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The 1970s Witchcraft Trial and Other Oddities in Witch History

Khalid Elhassan March 15, 2022 25 min

13. Disobedient Medieval Nuns Could be Burned at the Stake for Witchcraft

Witchcraft Facts - Cat nun — Cat nun. Mental Floss

Among other things, medieval nuns were expected to be celibate, and submit to poverty and hard work. They were expected to unquestioningly obey authority figures who had the right to compel compliance with coercive measures. Those ranged from the imposition of extra labor to confinement in cells, to the deprivation of food and water. Physical chastisement and punishment were also available.

They ranged from whipping and caning in-house, to turning over the most defiant nuns to ecclesiastic courts. There, if things went particularly bad, a hardheaded nun could end up burned to death for witchcraft or demonic possession. Such conditions of communal longstanding stress and fear are textbook causes for the outbreak of mass hysteria. It is thus not surprising that nunneries frequently experienced eruptions of mass delusions.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.