical, in connection with the devil (worship, pact, using demons in some way, etc. ) This led to the development of the hammer of witches and although.
