The atrocious, true history of Scotland’s wicked witch hunts
Moves are under way to grant pardons to the thousands killed during the ‘Satanic Panic’ which reached its peak in the 1600s. To find out what really happened, and why we should commemorate these grisly events, our Writer at Large speaks to Scotland’s leading witchcraft scholar Professor Julian Goodare Neil Mackay
THERE is a debate bubbling away in Scottish society – like some magical potion in a smoking cauldron set to simmer – about how we come to terms with one of the most disturbing episodes in our history: the execution of about 2,500 people, mostly women but some men too, as witches.
Scotland was the most ferocious country in Europe when it came to witch-hunting, killing far more people proportionally than any other nation.
Today, there’s talk of apologies and memorials for those who lost their lives. The Scottish Government looks set to address this legacy of the past with legislation to pardon victims. Just this wee, Catalonia pardoned those executed as witches centuries ago.
But what do we in Scotland really know about this dreadful part of our history beyond the bare facts?
The true story of the Scottish witch hunts is even more astonishing than we imagine – upending popular misconceptions, and showing that much of what we think to be true is simply myth. In some respects, we modern Scots are just as confused about witches as our religious forebears.
To get to the truth of what really went on in the 16th, 17th and even the early-18th century, The Herald on Sunday has turned to
Scotland’s leading scholar on the witch hunts: Professor Julian Goodare from Edinburgh University.
He is director of the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, and has published several books on the “Satanic Panic” which gripped the country from the end of the 1500s, including Scottish Witches And Witch-Hunters, Witchcraft And Belief In Early Modern Scotland, and The European Witch-Hunt.
How did it start?
SURPRISINGLY, witch-hunting wasn’t a “craze” in the Middle Ages, the medieval period. It took until the late-16th and early17th century (well into what historians call the early modern period) for the hunts to really get going.
However, the medieval era did lay the foundations for the persecution to come.
The 1400s saw numerous heresies ignite across Europe – like the Lollards in England or the Hussites in Bohemia, which challenged the Catholic Church. So, during the Middle Ages, “there’s lots of worry about heresy and heretics” on the rise, Goodare explains.
Then comes Luther and the Protestant reformation, focused on keeping rigidly to the teachings of scripture.
Anyone seen acting contrary to the Bible could find themselves in serious trouble.
Crucially, says Goodare, the witch hunts also overlapped with a “rise in state power – and religion was part of that state power”. As European society advanced, there was just “more government” and the Bible was central to the way rulers ruled.
So, the reformation and “big government” collided, creating a set of circumstances where “state authorities were trying to prove they’re godly … This is where frenzies can develop. If you could draw a graph of the rise of witch-hunting and of the rise of state power they would run roughly together”.
Religion was also public. Everyone was Christian and if you stepped out of line “you’d be in trouble”.
In Scotland, control was maintained by the Kirk Session, which could drag parishioners in for questioning and dole out punishment for offences of “fornication” or “breaching the sabbath”, with penalties like small fines and public shaming.