Witchcraft and Children - Child Witches

Child Witches

By the start of the seventeenth century, many children were being punished and put in prison for taking part in witchcraft. This usually occurred because of their alleged participation in Sabbats. It was a common belief that witches' children inherited witchcraft from their parents. It was often the practice to charge the whole a whole family witchcraft even if only one individual was suspected. Witches who confessed often claimed that they learned witchcraft from a parent.

Pierre de Lancre and Francesco Maria Guazzo believed that it was enough proof of a witch's guilt to have parents who are witches. They believed witch parents introduced the children to Satan, took the children to Sabbats, married children to demons, inspired the children to have sex with Satan, or had sex with Satan with the child present. Many times the child accused of witchcraft, due to being shunned, threatened community members, thereby enforcing their beliefs that the child was a witch.

There are several cases of witchcraft in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that involved children as witches. In Sweden in 1669 a large number of children were included in a witch hunt and in Würzburg as in Salem in 1692, children were the focus of witch hunts. In Augsberg, beginning in 1723 an investigation into twenty children between the ages of six and sixteen resulted in them being arrested for witchcraft. They were held for a year in solitary confinement before being transferred to a hospital. The last child was freed in 1729.