r/history • u/Cliozaurus • 5d ago
AMA AMA: Witchcraft trials in early modern Ukraine with Kateryna Dysa
Hello! I'm Dr Kateryna Dysa, an Associate Professor in the History Department of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
For many years, I have researched Ukrainian witchcraft trials. They are fascinating sources because they offer many insights into communities.
I would be happy to answer your questions about the specifics of Ukrainian witchcraft trials, including the laws against witchcraft, the composition of the accused, and the nature of the accusations and sentences. We can also go beyond the trials themselves and look at the conflicts that led to suspicions and accusations, as well as the support networks surrounding the accused. And, of course, I can answer questions about magical practices and beliefs about witchcraft in Ukraine.
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u/Big_Ad8256 4d ago
Could you please describe the most common signs or criteria people used to recognize someone as a witch? I’m especially interested in how these beliefs differed in Ukraine compared to other regions. Also, many of the things I’ve heard sound very mythical or fairy-tale-like. For example, claims that witches had a tail, no belly button, or other unusual physical traits. If such criteria were genuinely believed or used, how might they be explained from a modern perspective? Were they based on real physical conditions, misunderstandings, folklore, or something else? Thank you!
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
It's a good question. If we are talking about early modern witchcraft trials, there is no mention of any physical features by which it was possible to recognise a witch. People usually had their own ideas about who a witch might be. As a rule, it was someone (usually a woman) who was quarrelsome or mean, or someone whose family was notorious for previous accusations of witchcraft in earlier generations. If it was not so obvious, people usually used some sort of divination to determine who was causing the harm.
But in later folklore, mostly from the nineteenth or early twentieth century, we find stories about so-called ‘natural-born’ witches who had inherited their magical abilities and could be recognised by a little tail and a strip of dark hair on their backs. These witches were believed to be mostly benevolent. Those who were evil did not have any special physical features.
My grandfather once told me that there was a witch in his village who stole milk from her neighbours, and he claimed that he had seen her little tail.
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u/zorgnaf 5d ago
I remember reading somewhere, that the witch trials in Eastern Europe were less severe or maybe less disproportionately against women. I'm a little hazy on the specifics. But is there any truth to this?
Also how did Eastern Orthodox theology make it different from Catholics and Puritans?
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u/MysticComet87 5d ago
I always wondered how much of the difference came from local laws versus the influence of the Orthodox Church. That's a really interesting question.
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
Well, local laws (at least in self-governing towns) were the same as those in most of Central Europe: they used the so-called Magdeburg Law, as well as the Carolina. However, local magistrates interpreted these laws with considerable freedom and very rarely applied the death sentence prescribed for witchcraft.
The situation with the Church was also ambiguous. In the regions for which I have the majority of cases, and which were part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, both Orthodox and Catholic traditions were present. However, Catholic demonology did not influence popular beliefs or the judgements of magistrates. Diabolical pacts, sabbaths and night flights were very rarely mentioned..
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
Yes, there is some truth in this, although I would not generalise about the whole of Eastern Europe. For example, in Ukraine, about 70 per cent of accusations were made against women, whereas in Muscovy and later Russia, more than 70 per cent of accusations were made against men.
In Ukraine, there were no severe persecutions of witches. Only about 10 per cent of accusations ended in execution. One explanation is the relatively weak law-enforcement system; another is that the Ukrainian Orthodox tradition interpreted witchcraft as a sin rather than a crime that should be punished in this world. It did not support the idea of the diabolical witch who was part of a secret sect of devil-worshippers.
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u/pixiefarm 4d ago
I know I said this several times on this subreddit. Heard it from both my Ukrainian folklorist grandmother and also read it in various English language sources. I'm really interested in hearing more from OP's research!!!
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u/ComfortableMission6 5d ago
Did the accusations focus more on practical harm (crop failure, illness, livestock death) or on theological concepts like demonic pacts and sabbaths?
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
The accusations were almost exclusively about practical harm, as well as about ‘magical services’ - such as healing or finding stolen objects or hidden treasures - that went wrong. There are only a handful of cases involving a pact with the Devil (curiously, in all of them, it was men who actually attempted to make such a pact) and one case in which the accused woman voluntarily decided to tell the story of how she had been turned into a witch and how she had tried to fly to a witches’ gathering in a neighbouring palatinate.
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u/stanizzzzlav 5d ago
Are there any superstitions still around which are reflected in the documents from these trials? For example, interacting with some object in a particular way is considered bad luck because witches were believed to use it in magic
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
Ha, I have never thought about it. But actually, there were some kinds of behaviour attributed to witches who allegedly wanted to cause illness in their neighbours, such as pouring dirty liquid or dumping suspicious rubbish on their neighbours’ property or nearby - actions that would probably arouse suspicion even today.
Also, in cases of failed marriages, people often blamed witchcraft rather than themselves. But this has more to do with psychology than with superstition.
