Why Medieval Britain Was So Terrified Of Witchcraft | Gods & Monsters | Absolute History

officially we britons have been christian for more than 1500 years but scratch the surface and you'll find our ancestors believed in far more than christ and the cross [Music] pagan gods witches demons evil spirits were all proclaimed as terrifying fact now i want to uncover what beliefs and fears really built britain this week along with a team of top historians i'm investigating why our ancestors once lived in terror of witches why were hundreds of women believed to be committing horrific supernatural crimes the grinding up of bones of babies of murdered children would make the broomstick fly how could you tell who practiced the dark arts in medieval times people might have said you've got the devil's mark why did a witch's power come from sex with satan his semen is icy cold and how could you commit murder through magic they were a very feared set of [Music] people today witches are the stuff of fairy tales fantastical creatures that ride broomsticks and cast spells over bubbling cauldrons but back in the 16th and 17th centuries when the tudors and stewarts ruled everyone thought they were terrifying fact for 200 years we were so scared of witches the church and state became hell bent on exterminating them across europe more than 40 000 innocent people were put to death these horrific witch hunts were one of the darkest and bloodiest periods in our history i want to find out exactly what the word which meant to our ancestors where did they come from what harm did they do and how on earth could you stop them to get the answers i'm going to investigate a case study from the many thousands documented in contemporary court records i've chosen agnes sampson a scottish midwife believed to be the inspiration for shakespeare's witches in macbeth in 1590 agnes was accused of trying to murder king james vi of scotland with black magic her spells were thought to have conjured up a terrible storm that nearly sank his ship [Music] i hope her story will reveal why our ancestors were so convinced witchcraft was real helping me in my quest is historian dr lawrence normand she was right at the center of one of the most um spectacular witch hunts in scotland the so-called north bergen in 1590 and she was supposed to have gathered with some other witches by 200 in north berry kirk and plotted to kill king james and also his wife queen anne and that was a center of a big kind of plot against against the king so did they think she had powers yes i mean it was they those who were accusing her of witchcraft thought that she had made a pact with the devil and in doing that she'd acquired demonic powers devilish powers when you say she was in league with the devil what did that mean not only did the devil give them supernatural powers that they could do all sorts of extraordinary things but that they had the power to destroy they could kill your children they could destroy your livestock give you diseases they were a very feared set of people so our ancestors believed that witches weren't born with their terrible powers they were ordinary women who had been tempted to the dark side by the devil himself this meant your wife daughter or sister could easily become one professor malcolm gaskell is going to reveal how this diabolic transformation was thought to take place well the way in which accused which sometimes do describe their first meetings with the devil is that they're going about their business and yes he suddenly appears often in a kind of a rural setting like this it was believed that the devil could travel in the form of smoke or mist and then morph into any disguise he wanted why would respectable upright women like agnes have fallen for the devil the devil you know we think of as a very frightening being and of course people were frightened of him but then to those who possibly were powerless like women especially poor women that he was also something rather attractive about him and he wasn't just attractive that he was presenting with a kind of business proposition he was actually often described as an attractive man who would come to you like a sexual suitor what did he do once you've got one of these women on side what the devil would try and do is sweet talk the candidate that he's identified into coming over to his side so he might point out the inadequacy of the candidate's life and say you know you're living a life of absolute poverty you know i could make you richer you're living a life of powerlessness i can give you power once he'd found a willing convert then he would look to kind of seal the deal and that meant fixing a a covenant or a contract or a pact with the individual court records revealed that the most horrific aspect of the diabolic pact was thought to be when the devil mated with his new recruit this whole 16th century fantasy revolved around women exchanging their virtue for power from hell you've got to remember of course that this is all about inversion so the devil is like the the opposite of a good husband and this is the witch giving herself intimately to her new master which is often described that the devil is cold his body is cold and even that his semen is icy cold because what it symbolizes is the witch now she's committed a crime against the government she's committed a crime against the church and religion in this nightmare fantasy