Pourquoi les persécutions pour sorcellerie ont-elles décliné à la fin du 17e siècle ?

Exposé Histoire & géographie Histoire moderne

Date de publication :

28/05/2009

Langue :

French

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.doc

Nombre de pages :

3 pages

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avancé

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Sommaire :

Sommaire

A change in the legal treatment of witchcraft
The change of the intellectual framework

Résumé :

"I have remained in the shape of a horse until the witch removed the bridle from me, and then I saw thirteen women and a tall black man whom the women called their Protector. The others danced in the shapes of hares, cats and mice, and I sang and was then bridled again and ridden home" could be an ordinary testimony about witchcraft in the sixteenth-century England. However reactions to such a kind of statement and to witchcraft accusations changed. After centuries of prosecutions of alleged witches supported for instance by the 1542 Statute, the prosecutions declined in the later seventeenth century.
What was the cause of such a decline? First was the alteration of the relations between the judicial system and witchcraft, with the growth of judicial scepticism; then an intellectual and scientific revolution occurred during the seventeenth century, thus people, namely the élite, saw witchcraft in a new light. But as Middleton pointed out: 'There is not in all history any one miraculous fact, so authentically attested as the existence of witches. All Christian countries whatsoever have consented in the belief of them and provided capital laws against them: in consequence of which, many hundreds of both sexes have suffered a cruel death, [...] [but in Restoration England] the belief of witches is now utterly extinct, and quietly buried.' Was this statement true at the level of the common people or did they continue to view witchcraft as the explanation of their day-to-day problems?