(I'm Swedish, so I'm sorry if my English is faulty.)
My Serbian workmate was cleaning out the grills this evening, and went "Puh! it smells like a witch burning in here."
I said, "Did they do witch burnings in Serbia?"
Which he interpreted as, "Did they burn witches in Serbia when you lived there?"
After some extremely awkward moments I managed to explain that I meant "Where there witch hunts in Serbia during the well known witch processes in Europe of the 15th to 17th centuries," at which point he calmed down. He didn't have an answer, though, and after doing some googling I still don't really have any.
So my short question is, was the witch hunt of that period spread to modern day Serbia?
Longer question; exactly how wide spread was the witch hunt hysteria through Europe during the 15th to 17th centuries?
Thanks for reading!
There was never organized witch hunts like in the west. Orthodox church didn't have an inquisition. Also most of modern Serbia was under Ottoman rule back then and the church just didn't have that much power.
What we did have were cases of villagers lynching older women, whom they believed to be witches, all until the 19th century, usually during the epidemics or droughts. Branding them or roasting them alive was the standard punishment. Throwing them into lakes was a test to see if they were witches. If she floats, she is a witch.
Serbian law from 1810 explicitly bans witch hunts.