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The European Witch Hunts was a period of time when Roman Catholic bishops, in an attempt to destroy evil, would seek out and persecute alleged witches, and would send many of them to their deaths. The witch craze began in the fourteenth century and lasted for about 300 years, across France, Italy, Germany, Spain, England, Scotland, Austria, and Scandinavia. When the typical village was struck by the witch craze, no one would be safe from accusation, not even the followers of the church who encouraged the persecution of the witches. Fear of being accused as a witch caused people to turn on each other, children would testify against their parents, and neighbors would report one another over events that would have been considered usual in normal situations (Constable. 41-21). In the mid-1600's, the witch trials and reached a pinnacle in areas of Germany, where the population of whole villages was declared witches and decimated.

The change in attitude that led to the witch hunts could be blamed on the Church. In an attempt to spread its gospels and to quell pagan religions, the Church would incorporate some of their rituals and beliefs into the Church calendar and writings. Those that couldn't be incorporated were demonized and declared as evil and many of their gods became synonymous with Satan. The Church especially condemned the worshipping of many of the pagan religions' female goddesses, leading to the fact that most witches persecuted were women.

Of those accused as witches, eighty percent were women (Cox). It was thought then that women were weaker than men and more likely to succumb to the devil. Women also had fewer legal rights, so they were more likely to resort to magic than law to settle disputes, such as between neighbors (Bever). It was these quarrels over little things amongst neighbors, such as a sheep that had wandered into another farmer's pasture, which provoked most of the witch trials

No one really knows how many people were persecuted or killed in the European witch hunts, Brad Cox, PhD, estimates in his essay, "Witch Hunts with Paradoxical Goals", that 3,000 were executed in Germany alone, and another source puts the total number persecuted at 200,000 (Constable, 41). Percentages of those executed compared to those persecuted varied widely. In England, where torture was illegal, only about twenty percent of all condemned were put to death, on the contrary, in Scotland, where torture was utilized, the execution rate was around fifty percent

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