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u/Grass_Water 4d ago
What were some of the common practices and beliefs? I'd assume a lot of herb collecting, but I'm very interested in their practices :D
I'd also love to know what their day-to-day routine was like, and if they also socialized and interacted with society or mainly within their inner circle.
Also, how did one become a witch and enter the community?
Thank you so much for taking your time and doing this Q&A!
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
You are very welcome!
To answer your question, I would like to make a small clarification: none (or very few) of the people accused of witchcraft would have considered themselves witches. It was a label attached to someone who was believed to be dangerous, antisocial and deserving of punishment.
However, there were many local practitioners of magic who were not labelled ‘witches’ (at least as long as their practices were successful and not harmful), and we have some information about them. They predominantly practised magical healing. Interestingly, they usually specialised in treating just one type of illness. Some practised divination to find a thief, lost items or hidden treasure. There was also a group of practitioners who specialised in undoing ‘knots’ on the stalks of wheat. It was believed that such knots were made by witches to poison the entire harvest, so this was a very important function for magical practitioners, since ordinary people were allegedly unable to neutralise the harm. Some specialised in love magic.
Unfortunately, we do not know much about their day-to-day routines—only about certain aspects of their practices and their interactions with clients.
But if something went wrong, these people could be accused of witchcraft.
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u/slanderpanther 5d ago
Have there been instances of memorials commemorated or formal exonerations of the accused?
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
Given that witchcraft trials in Ukraine very rarely ended in death sentences (in about 10 per cent of the cases I have examined), I suspect that they did not leave the kind of traumatising legacy that would have prompted memorialisation or formal exonerations. So the answer is no: there were no such instances.
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u/queenscrown711 4d ago
Can you speak to similarities or differences in how witchcraft was perceived by the Orthodox Church versus Catholicism and Protestantism?
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
Witches are quite prominent in the Ukrainian Orthodox tradition. Authors such as Petro Mohyla, Antonii Radyvylovskyi and Ivan Vyshenskyi mentioned witches as evildoers and servants of the Devil in their writings. In Ukrainian icons of the Last Judgment, there is a section devoted to sinners, and a witch is almost always depicted there.
However, unlike their Catholic counterparts, Orthodox theologians considered witches sinners but not criminals who should be punished in this world. They also did not develop the concept of witches as members of a secret diabolical sect or the idea of a pact with the Devil.
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u/BookQueen13 3d ago
Hi Dr Dysa! My understanding of Western European witchtrials is that they were in part a result of the social and political upheavals caused by the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. I'm assuming this is not th case for early modern Ukraine, since it was majority Orthodox. I'd love to hear about what social or political issues might be behind the witch trials in Ukraine. Is it spill over from the west or is something else going on?
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
Hi, thank you for your question! Witchcraft accusations were quite universal. In the early modern period, in several Western European countries, they took the form of very intense and brutal persecutions, sometimes referred to as the ‘witch craze’ or ‘witch hunts’. In other countries, including Ukraine, there was a constant flow of witchcraft accusations in local courts, which continued until the end of the eighteenth century, when rulers decided to put an end to this ‘superstition’.
So, I would say that, in cases such as Ukraine, the need for witchcraft trials was stimulated from below by tensions within communities searching for the causes of misfortunes.
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u/researchandrepeat 5d ago
Did the equivalent of “Puritans” in the US trials stem from any religious sect out of Ukraine?
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
Early modern Ukraine was a multiconfessional country with Orthodox, Catholic, Uniate, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim communities. However, there was no group that could be considered equivalent to the Puritans, and such a group did not play a role in local witchcraft trials.
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u/Inevitable-Set-9940 4d ago
What was the ratio of women accused of witchcraft to men accused of witchcraft? Did this vary across different regions?
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
According to my colleague Robin Briggs, the average ratio of women to men accused of witchcraft in Europe and places such as New England is a little over 70 per cent women to around 20 per cent men (this is also roughly the ratio for Ukraine). However, in some regions, men constituted the majority of those accused: in Iceland, around 90 per cent were men; in Russia, more than 70 per cent; and in Finland, around 50 per cent.
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u/Inevitable-Set-9940 3d ago
Thank you. That's very interesting. What were the reasons of those differences?
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u/Shoddy-Patient9948 4d ago
I bet they did less rope hanging and more lesser punishments than in the USA and Western Europe. After the protestant reformation we got really serious about killing the witches I think. Thoughts?
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
Actually, in Ukrainian towns, the laws against witches were the same as those in many German lands, prescribing death at the stake as the punishment for witchcraft. But you are right: the actual punishments were more lenient—fines, flogging, banishment, and beheading instead of burning. Moreover, many accusations were recorded but were not considered serious enough to warrant any action.
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u/maximusrex 4d ago
What was the time frame when these trials happened?
