The myth of 9 million | calculating the Early Modern witch hunt death toll
The European witch hunt craze started at around 1400, peaked from 1580 to 1630, and ended at about 1750. It is typically referred to as the Early Modern witch hunt, since most of it took place not in the medieval era, or even during the Renaissance, but in the Early Modern period of the Enlightenment. By the time it had finally burned out, thousands upon thousands of people (overwhelmingly women), had died tragically for imaginary crimes, on false charges. But how many died? This has been an active area of investigation since the eighteenth century.
The claim
In 1990, “The Burning Times”, a documentary on the European witch hunt, claimed a death toll of nine million (sometimes represented as nine million women alone). This number had been circulated for years earlier, but became widely publicized by the documentary, and has been cited for decades by feminists in general, and modern pagans in particular. [1]
“Andrea Dworkin is best known in the context of witchcraft studies for her claim that nine million women were burned as witches: See Women-Hating (New York: Dutton, 1974).”, Lara Apps and Andrew Gow, Male Witches in Early Modern Europe (Manchester University Press, 2003), 39
The first estimates
After the witch hunts had finally ended in the middle of the eighteenth century, historians and scholars began to assess their causes and impact. At this early stage estimates varied wildly from a few thousand to 100,000 or more, due to incomplete records and the difficulty of locating and verifying reliable sources. The estimates also varied depending on the personal agenda of the individual making the calculations. European intellectuals during the eighteenth century Age of Enlightenment sought to distance themselves from what they considered to be the superstition and ignorance of earlier times, and were prone to exaggerate their criticism.
“Voltaire guessed at 100,000, while later in the eighteenth century a Catholic scholar, Jakob Anton Koillman, came up with 30,000. Nineteenth century computations varied even more widely.”, Ronald Hutton, Witches, Druids and King Arthur (A&C Black, 2006), 30
“Witch beliefs were a vivid symbol of pre-Enlightenment unreason, a key to everything that progressive thinkers had overturned.”, Malcolm Gaskill, “Witch Trials in England,” in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. Brian P. Levack (OUP Oxford, 2013), 285
Origin of the nine million myth
Despite more sober efforts at accuracy in the nineteenth century, it was a figure proposed in the eighteenth century which became dominant, and took on a remarkable life of its own. German historian Gottfried Christian Voigt wrote an article “Etwas über die Hexenprozesse in Deutschland” (“A few words about witch trials in Germany”), in which he cast doubt on previous estimates, and claimed a massive 9,442,994 people had been executed as witches over the eleven centuries from 600 CE to 1700 CE.[2]
This statement is very different from the way it would eventually be described. Not only is it a total of both men and women (rather than just women), it is also a death toll for eleven centuries of witch hunts (rather than only the 300 years of the Early Modern witch hunt). Voigt’s figure may have sunk into obscurity had it not been taken up in the nineteenth century, and popularized by anti-Catholic Protestants. [3]
Feminist use of the nine million myth
However, it was Matilda Joslyn Gage, an American women’s rights activist, who became responsible for spreading the figure around the world, and ensuring it was treated as fact for almost 100 years. Gage wrote a revisionist history of women, in which she claimed that the Early Modern witch hunt was a misogynist attempt to destroy an ancient tradition of pagan priestesses. [4] Gage’s fantasizing became enormously popular among feminists of the era, and was adopted by the English spiritualist Gerald Gardner, who almost single-handedly invented the neo-pagan movement of the twentieth century. [5]
Nazi use of the nine million myth
While the nine million myth was being used by British and American feminists to create an alternative history of women priestesses and enlightened paganism, it was being used for a far more sinister agenda in Germany. In 1920 the early Nazi party adopted an anti-Christian folk paganism, in order to unite the post-war German population with an alternative to both Christianity and Marxism. [6]
Nazi neo-paganists such as Mathilde Ludendorff used feminist arguments to build their myth of a Christian genocide of ancient German pagans and their priestesses. [7] This pseudo-history was appealed to enthusiastically at every level of the Nazi Party, and was promoted by leaders such as Heinrich Himmler.
Neo-pagan use of the nine million myth
The now almost magical number of nine million was promoted for years by neo-pagans and feminists for most of the twentieth century.