sex with the devil would transform women like agnes into terrifying witches but they'd be impossible to spot as outwardly they'd look absolutely normal professor marion gibson explains the woman next door to you could be a witch the woman in the same house as you could be a witch and you wouldn't know she was exactly like other women but on the inside she might be very very evil what kind of evil things did they do that were actually quite ordinary they did all kinds of things they would use ordinary tools like this knife for example which is might plunge this into the wall in order to be able to milk their neighbor's cows they would plunge the knife in and then milk it in order to draw the milk into their own home domestic implements were believed to be at the heart of the witch's arsenal they could supposedly be transformed into tools of the occult by using the most shocking ingredients the way that they would have made this simple broomstick into into an implement that could fly would involve the grinding up of bones of babies of murdered children um and the reducing of this to this kind of goopy fat and they would smear this onto the broomstick um and because this was a demonic and unnatural activity the killing of children boiling of their bones this magic would make the broomstick fly why do you think they chose the image of a broomstick it's a household implement which is available to everybody that seems to have been one of the reasons why these came up so often in the stories it also is a complete inversion of what a housewife is supposed to be doing with a broomstick instead of cleaning the house with it it's a means of corruption and pollution and wickedness generally just as the baby's bones are about the anti-maternal this is the world turned upside down isn't it yes absolutely yes this is exactly all the things that a woman should not be doing but agnes wasn't thought to be performing black magic alone witches were believed to combine forces at diabolic meetings these terrifying celebrations of the dark arts were known as witches sabbaths using court records marion and malcolm began to show me what they were thought to involve malcolm what would have people started doing once they got here they would start to dance around the fire and they would be feasting and celebrating it's like a kind of a it's been described as like a perverted village fair but what was it that scared people so much about all this well of course witches have come here to pay homage to their master satan to plot their foul crimes against their neighbours there really is the dark side of religion they have come here to do something terrible it's like a big black mass so it's actually a you know it's heretical and atheistical meeting as well so all those things that are precious to order in society are being attacked and undermined inversion transforming everything good into its dark demonic opposite was believed to be at the heart of the sabbath anything wholesome would be made foul a healthy stew would become an evil concoction designed to harm rather than nourish in plays like macbeth shakespeare for example imagines people putting in bits of tiger and baboon's blood and so on so hubble bubble toil and trouble really was part of what they thought which is did yes absolutely yes anything that was out of the ordinary that was obscene or erotic or exotic that would all go on at the sabbath popular religious festivals and celebrations would also be inverted at the sabbath becoming a hellish travesty with participants supposedly dancing backwards it's back to back it's hip to hip it's inversion it's disorder all the kind of things that the early modern world was very suspicious of this is everything that was decent and orderly and proper in society turned on its head and turned backwards but the main target of mockery was christianity itself its rituals were subverted so the devil became the object of worship and all manner of sacrilegious acts would take place the climax of the sabbath came when the witches once again pledged allegiance to their satanic master they would kiss the devil's arse this is the so-called shameful kiss the unclean kiss the osculum infamy in the case of agnes sampson we have an account where the devil supposedly hangs his ass over the side of the pulpit so the witches can you know to really get in there and really show give him a good snog yeah what the devil's kiss the unclean kiss does is it turns everything on its head social norms political norms and religious norms as well of course this is the black mass this is an absolute mockery of everything that's good and holy about the church and through this really foul sexual act all those things that can come together it's difficult to imagine quite how shocking all this would have been to people around here at the time but it would have been about as bad as it could get it mocked and attacked everything that they held dear a bit like desecrating a grave or something and even today there's something about it that makes you feel quite uncomfortable isn't that of course none of this really happened but this is what our tudor and stuart ancestors firmly believed was going on in secret women like agnes were supposedly turning their backs on everything good and exchanging their faith and virtue for powers from hell witches were a threat to everything that 16th century britain held dear and