Witch Hunts of the Early Modern Period as the Result of Religious and Social Upheaval

Witch Hunts of the Early Modern Period as the Result of Religious and Social Upheaval

The Early Modern Period was a time of great change in and around

Europe. The people of the age were faced with upheaval of all forms;

religious, social, political and even economical.

Religious upheaval stemmed from changes in religious views and

practises. The Reformation was a hugely significant event that took

place in the years spanning 1520-1650. It was a religious, and

political, movement in Europe that began as an attempt to reform the

Roman Catholic Church, but ended in the establishment of Protestantism

and Protestant churches. The aim of the reformers was to restore the

Church to its early Christian purity, and in order to accomplish this,

they made significant changes.

The Reformation denied the power of indulgences, redefined the

function of the sacraments, eliminated or drastically altered the

Roman Catholic Mass and changed the role of the clergy. A developed

idea from the Reformation was that each believer was a priest and it

posited a direct relationship between man and God. In Medieval

Catholicism, clerical and angelic intermediaries were already

established between man and God, but reformers choose to remove many

of these.

The incompatibility of the ideas of the reformers with Roman Catholic

ideology, and the failure of the Roman Catholic Church to reform

itself, led to the break with Rome and the establishment of

independent Protestant churches. The inability of reformers to find

scriptural support for papal authority over them was also an equally

decisive factor for the eventual break with Rome.

Evidently, with the...

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...ore widespread and people

were more susceptible to becoming ill. Concerning this, and the fact

that people of the age had a distinct lack of scientific knowledge,

yet again, ‘suspicious’ people were being accused of being witches

because there was nothing or no one else to blame for the increased

amount of death and turmoil.

Overall, in conclusion to the question, religious and social upheavals

were incredibly significant factors to why witch hunts resulted in the

Early Modern Period. In my opinion, the word upheaval reflects the

changes in which people of the age had to endure and face. Evidently,

with these changes came the changes in people’s psychological outlooks

on life, and therefore changes in their behaviours. This resulted in

events such as the accusations of, more than likely, normal people as

witches.