# How good was the evidence at European-style witchcraft trials?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 15, 2008, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554 "2008-07-15T09:13:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/1 "2008-07-15T09:13:22Z")
OK, very overbroad topic. I know. European-style witchcraft trials were held for centuries over at least two continents. (By European-style I explicitly exclude trials performed in areas that still believe (in the judicial sense) in witches, witchcraft, and the crime of witchcraft.) But I keep coming across this old quote:
> [@Ambrose Bierce](#):
>
> But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges’ decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
He’s pretty obviously overstating his case. The Salem witch trials, for example, involved the torture of citizens to an extent that the testimony extracted from them would be found odious and completely poisoned by today’s judicial standards. However, was he lying completely? How good were other witch trials?
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/2 "2008-07-15T09:23:02Z")
Ambrose Bierce was a cynic and humorist. The point of that paragraph isn’t that the trials were perfectly good trials, but rather that “human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.” I.e. people suck.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/3 "2008-07-15T09:23:58Z")
I think the passage you’re quoting is satirical, that is, I think he’s saying the extreme opposite of what he believes to be true.
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/4 "2008-07-15T09:24:34Z")
[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
Ambrose Bierce was a cynic and humorist. The point of that paragraph isn’t that the trials were perfectly good trials, but rather that “human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.” I.e. people suck.
[/QUOTE]
Probably. I’m still curious if they were all kangaroo courts, though.
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### Author:  [@Shamozzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shamozzle)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/5 "2008-07-15T09:32:30Z")
[QUOTE=Derleth]
Probably. I’m still curious if they were all kangaroo courts, though.
[/QUOTE]
Well, they would have to be, wouldn’t they? _The People versus Broom Hilda_ being the exception.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/6 "2008-07-15T09:34:07Z")
Given that, by modern standards, the charge of _witchcraft_ doesn’t really hold water, how _could_ the trials have been properly rigorous? How _could_ the evidence have been reliable?
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### Author:  [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/7 "2008-07-15T09:45:20Z")
The key is the opening words: “But as records of courts of justice are admissible…”
What he is saying (rightly or wrongly) is that the records of the courts in question are themselves admissable as incontrovertible proof. If Jim has been found by a court of record to be a murderer, to prove in a court subsequently that Jim is a murderer one would need only to produce the records of the first trial, and one’s work would be done.
Therefore, (so the argument goes) since early courts of record found there to be witches, it could be proven in a modern court that there were witches simply by producing the records of the earlier courts that found it so.
Ambrose Bierce is being sarcastic and has his tongue firmly encheeked. If Ambrose Bierce’s tongue ever left his cheek I’m yet to see evidence of it.
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### Author:  [@puppygod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puppygod)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/8 "2008-07-15T11:51:39Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Given that, by modern standards, the charge of _witchcraft_ doesn’t really hold water, how _could_ the trials have been properly rigorous? How _could_ the evidence have been reliable?
[/QUOTE]
Well, technically some people did practiced black magic (and some do even today), so it was possible to be actually guilty of witchcraft in the days of yore, when it was illegal. I’ll try to find and post later about a case of guy who literally wrote and signed pact with devil (although physical presence of the latter weren’t confirmed).
Also, there are records of trials where accused of witchcraft were found innocent. So at least some of those trials possibly were valid. Or at least as valid as other trials back then.
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### Author:  [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/9 "2008-07-15T12:18:26Z")
The classic text giving the procedures for the trial of witches and magicians is the Malleus Maleficarum, written in 1486 by the monks Kramer and Spengler. Magistrates used it as a handbook. The whole translated text is online [here.](http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/)
> [@](#):
>
> The Malleus Maleficarum (Latin for “The Hammer of Witches”, or “Hexenhammer” in German) is one of the most famous medieval treatises on witches. It was written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, and was first published in Germany in 1487. Its main purpose was to challenge all arguments against the existence of witchcraft and to instruct magistrates on how to identify, interrogate and convict witches.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/10 "2008-07-15T13:00:36Z")
> [@](#):
>
> The Salem witch trials, for example, involved the torture of citizens to an extent that the testimony extracted from them would be found odious and completely poisoned by today’s judicial standards.
This isn’t correct. AFAIK, no one was tortured during the Salem Witch Trials (beyond the odium of being imprisoned). People were convicted ion the basis of “spectral evidence” and on the testimony of their accusers. And the fact that self-confessed witches were given more lenient sentences certainly encouraged them to implicate others. But as far as I know, no torture was used to extract information or confessions.
the only possible exception was Giles Corey, who was pressed to death for failing to either confirm or deny the accusation of witchcraft, but that was because he stood silent and refused to even enter a plea. Exactly why this was the case is somewhat controversial. Some said he did it so his propertty wouldn’t be seized. Others that it was a protest against the court and its authority. But they didn’t do it to get him to confess to being a witch, or to accuse others.
By the way, aside from the Spectral evidence and some suspect confessions, most of the evidence presented at the witch trials is probably believable. More than one book has argued convincingly that folk magic (“witchcraft”) certainly WAS practiced at Salem, sometimes with malefic intent.
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/11 "2008-07-15T13:01:13Z")
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> Given that, by modern standards, the charge of witchcraft doesn’t really hold water, how could the trials have been properly rigorous? How could the evidence have been reliable?