it was the moral weakness of women which was at the heart of this fear these guardians of chastity and family values and faith could be tempted to the dark side and that meant that your mother or your sister or your wife or even you could fall and that was a terrifying prospect but the question is why did our ancestors believe that this nightmare scenario was real i'm about to find out why our ancestors were convinced magic was fact rather than fiction and how practicing the black arts became punishable by death i'm trying to find out why our tudor and steward ancestors were so terrified of witches that they executed hundreds of innocent people in their desperation to exterminate them one of these was agnes samson a midwife convicted of trying to kill king james vi of scotland with black magic i've discovered what witches were feared to do but now i want to know why everyone took this fantasy so seriously imagine i'm your average tudor bloke decent hard-working chap just trying to make an honest living on my small holding i've got a couple of pigs in the shed i've got a few sheep on the common and i've got my chickens but look at this this one has definitely pegged it i don't understand it she was right as rain this morning i even had one of her eggs for breakfast and now all of a sudden boom she's dead and there isn't a mark on her the foxes haven't had her the gate's locked no one's broken in and i definitely fed her this morning honest for 16th century man there was one obvious conclusion someone in this village is a bloody witch our tudor ancestors obsession with witchcraft grew out of a long-standing belief in all forms of magic stretching back to roman times and beyond by the middle ages magic was such a popular way to deal with everyday problems it had become big business in towns and villages across the country so-called cunning folk were doing a roaring trade selling supernatural solutions for all manner of troubles professor owen davis is going to give me a taste of what they offered good morning good morning owen how seriously did our medieval ancestors take magic hugely seriously they're living in a chaotic unpredictable world a world full of spirits and fairies and witches people are constantly trying to make sense of why things happen and why they've happened to them individually so there really would have been a sort of one-stop shop where cunning folk like you could have sold on my problems absolutely they would offer pretty much to do anything for you apart from raising the dead as long as you paid for it all right my sister's husband is a bit of a swine and i think he's been having an affair with someone else okay well i think we need to call that harder and to do that i need a lock and a key ah a lock and a key okay now if you give this to me i'm using my magic when i lock the lock and take the key out i need to put them in water here are two buckets of water that's what we need so i'm gonna put the key in one bucket and the lock in the other and having done that the two will never come together that'll teach them on it this is a form of sympathetic magic where objects represent people separating the phallic key from the tempting lock would also separate the errant brother-in-law from his mistress you're transforming my life but there is one big issue we haven't discussed yet which is i don't think that my girlfriend fancies me anymore well looks like we need to get a magic spell together and do that i need a rose oh got a rose here's a rose perfect now i also need you to give me that consecrated ink and i will consult my book of magic to find a love charm for you so i shall write the magic symbol on the charm yeah and now i'll give that back to you and if you strew the petals or the doorway of your beloved she will love you forever the spells of cunning folk were clearly about showmanship and suggestion rather than manipulating supernatural forces clients were encouraged to believe that everyday objects could have magical powers but does this mean our ancestors were just gullible and naive not necessarily psychologist claudia hammond has gathered a group of rational skeptical science students to demonstrate that many of us still subconsciously believe in the possibility of magic so who is this this is my mum and my little brother and what's your relationship like with them um well my relationship with my mom has ups and downs but she's been always there for me i needed somebody to talk to and your little brother he's adorable he always wants to talk to me on the phone when i call he's just an adorable little bundle of joy so what we're going to do is i've got this board here so i'm just going to put the picture on this nice wooden chopping board here um and i've got a knife would you be prepared to take the knife and and stab the picture with it no but it's only a piece of paper it's not the real people it's so much connected to them though it's the image of them i feel like they're looking out at me right now as i'm looking at the picture i can't even bring myself to destroy an image of them it's interesting that you wouldn't because you know this isn't them it's not going to hurt them but many many people would find this very difficult thing to do these are my grandparents they they looked after me a lot when i was young would you be prepared to stab the picture no i can't be comfortable with the idea of of there being any