The Burning Times

The witch-hunt craze picked up speed during the Reformation period. The intellectual leaders of this religious movement, which sought to reform the Christian practices of Europe and reject the Catholic Church as the only true Christianity, offered no protection to those accused of Witchcraft. The public, confused and struggling with the new religious ideas being put forth, was only too willing to blame anyone whose opinions and traditions differed. Anybody with a grudge against a neighbor might denounce her as a Witch. It was the perfect environment for mass persecution. The legal sanctions against Witchery became even harsher than before, and the lengths to which authorities would go to secure a confession grew even more malevolent.

The infamous Malleus Maleficarum, a guidebook for inquisitors, added fuel to the fires of Christian righteousness. The torturers believed that if an accused person was not guilty, God would certainly intervene. When Divine intervention didn't happen, the subsequent confessions and deaths increased the Inquisitors fervor and power.

During the so-called Burning Times in Europe, which lasted from the fourteenth until the eighteenth centuries, at least ten of thousands and possibly millions of people were executed as Witches, depending on which source you choose to accept. The majority of these were women and girls. So thorough were the exterminations that after Germany's witch trials of 1585 two villages in the Bishopric of Trier were left with only one woman surviving in each.

It's hard to know for certain why the Witch hysteria finally subsided. Part of it may have been that people grew weary of the violence. In England, the hunts declined after the early 1700s, when the Witch statute was finally repealed. The last execution on record occurred in Germany in 1775.