ABSTRACT
The historiography of witchcraft has depicted the Southern Netherlands as a region of terrible, organized witch hunts, mainly by the Spanish Habsburg rulers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Like most European regions, the Low Countries experienced their real witch hunts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The short-term consequences of the trials at Arras launched large-scale inquiries at Tournai, Douai and Cambray about potential witches. After an early initial phase, most of the regions had a second peak in witch hunting from 1570 to 1630. In the northern provinces of the Low Countries, the Northern Netherlands, trials for witchcraft were rare, with very few mass persecutions. Witchcraft trials followed normal criminal procedures, but the judges, influenced by demonology, accepted a combination of facts, especially the “punctum diabolicum”, as indications of guilt. The impact of the Church(es) on witchcraft prosecutions differed greatly between the Northern and Southern Netherlands.
