Witch hunts, another consequence of climate change

On November 1, 1617, a six-day Levante storm began in Catalonia. It caused widespread crop destruction and rivers overflowed, sweeping away bridges, mills, and forges. This is what the chronicles call the Year of the Flood. During this period, trials of women accused of witchcraft also intensified, with convictions and executions. Is there a cause-and-effect relationship between the two events, or was it simply a coincidence? For Agustí Alcoberro, professor of modern history at the University of Barcelona, ​​​​who has extensively researched witchcraft in Catalonia, this is no mere coincidence. Women were accused of having caused these natural disasters.

"What we routinely observe in Catalonia, and which we believe extends to the Kingdom of Aragon," he explains, "is the primary, often unique, role of extreme weather events in the witch hunts of those years."

That period falls within the so-called Little Ice Age or Little Glaciation, a very cold period that occurred from the middle of the 14th century to the middle of the 19th century, following a very warm era. In Catalonia, this resulted in extreme droughts as well as storms and floods.

In 1995, the German historian Wolfgang Behringuer, a specialist in the study of witchcraft, proposed that there was a direct relationship between this little ice age, especially with the climatic effects in Europe between 1560 and 1630, and the peak of game hunting. Other historians have questioned this thesis or have claimed that accusations of weather manipulation did not appear in the documents or played a secondary role.

Regarding Catalonia, Alcoberro takes a different view and sees a prominent role for it. In a chapter on this topic published in the collective book Rethinking Violence in Valencia and Catalonia: Fourteenth to Seventeenth Century (in English: "Rethinking Violence in Valencia and Catalonia: From the 14th to the 17th Century"), published last year by the Swiss publisher Peter Lang, explains that "most of the statements extracted under torture are limited to a repeated description of the storms, hail, or fog that occurred in the locality in question." It adds that "in all of them, the accused are required to quantify the value of the losses caused by the victims."

At that time, the Principality of Catalonia constituted a state within the Habsburg Monarchy. It had full legislative, fiscal, and judicial powers. Regarding witchcraft, the Inquisition could only deal with sins of apostasy and worship or pacts with the devil. The civil courts handled most witchcraft trials because they also sought to defend the monarch's property interests, which were considered to be affected by atmospheric catastrophes, the work of witches and the devil.

Witchcraft also served as an excuse to persecute women, especially vulnerable ones, for ideological, revenge, or other reasons. Witches were accused of manipulating the weather and causing disasters and crop failures. And perhaps that's where words like sorcerer, which means hail or frosty wind.

Trials, executions, riots

One of the regions with the most extensive documentation and where this relationship between climate and trials of alleged witches is best observed is Vallès, which had played a prominent role in the economic and social changes experienced since the 16th century. Between 1614 and 1622 alone, fifty women have been identified as having been tried, of whom no fewer than 37 were executed, in seventeen towns or villages.

It should be noted that extreme torture made women confess anything. For example, Alcoberro cites Margarita Mimó (Mimona), hanged on January 21, 1620, with two other women, who described pilgrimages or Saturdays held in the summers of 1605, 1607, 1614, 1615, 1617, and 1619, which they consider to be 1619.

In total, more than a thousand executions for witchcraft have been documented in Catalonia, according to theAtlas of the Witch Hunt, prepared by Pau Castell, professor of medieval history at the University of Barcelona. But most occurred in the early 17th century and shortly after the floods of 1617 and the crop failures of the following year.

These trials and executions for alleged witchcraft are not the only violent consequences of extreme weather events. Change In February, experts from various countries and disciplines will analyze research on climate and conflict from the perspective of social and historical sciences. This provides an overview of how this relationship has developed in the past and what perspectives currently exist.

Among the 24 authors, in addition to Alcoberro and Castell, are Mariano Barriendos, from the Institute for Environmental Diagnosis and Water Studies (IDAEA) of the CSIC, and Santiago Gorostiza, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for the History of Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

In addition to presenting the aforementioned case of witchcraft, the article explains that droughts, plague, and wars affecting grain imports intensified existing conflicts. Thus, in 1631, protests over grain prices and bread shortages led to protests and riots, and the Consell de Cent assumed full control of bread production and established a centralized rationing system.

From the Hittite Empire to the Thirty Years' War

The article mentions several historical examples of the role of climate change in certain episodes in some countries. The oldest refers to archaeological and tree-ring studies indicating a prolonged drought in Anatolia between 1198 and 1196 BC.

In China, over the past sixty years, comprehensive databases and chronologies have been compiled on extreme events, harvests, population movements, epidemics, and episodes of violence or conflicts. This has led to widespread internal migration, and the concentration of poor people, without jobs or homes, fueled conflicts in areas also affected by the decline in harvests.

Another example is the Thirty Years' War, which took place in Europe between 1618 and 1648. While its outbreak was unrelated to climatic variations, the article explains that it occurred during an extraordinarily cold period. Grain I, combined with appalling hygiene conditions, led to the spread of contagious diseases. The article is not deterministic in the sense that climatic phenomena provoke violent uprisings, wars, or riots. They also emphasize that the effects can be indirect or delayed. The climate, the opportunities that some armed groups see, and the inability of governments and institutions to address it and prevent social conflict.

Social and environmental conditions

In an article published in PNAS in December 2009In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, US researchers analyzed the possible link between civil wars in Africa and temperature. They found a strong relationship in the past and, combining this with climate models, made a very pessimistic forecast: based on rising temperature trends, there could be a 54% increase in armed conflicts and an additional 393,000 additional deaths from battles by 2030.

One way to try to avoid this bleak outlook is to reduce the effects of global warming. But since everything indicates that we are already quite late and a 1.5-degree increase in average temperature seems inevitable, attention must be paid to their two proposals. The first is for governments and organizations to help African farmers cope with higher temperatures. This can be done by developing heat-adapted varieties, providing farmers with knowledge and incentives to use them, and building more irrigation infrastructure. The second measure would be to implement insurance to protect against large drops in food production. All of this, they claimed, could reduce the risk of civil wars in Africa.

The importance of social measures is also highlighted by researchers from Yale University in an article published in Environment International in January. In this case, they studied the possible relationship between daytime summer temperatures and violent crime in 44 US cities between 2005 and 2022. The results indicated that the risk was slightly higher in all cities with high temperatures than in those with moderate temperatures. It was also higher in moderate temperatures than in cold temperatures.

It's worth noting that in each city, the risk varied depending on the latitude and average temperature, but also on the density of green areas and the percentage of private homes with air conditioning. In other words, they concluded that the disparity according to the social and environmental characteristics of the cities had to do with whether the risk was higher or lower.

As in the case of the study on civil wars in Africa, the authors show that in addition to fighting global warming, it is necessary to take socioeconomic and environmental measures for the most vulnerable groups. And without looking for scapegoats, as was done with alleged witches several centuries ago.