Why Did People Actually Believe in Witches?

Why Did People Actually Believe in Witches? 💬 Be honest: in Hans's place, would you have pointed the finger? Tell us in the comments. 🔔 Subscribe for more stories about why people in history did the things they did. 📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES ▸ The 1626 frost & climate — Wolfgang Behringer, "Climatic Change and Witch-Hunting: The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities" (1999, Climatic Change). ▸ Agency detection — Justin L. Barrett, "Exploring the natural foundations of religion" (2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences). Why our brains guess "someone did this." ▸ The Hammer of Witches — Heinrich Kramer, Malleus Maleficarum (1486). The witch-hunting manual that ran through dozens of printed editions. ▸ Refused charity & accusation — Alan Macfarlane, "Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England" (1970) and Keith Thomas, "Religion and the Decline of Magic" (1971). ▸ The swimming test — King James VI, "Daemonologie" (1597). ▸ The Bamberg trials & Johannes Junius — Junius's letter to his daughter Veronica (Bamberg, 1628). ▸ Religious competition & witch trials — Peter T. Leeson & Jacob W. Russ, "Witch Trials" (2018, The Economic Journal). Data on 40,000+ accused witches. ▸ Weather & witch trials — Emily Oster, "Witchcraft, Weather and Economic Growth in Renaissance Europe" (2004, Journal of Economic Perspectives). ▸ Matthew Hopkins — Malcolm Gaskill, "Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy" (2005). ▸ The argument against torture — Friedrich Spee, "Cautio Criminalis" (1631). ———————————————————— PEOPLE & PLACES IN THIS VIDEO ▸ Heinrich Kramer — German churchman who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum after a bishop threw him out of Innsbruck. ▸ Johann Georg Fuchs von Dornheim — Prince-bishop of Bamberg who built a prison just for accused witches. ▸ Johannes Junius — Mayor of Bamberg, tortured into confessing in 1628. His smuggled letter shows how the machine worked from the inside. ▸ Matthew Hopkins — The self-titled "Witchfinder General" of 1640s England. ▸ Friedrich Spee — Jesuit priest who walked the accused to their deaths, then anonymously published an attack on the trials. ▸ Anna Göldi — The last person legally executed for witchcraft in Europe, Switzerland, 1782. #history #witches #witchtrials #witchhunt #halloween #darkhistory #historyexplained #europeanhistory #psychology #animation #historyfacts #explainer