“Many elements of the radical feminist interpretation of witchhunting stem from factually inaccurate myths created by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers on witchcraft, which feminists have adopted uncritically to suit their own agendas.”, Alison Rowlands, “Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Europe,” in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. Brian P. Levack (OUP Oxford, 2013), 452
However, more careful and unbiased scholars were re-assessing the witch hunt death toll with more accurate sources and methods, and a scholarly consensus during the 1970s placed the real figure below 100,000. Historians discovered that while around 100,000 people were prosecuted, far fewer were ever actually killed.
There is reliable historical evidence for only around 12,000 people put to death, and even accounting very generously for missing, incomplete, or otherwise unavailable records, scholars agree that the total death toll is unlikely to be higher than 50–60,000. [8] Historians have also proved that the interpretation of the witch hunts as a campaign against pagan groups and their priestesses, is mere fantasy. [9]
The death of the myth
In 1998 Voigt’s original version of the nine million myth was finally targeted and disproved by an article which investigated his error and showed how it had resulted from careless calculations. [10] The figure remains a popular talking point among feminists and neo-pagans, but is never taken seriously by professional historians and scholars.
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Footnotes
[1] Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (New York: Dutton, 1974); Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts (Pandora, 1994); Susan C. Boyd, From Witches to Crack Moms: Women, Drug Law, and Policy (Carolina Academic Press, 2004); Dawn Hutchinson, Antiquity and Social Reform: Religious Experience in the Unification Church, Feminist Wicca and Nation of Yahweh (Cambridge Scholars, 2010).
[2] Gottfried Christian Voigt, “Etwas über die Hexenprozesse in Deutschland,” ed. Friedrich Gedike and Johann Erich Biester, Berlinische Monatsschrift 3 (1780).
[3] “A Viennese professor of Old Testament studies, Gustav Roskoff, rounded it down to a handier nine million, and this figure was used with particular energy by German Protestant writers to attack the Catholic Church in particular.”, Ronald Hutton, Witches, Druids and King Arthur (A&C Black, 2006), 30.
[4] “Though Gage’s writing was hugely influential upon the advent of American feminism, it must be noted that, like La Sorcerie, it is filled with inaccuracies.”, Pam Grossman, Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power (Simon and Schuster, 2020), 24; “Gage is also responsible for further circulating the now disproven claim that nine million witches were put to death in Europe — scholars today estimate the figure as being somewhere between fifty- and two hundred thousand.”, Pam Grossman, Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power (Simon and Schuster, 2020), 24.
[5] “Contemporary Wicca emerged from a confluence of influences in the mid-20th century, but modern Wicca can be largely traced to two founders, Gerald Gardener and Doreen Valiente, who together founded a branch of Wicca known as Gardnarian Wicca.”, Micah Issitt and Carlyn Main, Hidden Religion: The Greatest Mysteries and Symbols of the World’s Religious Beliefs: The Greatest Mysteries and Symbols of the World’s Religious Beliefs (ABC-CLIO, 2014), 505
[6] “We will explain below some of the reasons why the Nazis rejected Christianity, at least in its traditional forms, focusing on their view that the medieval and Early Modern witch trials were an attempt by the Catholic Church to eliminate German culture, race, and religion.”, Eric Kurlander, Hitler’s Monsters (Yale University Press, 2017), 164.
[7] “In her book Christian Terror Against Women she argued that the Catholic Church had employed witchcraft accusations to eradicate an authentic, pagan Germanic culture and religion.”, Eric Kurlander, Hitler’s Monsters (Yale University Press, 2017), 166.
[8] “This research has resulted in a broad agreement that approximately 100,000 individuals in Europe and colonial America were prosecuted for witchcraft between 1400 (p. 6) and 1775, and that the number of executions did not greatly exceed 50,000.”, Brian P. Levack, “Introduction,” in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. Brian P. Levack (OUP Oxford, 2013), 5–6.
[9] “Archival research has shown that the total number of executions for witchcraft in early modern Europe was around 45–60,000, certainly not nine million, and that there is no evidence for the survival of organized pagan cults into the early modern period, let alone priestesses who presided over them.”, Alison Rowlands, “Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Europe,” in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. Brian P. Levack (OUP Oxford, 2013), 452.
[10] Wolfgang Behringer, “Neun Millionen Hexen: Entstehung, Tradition und Kritik eines populären Mythos,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 49 (1998): 664–85.