110,000 witch trials over two centuries; Enlightenment historians later inflated it to millions
Trial records from sixteenth and seventeenth-century Europe show roughly 110,000 witch-trial cases, with juries often acquitting for insufficient evidence—a picture far more complex than ‘collective madness’, and far gentler than later centuries imagined.
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The argument · timestamps estimated from transcript position
The visible world opened onto the invisible
Gaskill argues that five hundred years ago people weren't necessarily more credulous than today, but they universally assumed an invisible world existed and connected to daily life—consensus rather than supernatural explanations for every event. They accepted many natural phenomena as 'God's creation, not yet understood,' with no need to invoke miracles or demons. Witch accusations, often misread as 'don't understand disease or disaster so blame witches,' aren't supported by the actual records.
— GaskillThe rain-maker reasons but lacks the scientific method
Mounk recounts an anthropologist's encounter in Ghana with a rain-maker claiming a unique magic stone that, when turned with an incantation, usually brought rain the next day—it was a glass marble. When the anthropologist later showed him an identical marble, he was surprised but still said 'don't know, want to try?' The mentor used this to refute the claim that 'instrumental reasoning is uniquely Western'—the rain-maker possessed cause-and-effect thinking and an instinct for empirical testing. What he lacked was the scientific method itself, and a framework separating the visible world from the invisible.
— MounkWitch-trial numbers were far lower than imagined
Gaskill presents the figures: sixteenth and seventeenth-century European witch trials show approximately 110,000 recorded cases—large, but far below the inflated 'millions' claim that became standard after the Enlightenment. England specifically saw roughly 1,000 trials over two hundred years and about 500 executions; in the other half of cases, juries simply declared 'insufficient evidence' and refused conviction, unwilling to sentence someone to death without the certainty the law demanded.
— GaskillNo defense existed, yet verdicts were not arbitrary
Before the eighteenth century, the accused had no defense counsel, took no oath, and could only say 'I didn't do it.' The entire system operated on an amateur principle—only the traveling judges were professionals; everyone else was a layperson. Judges had to clear prisons quickly and dispose of months-long backlogs in days, making trials blazingly fast. Yet within this apparent haste, juries showed unexpected circumspection: they believed witches might exist, but when confronted with actual evidence of the accused, they often concluded 'this is just a neighbor dispute,' and refused to send someone to the gallows for it.
— GaskillWitch-hunts raged fiercest where authority had vanished
Gaskill emphasizes a counter-intuitive mechanism: witch hunts were most violent not where religious fervor ran highest, but where central authority—secular or ecclesiastical—had no reach. Both powers typically acted as a brake. The inter-confessional conflicts between small German states, the social disorder of 1690s Salem, the judicial chaos of 1640s English Civil War—all are examples. Most striking: early-seventeenth-century southern Spain, where locals believing they were doing the Inquisition's work rounded up a batch of 'witches' and imprisoned them awaiting commendation. When inquisitorial officials arrived, they scolded the townspeople: 'What are you doing? Release them.'
— GaskillWorld War I broke the Enlightenment's progress narrative
Gaskill observes that the post-Enlightenment story—'we grow steadily more rational'—was shattered by the First World War. It wasn't merely slaughter; contemporaries experienced it as an outbreak of collective madness. Mechanization, industrialization, the rational age itself had produced this result. Millions of bereaved families could no longer process their grief through an Enlightenment framework, spawning a boom in spiritualism and the rise of Buddhism and other 'New Age' beliefs in the 1920s—not despite the churches' claimed rationality, but because those same churches had endorsed the war and lost all credibility.
— GaskillA village ten miles north of Cambridge held identical beliefs for a century
Gaskill describes a 1920s village near Cambridge where beliefs about witchcraft and magic were nearly identical to those of the seventeenth century—malevolent witchcraft causing harm, counter-witchcraft rituals, anxiety about livestock being cursed. All persisted. The reason wasn't deliberate suppression of reason, but that education levels and daily rhythms had not changed: subsistence farming and seasonal work continued, superstition with them. This illustrates that 'rationalization' is largely a product of class and education—not an era discovering collective enlightenment.
— GaskillIs Brexit a new superstition—the two frankly disagree
The pair diverge sharply here. Gaskill draws an analogy: Brexit was a 'superstitious' collective emotion rooted in nostalgia for post-war Britain and swayed by false claims. Mounk directly objects: calling Leave voters 'as irrational as witch believers' erases genuine political grievances over sovereignty, democratic deficit, and immigration policy—you can oppose their position or argue the promises weren't kept, but you cannot reduce the entire referendum to superstition. Gaskill partially concedes, clarifying that he doesn't think Leave voters 'stupid,' only that nationalism cares less for facts than for stories that move hearts.
In their own words · checked verbatim
their world—their visible, tangible world—was much more porous to the unseen world.
Gaskill0:00
There’s a condition called pareidolia, which is really where you join up the dots to make a picture where no picture exists.
Gaskill0:00
I have a secret stone. If I turn it a particular way and say a particular incantation, most of the time the next day it rains.
Mounk0:00
I don’t know—shall we give it a try?
Mounk0:00
probably about 110,000 across the 16th and 17th centuries.
Gaskill0:00
Within nations, typically, the central authorities are the restraining forces. The really bad witch hunts happen not because of the strength of law, but because of its weakness in that area.
Gaskill0:00
in the 1920s, the beliefs in witchcraft and magic in that village, only ten miles north of Cambridge, were almost completely unchanged from the 17th century.
Gaskill0:00
the idea that I could no longer move to Britain whenever I wanted, and feel welcome there the same way, was personally upsetting to me.
Mounk0:00
Figures
| England witch trials over 200 years | roughly 1,000 | 0:00 |
| England witch-trial executions | roughly 500 | 0:00 |
Glossary
- pareidolia
- The brain's tendency to identify meaningful forms, especially faces, in random or ambiguous visual patterns.
- confessional state
- A polity whose political identity and claim to legitimacy derive from a single religious denomination (Protestant or Catholic).
How to listen
Readers interested in European witch-trial history, religious history, and how Enlightenment narratives have been re-examined by historians.
If you want only witch-trial facts, the Brexit analogy section is debated and can be skipped.