Q&A

Were witches actually burned at the stake?

In songs, stories, horror films and detective fiction, the witch always burns. In continental Europe, people convicted of witchcraft certainly did burn: approximately 40,000 victims, the majority of them women, went to the stake between 1428 and 1782. Indeed, a German chronicler, writing in 1590 in the aftermath of a hunt, described the execution ground as looking “like a small wood from the number of stakes” driven into the earth.

Witchcraft was seen as an “exceptional” crime that struck at the foundations of society, Christian belief and governance. As such, it demanded exceptional punishment. Death by