In the 16th century, witch hunting in Scotland was carried out by royal commissions, not mobs wielding pitchforks. As a result, Aberdeen’s city archives now have meticulous historical documents of the 1597 witch trials and executions, including payments to a local blacksmith for the iron rings and shackles used to detain convicted witches at the Kirk of St Nicholas.
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The city records also include the costs of the rope, wood, and tar that were eventually used to burn the guilty witches at the stake in front of enormous audiences on Castle Hill and Heading Hill in Aberdeen. According to the University of Edinburgh’s online Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, most condemned were strangled to death before their bodies were burned.
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According to Chris Croly, a historian at the University of Aberdeen- Aberdeen’s Great Witch Hunt of 1597 was one phase of a wave of witch persecutions across Scotland sparked by the witchcraft laws laid down by King James VI of Scotland who later became James I of England in 1603.
Croly explained, “It is often said that Aberdeen burned more witches than anywhere else — that may not be entirely accurate, but what is absolutely accurate is that Aberdeen has the best civic records of witch burning in Scotland, and so it can appear that way.”
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According to Croly’s account, the wave of witchcraft persecution began in Europe in the 15th century and reached Scotland in the 1590s. It later proceeded into the Americas in the 17th century, culminating in the infamous Salem witch trials in Massachusetts in 1692 and 1693.
At the time, many Protestant and Catholic authorities agreed that witchcraft was the result of witches “communing with the devil” and that biblical text authorized their execution. Croly said, “That’s how this wave can sweep through both Protestant and Catholic countries.”
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