Misinformation: how the printing press fuelled a massive increase of witch trials in Europe

Amazing stuff! Was it a mania fueled by the new printing press!

Did witch trials in one place inspire more such trials in other places? Imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery.

The author of the following article is a woman, but she uses "people" to refer to women! Disturbing!

"The printing press – and a particular manual it printed – played a big role in early modern witch trials, according to a fascinating new study.

Between 1450 and 1750, some 90,000 people were put on trial for being witches across Europe.  About 45,000 of these people were executed. ...

In particular, they believe the Malleus maleficarum, which was first published in 1487, could explain a lot of the uptick – alongside trials in neighbouring cities. ..."

"... The sudden emergence of witch trials in early modern Europe may have been fueled by one of humanity's most significant intellectual milestones: the invention of the printing press in 1450. ...

the printing of witch-hunting manuals, particularly the Malleus Maleficarum in 1487, played a crucial role in spreading persecution across Europe. The study also highlights how trials in one city influenced others. This social influence — observing what neighbors were doing — played a key role in whether a city would adopt witch trials. ..."

From the abstract:

"The great upsurge of witch trials in early modern Europe remains a historical puzzle. Popularly known as the “witch craze”, this eruption of persecution is puzzling because belief in witchcraft had existed for centuries, but large-scale witch-hunting appeared rather abruptly, spread widely, and was remarkably brutal in comparison with the past. We define a theory of ideational diffusion to describe the general process of the emergence and spread of a new idea along with its prescribed behavioral change, in this case the adoption of witch-hunting. Ideational diffusion distinguishes between the adoption of new ideas, which lead social actors to reinterpret the world and thus to change their behavior, and the adoption of behavior alone. We relate how a new theory of witchcraft appeared in the fifteenth century and show that its widespread propagation, owing to the new technology of printing, matches our description of ideational diffusion. We then analyze the diffusion of witch trials in Central Europe by combining data on the publication of demonological treatises alongside climate, state capacity, religious economy, and city network variables. We find that cities adopted persecution after demonological treatises were printed, and that nearby trials induced neighbors to adopt persecution. Tracing the print vectors and social interdependence spurring witch-hunting helps us understand the general mechanisms behind the spread of persecution."

Misinformation: how the printing press fuelled witch trials

How a witch-hunting manual & social networks helped ignite Europe’s witch craze (original news release)

Ideational diffusion and the great witch hunt in Central Europe (open access)

Frontpiece for a 1576 edition of the Malleus maleficarum. Via Wikimedia Commons

Fig. 1 First witch trials across cities in the Holy Roman Empire and editions of demonological texts (Malleus maleficarum in solid black lines; other texts, described in the appendix, in dashed grey)