harm to to them in in any way however distant and how however deluded it is even but we could run you off 20 copies of that and i completely acknowledged that but no i i just couldn't bring myself to do it [Music] that was such a simple experiment but i found it absolutely riveting it is extraordinary the different things that people do and people find strategies to cope with it people think that they might find it easy and then you realize they don't want to do it they're really uncomfortable with it they know it's just a piece of paper they know that's irrational but they don't like it in a sense these pictures are a bit like voodoo you know there is this idea that what if you found out afterwards some harm would come to them and you'd stab their picture how awful would you feel and i think that even though we know it's the 21st century we can't slightly get away from that idea this idea of sympathetic magic so a picture is similar to a person we know it's just a picture but there's something about it that's deeply similar and that's deeply disturbing for us even in the 21st century it seems we can't quite bring ourselves to discount the possibility of magic it's hardly surprising our ancestors who inhabited a world much less understood by science were prepared to believe not just in beneficial magic but witchcraft and the black arts and these beliefs were growing in strength and power as academics attempted to give them intellectual credibility with the arrival of the printing press in the 15th century their theories began to spread like wildfire the fear of witches soon reached epidemic proportions a lot of it starts with this one book the malius maleficaram which means the hammer of witches it was written in germany in the 1480s by a chap called heinrich kramer and he had a collaborator jacob sprenger as well so this is two dominican inquisitors these two guys were interested in catching witches questioning them indeed torturing them and then in punishing them so this is really a kind of handbook which starts that epidemic and then helps to spread it across europe but not many people could read could they no they couldn't but this is the kind of book that lots of gentlemen would have had in their private libraries so the contents of this book would have spread very widely even to people who couldn't read what kind of things does it say this is a book focused entirely on female witches men are being told that women can actually be having sex with the devil even while people are standing around them the devil will be invisible and this could be happening to your wife while you're watching look at this at the end of the act a very black vapor of about the stature of a man rises up into the air from the witch yes it's it's so salacious it makes us giggly it's like something out of a tabloid newspaper isn't it it's erotic but it touches on people's genuine fears as well yes it does yes this exactly this is like a red top newspaper and you can imagine the same kind of motivations lying behind its publication my goodness people will buy this but at the same time we have really important knowledge to communicate to them about the devil and his ways in the world when printed books like mallius malificarum started to appear witchcraft became taken increasingly seriously at all levels of society the church wanted to show it was protecting people by hunting which is down and eradicating them and it wasn't long before monarchs were anxious to show they were also playing their part dr susan duran has tracked down some revealing documents at westminster archives which monitors this one relate to this monarch is henry viii and you can see here it's the act against conjurations and witchcrafts and it's 1542 and it's the first act that makes witchcraft a felony in england what does it actually say well it says here where diverse and sundry persons unlawfully have devised and practiced invocations and conjurations of spirits pretending by such means to understand and yet know from their own luca and well it goes on to say to find treasure to carry out maleficent bad practices harm to their neighbours to people in the towns and also of course treason against the king and what would happen if they did those things they would be hanged at least if they were found guilty they would be hanged it's now very much the state's responsibility to safeguard the people who are under living in the king's realm from the bad practices of witches did henry believe this stuff i mean whatever we might think of him he was a very cultured man wasn't he yes but it was ingrained in society the belief in magic he shared it with very many intellectuals whether they were members of the church or whether they were secular he definitely believed in magic i'm going to be very careful with this document i know because it's just so precious in scotland where agnes samson lived james vi who was later to become james the first of england enforced several laws one of which made both witchcraft and keeping company with witches punishable by death james was pretty obsessed with witches wasn't he he came to be after he went to denmark where he had gone in order to marry his new queen queen anne when he came back he became particularly engaged with the problem of witchcraft because a storm had almost shipwrecked him and his bride on their return to scotland james really became alarmed about this