Medieval era - how did people decide if someone was a witch?

Question

I heard somewhere that it used to have something to do with a black spot on her body. what is that all about??

what are methods to find out if someone was a witch?

How did they torture witches?

Answer 1

If she weighed the same as a duck.

Answer 2

The usual way was to inform the church (anonymously was perfectly acceptable) that your much hated neighbor's wife was a witch. The church took care of everything else. Apart from the execution. The church still claims, with some pride, they never intentionally killed anyone.

Of course the judge who had the gumption to set the poor woman free was dead certain to be sentenced by his colleague to replace her on the stake.

There is however one place that tried to keep sanity: the Witch Scale in Oudewater, The Netherlands. This was a weighing station where accused could receive an official certificate that proved them to be too heavy to fly on a broomstick. This was valid evidence of their innocence. People traveled from all over Europe to get such a certificate.

Answer 3

The black spot is the witch's mark. I think it was an American/English thing, searching for the witch's mark or teat where witch hunters believed that the Devil suckled from.

Methods for finding witches differed from country to country. Most were accused when decades of accusations, complaints against a neighbour built up, which explains the assumption that most witches were elderly. However, the case in the US is rather different. Large witch "panics" built up around times of disaster, drought and wild weather, but conditions differ from place to place. Others were incriminated through torture.

Answer 4

Go to this site...

http://home.att.net/~wiccanhistorian/his...

Answer 5

there were no witches i'm sorry

Answer 6

Being old and last survivor of her family, being a herb woman, having healing knowledge, claiming to have any 'gift', being not quite right in the head, having red hair, being accused by a more powerful woman, being promiscuous, being too forceful, being not submissive enough, being sterile, any kind of difference would open a woman to the accusation of being a witch, especially during the period of witch hunting.

There were many way to discover if one was a witch, from not feeling a pin prick (England) to scars on the breast, having a strange marking on your skin, or more painful ways. Throw her in the water with hands and feet tied. If she sank she was not a witch. Of course she would be dead but that was to save her soul so it was all right. Another way was to heat a metal mask with a cross engraved on it and put it on the face of the woman. If she screamed it was because the cross was hurting her. If she fainted it was because the devil protected her from the pain of contact with the cross (Germany).

The tortures were used to make those poor women admit to the crime of being a witch, until they admitted it to stop the tortures. Alas that was not enough, most of the time those tortures were stopped only when the priest in charge considered it enough. The pain of it all was to help save their souls from h**l and shortening their stay in purgatory. Then they were burned to death. Additional pain to give those women a chance to avoid h**l.

Answer 7

torture?

they burnt them at the stake alive

methods of finding out?

point and cry witch lol that was enough back then

Answer 8

hon it was a bunch of crazy ****

they would say someone was a witch if they sneezed in church, their stomach growled, if they were able to survive being tied to a heavy rock and thrown into a lake, etc

they would burn them, drown them...

you should really read the Salem Witch Trials to know more.

Answer 9

Well a witch floats, but so does a duck. So is a witch a duck? No what else floats? Wood? Yes. So a witch must be made out of wood? And how can you tell is something is made out of wood? It burns? Yes, so how can you tell if she's a witch? Burn her? Yes. Burn her!!! Burn her!!!