The invention of the printing press in 1450 revolutionized how people communicated. Books and newspapers could be easily printed and sent across towns in hours, allowing people to spread ideas and knowledge. Though the printing press represented an intellectual milestone for humanity, a new study finds it is also the reason behind the mass hysteria and eventual deaths of so many “witches.”
One publication that became extremely popular across Europe in 1487 was witch-hunting manuals. The Malleus Maleficarum was a fan-favorite, with copies spread across cities and fueled the hunt for demonic witches. People read the manual describing how to spot a witch and other published news of witch trials in other towns. According to the authors, seeing what neighboring towns were doing to deal with witches influenced whether another town would adopt their own witch trials.
“Cities weren’t making these decisions in isolation,” says lead author Kerice Doten-Snitker, a Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, in a statement. “They were watching what their neighbors were doing and learning from those examples. The combination of new ideas from books and the influence of nearby trials created the perfect conditions for these persecutions to spread.”
The belief in witchcraft was not something that sprung up one day. Europeans had believed in witches for centuries, but it was only discussed amongst small circles, such as religious scholars and local inquisitors. However, printing witch-hunting manuals like Malleus Maleficarum put a greater spotlight on witches, providing a guide for finding, questioning, and prosecuting witches. In the 300 years of persecution and trials, roughly 90,000 people were accused, and nearly half of them were sentenced to death.
The new study, published in Theory and Society, built on previous research examining factors influencing the spread of witchcraft. These works emphasized economic and environmental factors, but the authors focused this time on social and trade networks and how they influenced people’s behaviors.
Researchers tracked the timing with the publication of witch-hunting manuals between 1400 and 1679 and the timing of witch trials in 553 cities. They found that with every new edition of Malleus Maleficarum, there was an increase in witch trials.
Along with printing witch manuals, the authors noticed neighboring cities also influenced whether a city would host witch trials. When one city adopted the practices in Malleus Maleficarum, others copied their behavior. This behavior is known as ideational diffusion, which is how ideas are spread through a population. It took years for people to learn and accept the new ideas surrounding witchcraft. Once they did, however, it led to unprecedented persecution for witches.
Source: https://studyfinds.org/printing-presses-fueled-misinformation-witch-hunts-europe/