he saw that there was a connection between his enemies political enemies and the powers of witchcraft james was told that the storm had been magically raised by a witch who wanted to kill him he was determined to find and destroy the evil being before she could do any more damage [Music] but there was a problem although wishes were fearsome supernatural creatures they looked perfectly normal so how could you spot one i'm about to find out how our ancestors thought you could tell who'd been dancing with the devil and i'll discover the best way to arrest and kill one of satan's creatures without risking your own life i'm finding out why our 16th and 17th century ancestors believed witches and black magic weren't fiction but horrific fact i've already seen how fear of these women and their supposed supernatural powers permeated all levels of society up to the king himself but now i want to discover how people actually dealt with these terrifying supernatural beings how did they identify them and trap them and put them to death after all which is looked completely normal on the outside so identifying who around you was in league with the devil required a very special set of tests professor malcolm gaskill is going to demonstrate a particularly brutal one what people are trying to do is to get the evidence which they can use because they're going to have to go to a court of law so one of the methods which is used is to subject the witch to the so-called ordeal by water how did that work well the idea is that you put the woman the suspected women into the water and that if she's innocent that she would sink and that if she was guilty that she would float because the idea is that the this is a pure element of water and it would actually reject the witch the reverse of the baptismal waters accepting the christian child in catholic countries a river or pond might even be blessed so it would become holy water this would supposedly repel evil forcing the witch up to the surface she would have been bound with her thumbs to her opposing toes making the sign of the cross over her body and also bound so that she couldn't swim to save herself and so spoiled the experiment so all the people from the village who had had suspicions against the suspect would have come out that day all eyes focused on the individual in the water to see whether she was indeed a witch or not well people often do float but there are accounts where people say well they floated even though we tried to hold them under the water with poles there's nothing we could do to make this individual sink and so that would have really emphasized the guilt uh of of the suspect but if she did stay under she'd just drown yeah well it's people often think that actually you're damned if you do damned if you don't if you sink then you drown and then you die anyway but actually you know these people would be attached to a rope because the idea is you haul them out you don't want them to drown because that could be murder what you want to do is prove the guilt haul her out of the water with the rope and then use that testimony in a law court against her ordeal by water was just one way to detect a witch another was to find the devil's mark when the devil touched his followers it was thought his demonic heat would burn them leaving a scar this could sometimes take the form of a teat-like appendage used to suckle demons i'm off to a dermatology clinic to see what sort of blemishes might once have been considered the devil's mark this again is a very very characteristic lesion that occurs with age that is interesting isn't it and it's an unusual job for gp jaunty heversedge so any anyone over the age of 40 will very often start to develop these lesions they're called seborrheic keratosis or seborrheic warts they look almost like a kind of scab on a on a healing wound but the other thing that it does look like is a thumb mark you can see why in medieval times people might have said you've got the devil's mark ah okay how do you how do you feel about how about that don't worry mate oh it doesn't a lot of people are concerned about moles on their skin um and you can imagine having something this size it is worrying but actually from a medical perspective this isn't of any concern at all wobbly skin tags tony these are very very characteristic of what we call skin tags incredibly common they they tend to occur where the skin rubs so the neck is commonly affected the armpits are commonly affected the groin is commonly affected i suppose it's possible that these could have been what they call witches teats but on the other hand they're so common aren't they virtually every older person has got these you're absolutely right and i guess you know the first thing is we've just got to imagine that we'd be thinking about a much younger population so they wouldn't have been quite as common as certainly we see them these days um but the other thing is that very often they looked for these things in sort of secret places in hidden places and i do think that skin tags from that point of view kind of fit the bill these days they're concerned about for cosmetic reasons but actually in those days it would have had far more serious consequences the discovery of a devil's mark was considered one of the most irrefutable pieces of evidence that a woman really was a witch king james's investigators found just such a blemish on agnes