Conclusion
Witchcraft was an imaginary crime. Whether organised heresy was constructed by the elite or not, the treatment meted out to the accused in both persecutions holds an especially abhorrent place in the history of human cruelty.
The physical and mental torments inflicted on suspects imparted tremendous pain but, at least in theory, were not intended to maim or kill. Even techniques without physical pressure, especially sleep deprivation and confinement in horrid conditions, could produce devastating effects on prisoners. Like other hunters, Matthew Hopkins probed suspects' bodies with needles in order to discover a ‘devil's mark', a place Satan had supposedly touched and which therefore could feel no pain. Stretching suspects on racks or the strappado, which involved tying the hands behind the back and hoisting and jerking the victim off the floor with a rope over a pulley, often with heavy weights attached to the feet, dislocated joints. Any part of the body might be burned. Boards were sometimes tightened around legs, then wedges were pounded around the limbs, squeezing them until the bones cracked and the marrow oozed out. Obviously these procedures could lead to permanent disability or death.On the Continent, if an experienced executioner could be found and paid, he would usually carry out torture after approval of interrogation ‘with pain' by a local magistrate or group of notables. Law codes of the sixteenth century, the imperial Carolina of 1532 and the French Statute of Villers-Cotterets of 1539, tried to set rules and limits on the use of torture. But the Carolina also stipulated that local laws and customs could prevail in witchcraft investigations, and in many jurisdictions the light imperial hand had no effect at all on the use of coercion. In some areas, a prisoner who could withstand several interrogations with torture and still not confess to being a witch would be declared innocent and released - but the victim would never again be healthy.
Executions in New and old England were by hanging, often lasting for many minutes as the victim choked to death. On the Continent, convicted witches were not always sentenced to death. But if they were, burning usually followed. Before witches were consigned to the flames, more pain might be inflicted, for example by tearing out chunks of flesh with heated tongs. Those found guilty were either burned alive or strangled first, then their bodies were burned; the difference appears to have depended on the severity of their alleged crimes. A witch convicted of signing a pact with the devil, fornicating with him and killing farm animals at his command, might be dispatched before the body was burned. Someone convicted of using Satan's help to murder numerous children would receive much harsher and prolonged treatment before execution. Contemporary illustrations clearly indicate the pain and suffering of those tortured and executed by fire.[798]
Such horrors dwindled to nearly nothing in western Europe by the late seventeenth century. It was not Enlightenment or scientific breakthroughs that brought an end to the witch hunts, but the growing stream of doubt about torture and proof of witchcraft. The questions raised during the hunts about natural phenomena such as illness and storms helped lead indirectly to a more rigorous stance towards evidence in general; in that way, the witch persecutions assisted the coming of the Scientific Revolution.
Large-scale hunts tended literally or figuratively to burn themselves out, leaving in their wake great disruption of ordinary life, families and the local economy. Secular and religious authorities increasingly criticised these outcomes. In light of all the problems raised, not solved by witch persecutions, they all but ended by 1640. Likewise, when heresy ceased to seem a serious threat to the established churches or the political elite, the quest to uncover it declined. Towards people of their own, Christian communities, especially as political-religious lines became more established, Europeans became somewhat more humane.