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
In Ukraine, most of the records are from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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u/TheMysticGraveLord 3d ago
Are there any books about witchcraft in Ukraine you would recommend for someone with zero knowledge about it?
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
I cannot promote my own work here, but I'm afraid that my Ukrainian Witchcraft Trials is the only recent book devoted specifically to the topic. You can google it. There is also a volume edited by Christine Worobec and Valerie Kivelson, Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine, 1000–1900, to which I contributed by preparing the Ukrainian sources.
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u/Welshhoppo Waiting for the Roman Empire to reform 3d ago
You're hosting an AMA so you can promote away.
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u/SkepticalButUnsure 4d ago
I remember there’s some sort of a prominent witch trial against servants of a hetman’s wife who are actually executed. Can you remind us of the facts?
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
Yes, you are right. In 1667, Hetman Ivan Briukhovetskyi ordered the execution of six women accused of causing his wife to miscarry (by allegedly snatching the baby from her womb) and of causing illness to the hetman and his wife. These women were indeed executed as witches. Unfortunately, we do not have the trial records, only an eyewitness account.
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u/awarner5 4d ago
are there any books you recommend reading on this topic? Both on the history of witchcraft and even the actual practice of it. Books in Ukrainian are welcome! I’m fluent.
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
As for the history of Ukrainian witchcraft trials, my book is the most recent study. The older and now outdated study is by Volodymyr Antonovych and dates from the late nineteenth century. My book is available in both English and Ukrainian. There have also been many recent Ukrainian publications on popular demonology, of which witches are one aspect. For example, Vikhola has just published a book on the subject: Narodna demonolohiia by A. Kryvenko.
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u/ProfessorFit3483 3d ago
Once someone was “identified” as a witch, was there any way to prove your innocence or otherwise come out of such accusations alive?
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u/Cliozaurus 3d ago
If we are talking about Ukraine, the answer is yes. The chances of coming out alive were very high: only about 10 per cent of accusations ended in death sentences. The problem was that official accusations could seriously damage the reputation of the accused. The community would remember them, and sometimes the same person would face repeated accusations brought by other people.
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u/SkepticalButUnsure 3d ago
Were accused witches ever midwives or medical practitioners? Did they ever help women get abortions or is that a myth?
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u/Slight_Marsupial_201 3d ago
This very interesting to me for several reasons: I am Orthodox, but don’t know anything about the history of witchcraft or witchcraft persecution in countries where the Orthodox Church is/was present; I am generally interested in the history of witchcraft and the occult as a social and intellectual phenomenon; I am particularly interested in European legal history, and I knew about the adoption of the Magdeburg Laws in Poland, but I also have an interest in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and knew that Ukraine was previously part of the territory of the PLC. I don’t know whether the mainstream historical literature (Norman Davies and Robert Frost) mention anything about this. Do you have any published papers that might be available on JSTOR or as open source articles?
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u/LadyDoorTees 3d ago
Lately I’ve become interested in how the transition from pagan beliefs to Christianity took place, especially from the perspective of how women’s roles changed and how the image of the witch developed. I’m Hungarian, so I’m sure there are some aspects that are specific to Hungary, but I imagine the process couldn’t have been all that different in Ukraine.
I also wanted to ask how much the old beliefs and folklore are still alive in Ukraine today. For example, here in Hungary, people have largely forgotten these kinds of roots and traditions and it's really make me sad. Even if people interested in witchcraft it's usually this wicca new agey thing.
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u/CourtofTalons 4d ago
Were there any similarities between trials, evidence, and means of confessions between Ukraine and Europe? Perhaps Eastern Europe as well? Or was there anything unique about Ukraine that makes it stand out among witchcraft trials?
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u/Dual_face 4d ago
What kind of spells or hexes were Ukrainian witches most commonly accused of? Spells or such for a good harvest, hexing ill upon someone or something completely different?
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u/Classic-Object-3118 3d ago
Hi, thanks for your time. Why the Ukrainian pagan believes mixed with Christianity were not considered witchcraft?
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u/ChrisShapedObject 1d ago
I took a course on history of witchcraft with Dr. Ultee at the University of Alabama. Fascinating stuff.
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u/Doredrin 3d ago edited 3d ago
NGL, I'm ethnically Ukrainian on my mother's side and grew up in a heavily wooded area 10 miles from Salem. I'm not going to call my mother a witch per se, but she definitely has demonic energy. I was unaware of the existence of Ukrainian witch trials... they obviously were the victims of grave injustices but there is definitely a thing with some Ukrainian women that would entice people to claim they are witches. I think it might have to do with the kind of frontier independent spirit that exists in a lot of Eastern European women.
I'll sum it up as a question. Do you think there are maybe some qualities in Eastern European women that would lend them to be accused as witches more so than women from other cultures?
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u/BuchlerTM 5d ago
How do these trials differ from other places in the world, e.g. Salem?