Chapter One: A Brief History of the Witch Trials

The witch trials began during the early modern period, occuring in its most intense between 1400 and 1782, in the year of our Lord, that resulted to the condemnation to death of around 40,000 to 60,000 people based on the suspicion that they were practicing witchcraft and other forms of sorcery. Most of these trials occurred in Europe, particularly most severe in some parts of the Holy Roman Empire.

The groundwork on the conceptual definition of witchcraft was developed by Christian theologians as early as the 13th century, prominently during the medieval times. Based on the available historical writings, prosecutions for the practice of sorcery further intensified during the period of the Counter-Reformation (the Catholic Church's initiative to curb the rise of the Protestant Movement), and within the European wars of religion, where in some regions those convicted of witchcraft was punished most severely through the burning at the stake. Most of those constituents who were found guilty are eighty per centum women, and the majority of whom are over the age of forty.

Throughout the medieval era, Christian doctrine has already denied the belief in the existence of witches and the practice of witchcraft, condenming it as a mere pagan superstition. However, many scholars have argued that the written works of St Thomas Aquinas of the Order of Preachers helped to clarify the shift in Christian doctrine, where many Christian theologians eventually acknowledge that sorcery indeed existed as a subject of collaboration with the Devil, who is ultimately responsible for giving the practitioners some form of the energy of the Occult and other supernatural powers.

As the known Faith started to gradually accept the presence of sorcery on account of the substantive evil of the participating demons, a papal bull by Pope Gregory IX, issued on 1233 anno domini, led to the establishment of a new branch of the Inquisition in Toulouse, France, a holy initiative to be led by the Dominican Order. Originally, this movement was founded to prosecute Christian groups considered to be heretical. The service of the Dominicans later on evolved to be the most zealous prosecutors of persons accused of witchcraft, particularly in the years leading to the Reformation period (or the advent of the Protestant churches).

There was no concept of demonic witchcraft during the fourteenth century, however; only at a later time did a unified concept combine the ideas of noxious magic, a pact with the Devil, and an assembly of witches for Satanic worship into one title of a codified crime.

With respect to the substantial articulation of the offense, there had been peculiar standards applied to the evidence involving witchcraft by allowing certain types of proof "that are now ways relating Facts, and done many Years before." There was also no opportunity to offer alibi as a valid defense because witchcraft did not require the presence of the accused at the scene. Meanwhile, witnesses were called to testify to motives and effects because it was believed that witnessing the invisible force of witchcraft was impossible (and therefore incapable of being substantiated), so that corroborating "half proofers are to be allowed, and are good causes of suspicion."

It was in these tumultuous times that "good-natured" witches and wizards have been forced to hide their true identities, and further development of their civilization across the European continent has been seriously halted with lasting greater, but with the severity of adverse, prejudiced effects. It was also in these trying times that many groups of wizards have been falsely accused of entering "a pact with the Devil," yet there are witches (almost all are, in fact, women) who did the unspeakable act of collaborating with the presence of Demonic forces, a cult called simply within the magical community as Extraordinary Defiance.

Due to these compelling reasons, a Revolutionary Council was called by the innocent groups of witches and wizards who "meant no harm to humanity," and such participating delegations have agreed to conceal all sorts of magic to the "non-magical world," and to reasonably adopt the edict of formally separating the pure-blood, the half-blood, muggle-born, and the rest of the Muggles "who are more capable of hate than the reaches of sorcery would be able to inflict," and a clear division of the many kinds (magical or non-magical alike) was formally established by the said Revolutionary Council in a vote of acclamation.

This event was the most important intersection justifying the use of witchcraft in all of the known chapters regarding the subject, most of which are adequately enshrined in the majority of the authoritative texts of History of Magic.

The adopted document, called the Great Edict of the Penn, was personally written in handwriting by the great Helga Hufflepuff, the interim Personal Secretary of the Council, who would later on become one of the most excellent founders of the leading magical school in Great Britain and most renowned internationally, the exceptional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; it is also within these times that saw the practice of sorcery to be enjoying a quiet and beneficial status quo, (a period of silence, as some of the prominent Historians of Magic had written in sparkling prose) and where the heritage of the Witch of Endor still governs the peace and the security of the magical world from the tragedy of those fateful days, starting from the promise made on the sacred soil of the Holy Land and then going into the complicated affairs and extreme challenges that transpired during the times of the Christianized Holy Roman Empire.

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This Chapter is sponsored by Luxurman.