Editing Inquisition (section)

===Witch-hunts===
{{See also|Witch trials in the early modern period}}

The fierce denunciation and persecution of supposed sorceresses that characterized the cruel witchhunts of a later age were not generally found in the first thirteen hundred years of the Christian era.<ref name="Thurston">{{Cite web|title=CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Witchcraft|url=https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15674a.htm|access-date=2024-04-26|website=newadvent.org}}</ref>  While belief in [[witchcraft]], and persecutions directed at or excused by it, were widespread in pre-Christian Europe, and reflected in old [[Germanic law]], the growing influence of the Church in the early medieval era in pagan areas resulted in the revocation of these laws in many places, bringing an end to the traditional witch hunts.<ref>Hutton, Ronald. ''The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy''. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, US: Blackwell, 1991. {{ISBN|978-0-631-17288-8}}. p. 257</ref> Throughout the medieval era, mainstream Christian teaching had disputed the existence of witches and denied any power to witchcraft, condemning it as pagan superstition.<ref>Behringer, ''Witches and Witch-hunts: A Global History'', p. 31 (2004). Wiley-Blackwell.</ref> 

Black magic practitioners were generally dealt with through confession, repentance, and charitable work assigned as penance.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Rio|first=Martin Antoine Del|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I2iCYDHYbycC&pg=PR7|title=Investigations Into Magic|date=2000|publisher=Manchester University Press|isbn=978-0-7190-4976-7}}</ref> In 1258, [[Pope Alexander IV]] ruled that inquisitors should limit their involvement to those cases in which there was some clear presumption of heretical belief<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bailey|first=Michael D.|url=https://archive.org/details/battlingdemonswi00bail|title=Battling demons : witchcraft, heresy, and reform in the late Middle Ages.|publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press|year=2010|isbn=978-0271022260|page=[https://archive.org/details/battlingdemonswi00bail/page/n47 35]|oclc=652466611|url-access=limited}}</ref> but slowly this vision changed.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Caputi|first=Jane|title=The Age of Sex Crime|publisher=Bowling Green State University Popular Press|publication-date=1987|page=96}}</ref>

The prosecution of witchcraft generally became more prominent in the late medieval and Renaissance era, perhaps driven partly by the upheavals of the era – the [[Black Death]], the [[Hundred Years War]], and a gradual cooling of the climate that modern scientists call the [[Little Ice Age]] (between about the 15th and 19th centuries). Witches were sometimes blamed.<ref>[[Brian P. Levack|Levack]], ''The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe'', p. 49</ref><ref>Heinrich Institoris, Heinrich; Sprenger, Jakob; Summers, Montague. ''The Malleus maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger''. Dover Publications; New edition, 1 June 1971; {{ISBN|0-486-22802-9}}</ref> Since the years of most intense witch-hunting largely coincide with the age of the [[Reformation|Protestant Reformation]] and [[Counter-Reformation]], some historians point to the influence of the Reformation on the European witch-hunt. However, witch-hunting began almost one hundred years before [[Martin Luther|Luther]]'s  ninety-five theses.<ref>{{citation|surname1=Brian P. Levack|title=The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe|pages=110, 111|edition=London/New York 2013|language=de|quote=The period during which all of this reforming activity and conflict took place, the age of the Reformation, spanned the years 1520–1650. Since these years include the period when witch-hunting was most intense, some historians have claimed that the Reformation served as the mainspring of the entire European witch-hunt.(...) It would be unwise, however, to attribute the entire European witch-hunt to these religious developments, since witch-hunting began again almost one hundred years before Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the castle church at Wittenberg."|author1-link=Brian P. Levack}}</ref>