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48 free Witchcraft History trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Between about 1400 and 1775 roughly 100,000 people were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe and its colonies and somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 were executed, four in five of them women. The story runs from a 10th-century church text that called night-flights with Diana a delusion, through a 1486 handbook its own church condemned, to prince-bishops who emptied whole villages, a king who wrote his own demonology, a self-styled Witchfinder General, and a Massachusetts village that hanged nineteen people in 1692. These 48 questions cover the whole arc. The Canon Episcopi and the papal bull that backed Heinrich Kramer, the Malleus Maleficarum and the Cologne theologians who rejected it, Trier, Bamberg, Würzburg and the mayor who wrote to his daughter from the torture cell, Alice Kyteler in Kilkenny, Joan of Arc at Rouen, the Basque trials and the inquisitor who doubted them, North Berwick and James VI, Pendle and Thomas Potts, Matthew Hopkins and sleep deprivation, the Torsåker beheadings, Salem's spectral evidence and Giles Corey's plea, Anna Göldi in 1782, Janet Horne in 1727 and Helen Duncan jailed in 1944. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
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Q 01Roughly how many people were executed for witchcraft in Europe and its colonies, 1400–1775?
40,000 to 60,000
Modern scholarship puts executions at 40,000 to 60,000 out of roughly 100,000 trials; the nine-million figure traces to Gottfried Christian Voigt's 1784 guess, later popularised by propagandists.
Q 02Roughly what share of those convicted of witchcraft in early modern Europe were women?
80%
About 80% of those convicted were women, though the pattern reversed in Iceland, Estonia and Russia, where most of the accused were men.
Q 03Witch prosecutions in Europe peaked during which period?
1560 to 1630
Prosecutions peaked between 1560 and 1630, the era of the Counter-Reformation and the wars of religion; the Holy Roman Empire saw the most trials.
Q 04The Malleus Maleficarum was first printed in 1486 in which city?
Speyer
The Malleus Maleficarum was first printed at Speyer by Peter Drach in 1486 and was reprinted more than two dozen times over the next two centuries.
Q 05Who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum?
Heinrich Kramer
Heinrich Kramer, a German Dominican inquisitor writing as Henricus Institoris, compiled the Malleus Maleficarum in 1486; Jakob Sprenger's name was added as co-author on later title pages.
Q 06Which body condemned the Malleus Maleficarum for recommending illegal procedures?
The Faculty of Cologne
The theology faculty of the University of Cologne condemned the book in 1490 for recommending unethical and illegal procedures, yet Kramer kept his post and his prestige.
Q 07Which pope issued the 1484 bull Summis desiderantes affectibus at Kramer's request?
Innocent VIII
Innocent VIII issued Summis desiderantes affectibus on 5 December 1484, confirming Kramer and Sprenger's inquisitorial powers in the church provinces of Mainz, Cologne, Trier, Salzburg and Bremen.
Q 08The 10th-century Canon Episcopi dismissed night rides with which pagan goddess as delusion?
Diana
The Canon Episcopi, first recorded by Regino of Prüm around 906, called the belief that women ride at night with the pagan goddess Diana a delusion; Gratian later copied it into canon law.
Q 09Who was the first recorded person condemned for witchcraft in Ireland, in 1324?
Alice Kyteler
Dame Alice fled; her servant Petronilla de Meath was flogged and burned at the stake in Kilkenny.
Q 10Joan of Arc was executed at Rouen in 1431 after a trial on what charge?
Heresy
Joan was convicted of heresy in 1431, the counts including wearing men's clothes and acting on visions she called divine; a 1456 retrial annulled the verdict.
Q 11The Trier witch trials of 1581–1593 were held in which present-day country?
Germany
Some 368 people were burned in 22 villages, possibly Europe's largest peacetime mass execution.
Q 12Which Trier university rector and chief judge was executed for opposing the persecutions?
Dietrich Flade
Dietrich Flade, rector of the University of Trier and its chief judge, had treated the accused leniently; he was himself tortured into confessing and was strangled and burned in September 1589.
Q 13Around how many people were executed in the Bamberg witch trials of 1626–1632?
About 900
About 900 people were executed at Bamberg, where the prince-bishop built a dedicated witch prison, the Drudenhaus; a May 1626 frost that ruined Franconia's vines helped trigger the panic.
