Lessons from the Fires: Witch Trials and the Survival of Women

When we think of the witch trials, we often imagine bonfires, shadowy figures in courts, and whispered accusations passed over fences. Yet beneath the drama of superstition and fire lies a deeper story: how societies under strain weaponized fear, how political and religious divisions fueled suspicion, and how women—so often the target—found ways to endure.

The witch trials were not about witches. Most of the accused had no connection to pagan practices or secret rituals. They were churchgoers, neighbors, wives, midwives, widows. Their “difference” was rarely religious, more often, it was poverty, independence, knowledge of healing, or simply being inconvenient to the dominant power. The figure of the witch became a vessel for collective wrath: a scapegoat who could absorb the community’s fear and blame.

The backdrop was already volatile. In Germany and Transylvania, accusations flared where Catholics and Protestants struggled for dominance, or where German Saxons distrusted Romanian peasants. In England and Scotland, trials surged during periods of political unrest, when conservatives and reformers clashed over the future of the nation. In Salem, they mirrored local disputes about land, inheritance, and authority. Fear of witches offered a way to police division, punishing those who stood slightly outside accepted norms.

Othering made this possible. The accused were often women without strong male protectors, or those who spoke too freely, who owned too little, or who knew too much. To accuse them was to prove loyalty to one’s faction: religious, political, or social. The fire consumed individuals, but it was meant to shore up order.

And yet, survival persisted. Some women adapted by practicing silence, masking their knowledge or hiding their independence. Others resisted openly, petitioning for release, refusing to confess, or even defending their innocence to the end. Survival was not only about individual endurance, it was about carrying fragments of culture, wisdom, and resilience through centuries that tried to extinguish them.

The wisdom history offers us is twofold:

• Fear weaponized against the vulnerable always repeats itself. When societies fracture—across religion, politics, or identity—they often choose scapegoats rather than confront the real causes of instability.

• Survival takes many forms. Women who were vulnerable to witch accusations carefully kept alive pieces of knowledge, story, and spirit that fire could not consume.

At HearthFinder, we return often to this truth: even when fire was used for destruction, the hearth, the place of continuity, story, and quiet strength, remained. The witch trials remind us that collective wrath does not need truth to justify itself, only division. And they remind us to be wary of any moment in which a community begins to single out “the other,” whether in faith, in politics, or in identity.

Sources and Suggested Reading

Burns, William E., ed. Witches and Witch-Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003.

Hutton, Ronald. The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

Kramer, Heinrich. Malleus Maleficarum. 1487. Reprint, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2019.

National Archives (UK). “The Early Modern Witch Trials.” Accessed September 29, 2025. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/early-modern-witch-trials/.

Pócs, Éva. Witchcraft and Demonology in Hungary and Transylvania. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Pop, Ioan-Augustin. “Vrăjitoria printre români (pe baza actelor proceselor de vrăjitorie din Transilvania).” Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Historia 63, no. 1 (2018): 33–50. https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=924643.

Rădvan, Laurențiu. “Imaginea femeii pe baza documentelor proceselor de vrăjitorie din Transilvania.” Anuarul Institutului de Istorie „A.D. Xenopol” 50, no. 1 (2013): 141–162. https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=738649.

Roper, Lyndal. Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Sharpe, James. Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England 1550–1750. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

Sørensen, Sarah, and Louise A. Jones. “Healers and Midwives Accused of Witchcraft (1563–1736).” Nurse Education Today 131 (2024): 105826. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2023.105826.

University of Cambridge. “Witchcraft and Work: How Women Became Targets.” Accessed September 29, 2025. https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/witchcraft-work-women.