Question 1 of 12Correct: 0
How many people were executed on charges of witchcraft?
When did the trials reach their peak?
Why could a neighbor be accused of witchcraft after a refused request?
What helped stop waves of witchcraft reports?
What did the Spanish Inquisition most often investigate?
Who usually ran mass witchcraft trials?
Who were called New Christians?
Why did baptism not protect people from the Inquisition?
What stopped the witch trials?
Which argument proved decisive?
What was the status of the Malleus Maleficarum?
What made the book so dangerous?
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Answers and explanations12 questions
- How many people were executed on charges of witchcraft? Several tens of thousands over three centuriesThe figures in the millions come from 19th-century polemics and are not supported by archival evidence.From “How Many Witches Were Really Executed”
- When did the trials reach their peak? Around the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, already in the early modern periodThis was the age of printing and religious wars, not the early Middle Ages.From “How Many Witches Were Really Executed”
- Why could a neighbor be accused of witchcraft after a refused request? The person who refused felt bad about withholding helpAfter refusing, the householder felt guilty, and a nearby disaster made it possible to reverse the roles and accuse her neighbor.From “Why neighbors reported witches”
- What helped stop waves of witchcraft reports? Higher review of verdicts and strict evidenceWhen a higher authority reviewed verdicts and torture and evidence were restricted, complaints more often remained squabbles.From “Why neighbors reported witches”
- What did the Spanish Inquisition most often investigate? What people said aloud about faithThe largest category in the reports was statements - doubts, jokes, and remarks made before witnesses.From “What the Inquisition Tried People For”
- Who usually ran mass witchcraft trials? Secular courtsMass witchcraft trials more often went through secular courts, not the Inquisition.From “What the Inquisition Tried People For”
- Who were called New Christians? Baptized Jews and Muslims and their descendantsFormally, they were Christians like everyone else, but they lived under lifelong suspicion.From “Who Were the New Christians?”
- Why did baptism not protect people from the Inquisition? Its concern was heresy, involving baptized peopleIt had no jurisdiction over the unbaptized: for them, there was expulsion.From “Who Were the New Christians?”
- What stopped the witch trials? A change in the rules of evidenceOnce courts stopped accepting confessions extracted under torture and testimony about visions, there was no longer any way to substantiate the accusations.From “How the Witch Hunts Came to an End”
- Which argument proved decisive? That torture makes even the innocent confess, so confessions prove nothingThis argument was procedural, which is why it worked more strongly than theological disputes.From “How the Witch Hunts Came to an End”
- What was the status of the Malleus Maleficarum? A private work without official approvalThe theological endorsement cited by its authors was disputed.From “What Is the Malleus Maleficarum”
- What made the book so dangerous? The printing press spread its ready-made procedure through provincial courtsIn the age of manuscripts, such a guide would have remained in a few libraries.From “What Is the Malleus Maleficarum”