sampson and its discovery triggered a brutal deadly sequence of events as the suspect was subjected to the due process of law but how did this process work how could you arrest and prosecute someone who could conjure up evil to harm you how could the law of mere humans triumph over the power of the devil himself dr jonathan durrant is going to show me how our ancestors tried to tackle a supernatural being without endangering themselves right we're a snatch squad about to arrest our witch this is louise our researcher who's kindly agreed to be our witch today how do i take hold of her you've got to be very careful about touching her and you've got to be very careful about her sight and her voice her words because they're all demonic she's been seduced by the devil and she's full of demonic power so you need to keep her at arm's distance somehow so you probably need some kind of stick okay i'll get get the stick here we go yeah just get her like that yeah yep no no now you need to neutralize her power how do i do that the best thing to do there is to scratch her somehow make her bleed now where do i scratch i would scratch her across the forehead but right away across bleeding was a common medical procedure in the 16th and 17th centuries but with witches captors hoped their supernatural powers would drain out of their bodies along with the blood she'd be terrified by now wouldn't she she's not only being trapped at the blood gushing all the way down her front you'd be frightened as well so you'll i'd forgotten that of course i would have been as frightened as she was that's right you're threatening her power so what do we do next we've got to manacle her guys can we manicle her up no no okay she's got the manacles on now right now you've got to raise her feet off the ground you need to find a plank to to lay her on plan guys it was believed that if a witch could make contact with the ground she could somehow channel the devil's power from hell do we know that this actually happened or was it just propaganda it's a suggestion in a a manual by some academic demonologist who who did prosecute witches and this is the way they suggest that you you do this i can imagine that people might want to do this if they feared the witch so much there's there's something cruel and brutal about it which might be quite satisfying now what do we do with her now you just lift her up and drag her through the streets and take her to prison once a witch had been arrested she was assumed to be guilty but to secure a conviction her prosecutors needed a confession and they'd stop at nothing to get it a fair trial was not the name of the game [Music] i'm going to see for myself how barbaric torture could make any witch confess and the desperate measures prosecutors took to try and protect themselves from hell's fury [Music] i'm on a quest to discover why our ancestors were so convinced witches existed they executed thousands of innocent people trying to wipe them out one of them was agnes samson a midwife believed to be the inspiration for the witches in shakespeare's macbeth agnes was accused of trying to kill king james vi of scotland with black magic i've discovered how suspected witches like agnes were identified and arrested but now i want to see how prosecutors obtained the confessions needed to convict and execute them contemporary accounts reveal a process that was terrifying for both suspect and interrogator this has now become good versus evil god versus the devil and the interrogators therefore need to protect themselves against his power what kind of things did they have well there's the base of things like the the cross which gives you the protection of christ we've got something in here feels like it's going to be a little little doll or something now it's um it's salt what was this for the salt is um again consecrated to protect the interrogators we're not sure why that is but certainly it's a positive thing it flavors food it preserves food so it's a positive item you've got strips of linen here yes therefore writing the stations with a cross on them that they interrogated with them where [Music] i can see why you might want to wrap a prayer around you but why are the stations of the cross it's a meditation on the arrest and then execution of christ himself so it replicates what's going to happen in the interrogation room a bit later the exact protective measures prosecutors took depended on the country and whether they were catholic or protestant but once ready all had the same job to secure a confession although torture wasn't allowed in england it was in scotland and james vi oversaw its use in the interrogation of agnes samson the witch is now being brought into the interrogation chamber and she would have been brought in backwards so you need to turn around why was she brought in backwards so she couldn't see the prosecutor and whatever else is in the interrogation chamber and so she couldn't um glance at the prosecutor and cause him some harm but then when she turned around this is what she'd see what's this mask this is a scolded bridle it's very much like a witch's bridle which would have been placed on the witch's head and it would have had prongs underneath her chin and perhaps in her mouth to make her feel very uncomfortable but as dr lawrence normand explains the bridle was just the beginning for agnes that is a thumb screws for example and