Gottfried Christian Voigt

Gottfried Christian Voigt (1740–1791, pronunciation [foːkt]) was an 18th-century German law clerk of Quedlinburg, scholar and antiquarian, author of a 1791 "History of Quedlinburg Abbey" (Geschichte des Stifts Quedlinburg).

He is known as the source of the estimate of "nine million victims" in the European witch-hunts which became an influential popular myth in 20th century feminism and neopaganism. The history of this estimate was researched by Behringer (1998).^[1] Voigt published it in a 1784 article,^[2] writing in the context of the Age of Enlightenment, wishing to emphasize the importance of education in rooting out superstition and a relapse into the witch-craze which had subsided less than a lifetime ago in his day. He was criticizing Voltaire's estimate of "several hundred thousand" as too low. His extrapolation was based on finding evidence for thirty victims of witch trials in Quedlinburg, adding another ten victims, and then assuming the same rate of witch executions to population for the whole of Europe in the same century, and finally applying the same number of victims per century to eleven centuries.

References

^ historicum.net: Neun Millionen Hexen
^ Voigt, G.C. (1784). "Etwas über die Hexenprozesse in Deutschland" [A few words about witch trials in Germany]. Berlinische Monatsschrift (in German). 3: 297–311. From p. 308: "Wenn nun in einem so kleinen Bezirk Deutschlandes, … neun Millionen vierhundert zwei und vierzig tausend neunhundert vier und neunzig Menschen." (Now when in so small a region of Germany, which contains hardly 11- to 12,000 people, up to 133 persons have been executed as witches in one century; then in the whole Christian Church [i.e., in all Christian Europe], this [i.e., the number of people executed for witchcraft] amounts to 858,454 [victims] every century, and in the period of eleven centuries designated by me [i.e., from 600 A.D. to 1700 A.D.], nine million four hundred and forty-two thousand nine hundred and ninety-four people [have been executed for witchcraft].)

Bailey, Michael David (2007). Magic and Superstition in Europe. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 236–238. ISBN 978-0-7425-3387-5.
Behringer, Wolfgang. "Neun Millionen Hexen. Entstehung, Tradition und Kritik eines populären Mythos". Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht. 49 (11). Stuttgart: Klett: 664–685. ISSN 0016-9056.
Herbert Pohl, Ein Blutige Catastrophen vnnd Ende. Osnabruecker Hexenprozesse im Spiegel fruehneuzeitlicher Publizistik, Nds. Jb. f. LG 62 (1990), 305-9.

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[1] storicum.net: Neun Millionen Hexen

[2] Voigt, G.C. (1784). "Etwas über die Hexenprozesse in Deutschland" [A few words about witch trials in Germany]. Berlinische Monatsschrift (in German). 3: 297–311. From p. 308: "Wenn nun in einem so kleinen Bezirk Deutschlandes, … neun Millionen vierhundert zwei und vierzig tausend neunhundert vier und neunzig Menschen." (Now when in so small a region of Germany, which contains hardly 11- to 12,000 people, up to 133 persons have been executed as witches in one century; then in the whole Christian Church [i.e., in all Christian Europe], this [i.e., the number of people executed for witchcraft] amounts to 858,454 [victims] every century, and in the period of eleven centuries designated by me [i.e., from 600 A.D. to 1700 A.D.], nine million four hundred and forty-two thousand nine hundred and ninety-four people [have been executed for witchcraft].)

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