Witchcraft During The Renaissance Era Essay

Furthermore, poverty also played a huge role in determining whether a women was a witch or not. However, scholar Keith Thomas, cited in O’Connor’s journal article, stated that “in England prosecutions can scarcely ever have had a financial motive. Most of the victims were extremely poor.” This passage is important because one can determine that poverty indeed may have been a factor in individual women being prosecuted for being witches. Many women were unmarried and uneducated, so they did not have the appropriate resources to support themselves so they ended up in jobs like prostitution and begging, which were indeed against the norm during the Renaissance period. Overall, all these women who were tried and hunted for being witches, may not have been witches at all, they could have been struggling individuals who just participated unusual behaviours during that period of time.

Art and literature were important mediums during the Renaissance period that depicted witches. Through many forms of art and literature, like paintings, plays and pamphlets, the common people of Europe got to see and experience the world of witches. One primary example that displayed witches in British culture was the famous play Macbeth. James I of England and Ireland was deeply fascinated by the world of witches and witchcraft. When he was King of of Scotland, James wrote wrote “Daemonologie” (1597), which an influential treatise on the subject at the time as it endorsed the fact that people could continue to participate in witch hunts. In addition, he also wrote it to the victims and witnesses who reported their former female friends and neighbours as witches to the authorities during his