Content Warning: This article contains detailed descriptions of torture, bodily mutilation, and execution. The early modern period has become synonymous with the witch-hunts that took place over the course of four centuries throughout Europe and Colonial America. Those who found themselves standing accused of witchcraft, predominantly women, were subjected to a rigorous process that often resulted in execution. As suspicions arose within communities, neighbours began to turn

The year is 1518. It’s the peak of a blistering summer. Strasbourg, one of the largest cities of the Holy Roman Empire, is gripped by a dancing mania. Blistered feet stain the streets with blood, sweat pours down jerking bodies, cries for help fill the air, the smell of heat stifles the city. Some dance in the narrow streets, some in the public square, some at home. Strasbourg was afflicted by choreomania : people were dancing themselves to death. One month earlier, a woman

Today, we usually attribute misfortune and tragedy to chance or coincidence, not tending to read into such events for any underlying cause or significance, however the same cannot be said for those living in early modern Europe, who often turned to the supernatural for an explanation, which cultivated a paranoid and God-fearing society. Looking at fears surrounding the patriarchy, immorality and difference may therefore help us to understand why it was witchcraft that Europea

The Enlightenment is often viewed as a period of rationalised thinking, that sought to emphasise individualism and challenge the traditional authority. Those who promoted these ideals are often regarded as the ‘great Enlightenment thinkers’, and if I were to ask you to name me these people, you might suggest John Locke, father of liberalism; Voltaire, criticiser of religious institutions; or even Isaac Newton, the physicist who transformed our understanding of gravity and mot