that's something that was used in the early stages of torture goes on the fingers like like that yeah and then of course it's tightened and the fingers are squeezed and uh for those who have tried it say it's acutely painful i don't know if you're feeling any pain yet that's really starting to hurt just there okay yes yes yes and the purpose of this is to because the the the witch's body is is demonic they they can resist a lot of pain so the the application of torture is to kind of break through that break through the resistance that the devil has given them and to get to the truth to make them confess but confession alone wasn't enough witches were believed to join forces to cast spells and the prosecutors were after names he wanted to know if there was a sabbath who else was there they wanted the names of people and as that happened so the whole thing became snowballed and became more and more terrifying [Music] if someone named you as a witch under torture that was evidence enough to get you arrested so the interrogation of a single suspect could lead to the prosecution of literally hundreds of people and this is one of the reasons the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries became so big and so terrifying so if you wanted more names from me does that mean that you had to up the pain there could be more pain yes there were worse tortures than the thumb screws what were these particularly used for well these are a really nasty form of torch or the pincers which would tear and and pierce the body you'd be able to hear yourself burning wouldn't you and smell it too but even after torture as extreme as this it wasn't necessarily over for women like agnes the prosecutors didn't just want to eradicate witches but witchcraft itself to do this they needed as many details as possible about how the dark arts actually worked as long as they didn't kill the suspect there was little they wouldn't do to get this information this is the strapado and it has several different levels that you can go through the first is a basic level her arms will be tied behind her at the back and says pulling up on her shoulders and uh possibly damaging her ligaments her tendons her nerves it would be agonizingly painful wouldn't it to be held up with your arms up like that yes that's not the worst of it if that didn't work they could just lift you up off the ground slightly putting more pressure on your shoulders if that didn't work then you could put a weight on like this yeah okay lift her up slightly and then the weight will be pulling through her whole body if this didn't work you could uh use a process called squassation where you just lift her up and then drop her and catch her before she hits the ground you definitely dislocate your shoulders then yes you might even break them at that point and if that last one didn't work then you could do repeated scorsation in something called the rabbit jumps which is just doing squassation several times what i find so eerie about this is that she stopped being a human being for the guys who are applying this torture the whole process culminated in the courtroom where the confession of the alleged witch was read out if it convinced the court she was convicted these confessions helped make ordinary people believe that the fantasy of witchcraft was very real what happened to agnes agnes was found guilty and she was executed the next day she was taken through the street to then bring a cart up to the castle hill where the scottish witches were burned and she was put on the on the on the pie and she was garrotted and burned as the sentence said her body was burned to ashes what was the point of burning somebody after they'd been strangled normally people are buried um they're not cremated and cremation basically eradicates your physical presence from the earth so in effect you've got no body there when the day of judgment comes nobody to rise up again and stand before god what would the people who were watching it have felt well those who were glad to see a witch being destroyed would feel that an evil element in the society had been uh had been deleted and the society was made pure as a result the last execution of a witch in britain was in 1727. in 1735 the state officially recognized that witchcraft was fantasy and it ceased to be a criminal offence by this time more than 40 000 innocent people had been executed as witches across europe what's so horrifying is how executing someone for an impossible crime like witchcraft should seem so sane and rational this is partly because some of the finest minds in medieval britain and europe were determined to come up with theories to justify their beliefs and they were good at their job by the time the church authorities and the monarchs and the academics had finished most of our ancestors were convinced this demonic fantasy was real but their success is surely also because people like you and me ordinary people wanted to believe when things go badly wrong we look round for an explanation someone to blame and in medieval europe witches were the perfect and deadly target

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 274,264

Rating: 4.8439026 out of 5

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history

Id: rDGE5ljmCUY

Length: 45min 58sec (2758 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021

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