HIST 1400
Jeffery Egan
Keran Sun
The era of religion conflict and witch craze can be called an era of black in Europe. In this era, the citizen of Europe suffered an era of witchcraft and the conflict between the Catholics and Protestants. As the result of the Black Death, the population of Europe as dramatically dropped, this directly influenced the population of labor force, which directly caused the result of economic depression. And this gave people great pressure. People blame all these torment on the witches, who was called the troop of devil. People consider most of the witches were women, and most of the women should be single or widows for no reason. This leads the tragedy of many innocent women to be killed or tortured to death.
Because there was a great conflict between the two religion communications, the violence was widespread in the mid 16th century in the Europe area. The conflict between the two caused a large area of destructive damages in many parts of France.
Catholic was the main fraction of religion before French war of religion. After the death of King Henry II, French Monarchy started to lose their power and strength, economy dropped dramatically, and the social structure started to lose stability at the time too. Also, some influential families valued this period of turmoil to gain more power and more impact power to the society. However, either side of the religion group wanted to compromise, the conflicts between the two still caused a horrible massacre by killing and torturing what was called “vermin”. French government tried to reduce the tension between two religions and their conflict, but it did not work.
In conclusion, the widespread violence in the religious wars and the witch craze was caused by the social and economy status early in the sixteenth century.