I suppose one standard is whether anyone accused of witchcraft or sorcery was ever acquitted. What I’m after is logical consistency: Did the courts establish rules for themselves and then play by them even if they lost? The obvious counter-example of that is the old “If you’re innocent you drown, if you’re a witch we come after you and find some other way to kill you.” Were _all_ witch trials based on the Catch-22?
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/12 "2008-07-15T13:21:32Z")
> [@](#):
>
> I suppose one standard is whether anyone accused of witchcraft or sorcery was ever acquitted. What I’m after is logical consistency: Did the courts establish rules for themselves and then play by them even if they lost? The obvious counter-example of that is the old “If you’re innocent you drown, if you’re a witch we come after you and find some other way to kill you.” Were all witch trials based on the Catch-22?
I’m not as up on European witch trials as on the Salem witch trials, but what little I’ve read shows that these were trials and were followed in the proper manner. I don’t think that the standard in these cases was the practice of “swimming the witch”, which I suspect was more of a mob-type expedient. Look up some of the records of witch trials. Anthropologist Marvin Harris covers some of them in his book “Cows, Pigs,. Wars, and Witches.”
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/13 "2008-07-15T14:31:47Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
the only possible exception was Giles Corey, who was pressed to death for failing to either confirm or deny the accusation of witchcraft, but that was because he stood silent and refused to even enter a plea. Exactly why this was the case is somewhat controversial. Some said he did it so his propertty wouldn’t be seized. Others that it was a protest against the court and its authority. But they didn’t do it to get him to confess to being a witch, or to accuse others.
[/QUOTE]
And, pressing was a common method used on those who refused to enter a plea in a criminal case. It wasn’t witchcraft specific.
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### Author:  [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/14 "2008-07-15T14:36:21Z")
Ambrose Bierce was discussing the inadmissability of hearsay in trials and about how most of our knowledge in the real world comes from hearsay. To give a context, this is the section of the quote immediately before the one you gave.
> [@](#):
>
> Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law. It cannot be proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was such as person as Julius Caesar, such an empire as Assyria.
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### Author:  [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/15 "2008-07-15T15:25:14Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
And, pressing was a common method used on those who refused to enter a plea in a criminal case. It wasn’t witchcraft specific.
[/QUOTE]
Is this where the phrase “we pressed him/her for details” comes from? :eek:
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### Author:  [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/16 "2008-07-15T17:23:48Z")
The Wiki article [Witch trials in Early Modern Europe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Early_Modern_Europe) has some good information, if you’re interested.
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### Author:  [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/17 "2008-07-15T19:05:20Z")
Part of the answer to the OP has to do with how you define practicing witchcraft or, as \*\*puppygod \*\* says, black magic. Yes, people do all manner of things, calling their behavior black magic, but since it doesn’t really have any effect, there’s a question of whether they’re guilty of practicing witchcraft, and what that actually means. Presumably, people could be convicted of the behaviors connected with the practice, but it would be a stretch to think that the evidence showed that they were effective, consequently guilty in that way.
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### Author:  [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/18 "2008-07-15T19:10:45Z")
[QUOTE=Derleth]
I suppose one standard is whether anyone accused of witchcraft or sorcery was ever acquitted. What I’m after is logical consistency: Did the courts establish rules for themselves and then play by them even if they lost? The obvious counter-example of that is the old “If you’re innocent you drown, if you’re a witch we come after you and find some other way to kill you.” Were _all_ witch trials based on the Catch-22?
[/QUOTE]
One prominant English example of a high-profile witchcraft case collapsing is the _second_ set of Lancashire trials. [The more famous Pendle case](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Witches) in 1612 had seen all but one of the accused convicted and executed. Come 1633 there was another round of accusations in the area, in at least one instance involving the same family. Initially things followed the earlier pattern, with at least one confession and a whole group of accused being found guilty.
However, the local crown officials seem to have had doubts and eventually bumped the cases of the four main accused up to London. There William Harvey got dragged in as the expert witness who had to subject them to a medical examination to check for all the classic possible signs on their bodies. While reporting that one of them did have two teat-like growths, he ruled that there was nothing abnormal.
From there the case began to unravel. The main prosecution witness was a ten-year-old boy called Edmund Robinson and he broke down and admitted that he’d made everything up. Charles I then pardoned the convicted women.
That said, what happened to them then is unclear. Most of the accused are known to have still been in prison in Lancaster Castle a couple of years later, though why and with what fate is unknown.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/19 "2008-07-15T19:16:53Z")
[QUOTE=Saint Cad]
Ambrose Bierce was discussing the inadmissability of hearsay in trials and about how most of our knowledge in the real world comes from hearsay. To give a context, this is the section of the quote immediately before the one you gave…
[/QUOTE]
Actually, such things could nowadays be proved under the usual hearsay exceptions: records of religious organizations, family records, statements in ancient documents, learned treatises, reputation concerning boundaries or general history, etc. See Ohio Evid.R. 803.
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### Author:  [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2008, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-was-the-evidence-at-european-style-witchcraft-trials/456554/20 "2008-07-15T21:57:09Z")
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
Actually, such things could nowadays be proved under the usual hearsay exceptions: records of religious organizations, family records, statements in ancient documents, learned treatises, reputation concerning boundaries or general history, etc. See Ohio Evid.R. 803.
[/QUOTE]
Still, his point stands. Most of what we “know” is hearsay. Nobody alive today has any first-hand knowledge of the Civil War; everything we know about it, we know from hearsay, in the sense that we’re just repeating what someone else told us. Everything I know about the Iraq War is hearsay; I haven’t been there, I just know what I’ve heard from various people.
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