Q 21In which year were the Pendle witches tried at Lancaster Assizes?
1612
The trials were held at Lancaster Assizes in August 1612; nine of the accused were hanged at Lancaster and Jennet Preston at York, and the clerk Thomas Potts published the account in 1613.
Q 22Which nine-year-old's testimony helped convict her own family among the Pendle witches?
Jennet Device
Nine-year-old Jennet Device gave evidence against her own mother, brother and sister at Lancaster in 1612; in 1633 she was herself accused of witchcraft on a ten-year-old boy's testimony.
Q 23Matthew Hopkins claimed which title, never actually granted by Parliament?
Witchfinder General
Q 14Johannes Junius, who wrote to his daughter from jail before his 1628 execution, held what office?
Mayor of Bamberg
Junius, a Bürgermeister (mayor) of Bamberg, confessed under thumbscrews and leg vices and was burned in August 1628; his smuggled letter told his daughter Veronica the confession was sheer lies.
Q 15Which prince-bishop was particularly active in the Würzburg witch trials?
Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg
Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg, prince-bishop from 1623 to 1631, presided over trials in which an estimated 900 people in the bishopric were executed or died in custody, children among them.
Q 16Which Jesuit's 1631 Cautio Criminalis argued that torture creates witches where none exist?
Friedrich Spee
Friedrich Spee, a Jesuit who had served as confessor to the condemned in the Rhineland, published Cautio Criminalis anonymously at Rinteln in 1631.
Q 17The Basque witch trials, which examined some 7,000 cases, began in 1609 in which town?
Logroño
The Inquisition tribunal at Logroño opened the case in 1609 and burned six people at its 1610 auto-da-fé; the junior inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías later concluded the whole affair rested on fantasy.
Q 18Which Scottish king attended the North Berwick witch trials of 1590?
James VI
James VI attended the North Berwick trials in person after storms on his voyage home from marrying Anne of Denmark were blamed on witchcraft; he published Daemonologie in 1597.
Q 19James VI's Daemonologie is believed to be a main source for which Shakespeare play?
Macbeth
Macbeth, written around 1606 after James took the English throne, draws its Weird Sisters' rituals and lore from Daemonologie and the North Berwick pamphlet Newes from Scotland.
Q 20James VI wrote Daemonologie largely in response to which sceptical 1584 book?
The Discoverie of Witchcraft
Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) argued that witchcraft prosecutions rested on delusion, and its chapter on legerdemain is the earliest English account of conjuring tricks.
Hopkins styled himself Witchfinder General from 1644, though Parliament never granted the title; he and John Stearne sent more people to the gallows than all English witch-hunters of the previous 160 years.
Q 24Matthew Hopkins was mainly active in which region of England?
East Anglia
Hopkins worked across East Anglia — Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and neighbouring counties — from March 1644 until his death in 1647.
Q 25In the water ordeal used in witch-hunts, what did it mean if the accused floated?
Guilt
Floating meant guilt, the water being said to reject a witch's body, while sinking meant innocence; a river ordeal for sorcery already appears in the Code of Ur-Nammu, c. 2100 BCE.
Q 26A 'witch's teat' was believed to be used to feed what?
Familiars or imps
The teat was said to suckle a witch's familiars or imps with her blood; searchers stripped suspects and looked for insensitive marks by pricking them with pins.
Q 27Convicted witches in England were usually executed how?
Hanged
English witches were hanged, since witchcraft was tried as a felony; burning was reserved for petty treason, such as a wife killing her husband.
Q 28About how many people are estimated to have been executed for witchcraft in England?
500
Roughly 500 people were executed for witchcraft in England, about 90 per cent of them women; Scotland, with a far smaller population, executed well over 1,500.
Q 29In Scotland, convicted witches were usually strangled at the stake and then what?
Burned
Modern estimates put Scottish executions above 1,500 under the Witchcraft Act 1563.
Q 30Who was the last person executed for witchcraft in Great Britain, in 1727?
Janet Horne
Janet Horne was burned at Dornoch in 1727 after a trial of questionable legality; the Witchcraft Act 1735 then repealed the Scottish act, ending capital trials.