Why did people confess to being witches?

Some may have been coaxed or or bullied by persecutors into confessions

Some may have been deluded

Torture used to secure confession

Collette du Mont

One of three women tried for witchcraft in Guernsey in 1617

Tortured after she'd already been found guilty and sent to death- wasn't until after torture she spoke of a relationship with the Devil, who had appeared to her on many occasions as a cat

Under torture she described how she met a group of 15 or 16 witches and wizards along with devils in the form of either animals either in the local church yard or on the beach

Account of the Sabbath can be dismissed as product of judicial coercion

Already sentenced to death she was perhaps trying to save herself from additional pain and suffering before execution

Content of confession closely relates to ideas about crime of witchcraft in mind of interrogator

Tendency for most confessions to conform to the preconceived ideas of those who extracted them

Hopkins

Used standard form of interrogation which involved questions that were leading

For the questions he only needed a monosyllabic answer from the victim; the details of the compact and the familiars could be supplied by the questioner

What an accused witch confessed to was heavily influenced by the attitudes and values of those hearing the confession

Many of the confessions were adduced under torture, the symbols contained in them usually reflect the projected fears of magistrates

Refusal to confess was sometimes attributed to the fact that a victim had been silenced by the devil, further evidence then of their guilt

In different jurisdictions, the outcomes of confession to the crime of witchcraft could lead to very different outcomes

German Witch Hunts

Confession meant almost certain execution

Salem

Prospects for survival considerably better for those who confessed than for those who refused to do so

Some women believed they had met the devil and he had persuaded them to use witchcraft

Many poor, often old women realising that their plight was desperate and believing that the devil offered people material pleasures in exchange for adoration, pledged their service and sold their souls to him- allowed inquisitors to convince them they engaged in other forms of devil-worship

John Weyer believed witches suffered from melancholy- psychological disorder- some may have been suffering from disorder such as dementia

Some may have confessed to activities they dreamed of doing- dreams conditioned by cultural traditions

Louise Jackson looked at the details of some confessions to witchcraft in England and reached a number of conclusions

Emotional responses to events and concerns were being articulated through the medium of witchcraft confession; demonological language and the conventions of witchcraft belief were used to cover or explain personal traumas

Witchcraft confession was intricately connected with self identity; it specifically required a woman to judge herself and her behaviour within the constraints of demonological language

Image of stereotype of the witch had been defined as the opposite of the good or godly woman (particularly in her roles as wife and mother) These cases show that the accused woman, in her their confessions, were judging themselves as wives and mothers- they were judging their anger, their bitterness, the fears and their failures to live up to the expectation of others

Could accuse others to make case seem better