Gottfried Christian Voigt
Author
1740 – 1791
Who was Gottfried Christian Voigt?
Gottfried Christian Voigt was an 18th-century German scholar, author of a 1791 "History of Quedlinburg Abbey"
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. Voigt published it in a 1784 article, 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.
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