Editing Witch hunt (section)

====Later Middle Ages====
[[File:Willisau 1447.JPG|thumb|200px|The burning of a woman in [[Willisau]], [[Switzerland]], 1447]]
The manuals of the Roman Catholic [[Inquisition]] remained highly skeptical of witch accusations, although there was sometimes an overlap between accusations of heresy and of witchcraft, particularly when, in the 13th century, the newly formed [[Inquisition]] was commissioned to deal with the [[Cathars]] of Southern France, whose teachings were charged with including witchcraft and magic. Although it has been proposed that the witch-hunt developed in Europe from the early 14th&nbsp;century, after the Cathars and the [[Knights Templar]] were suppressed, this hypothesis has been rejected independently by virtually all academic historians (Cohn 1975; Kieckhefer 1976).

In 1258, [[Pope Alexander IV]] declared that Inquisition would not deal with cases of witchcraft unless they were related to heresy.{{efn|"There would be no witch persecutions of the sort he envisaged. The Gregorian Inquisition had been established to deal with the religious matter of heresy, not the secular issue of witchcraft. Pope Alexander&nbsp;IV spelled this out clearly in a 1258 canon which forbade inquisitions into sorcery unless there was also manifest heresy. And this view was even confirmed and acknowledged by the infamous inquisitor Bernard Gui (immortalised by Umberto Eco in ''The Name of the Rose''), who wrote in his influential inquisitors' manual that, by itself, sorcery did not come within the Inquisition's jurisdiction. In sum, the Church did not want the Inquisition sucked into witch trials, which were for the secular courts."<ref>{{cite news |url=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/dominicselwood/100269271/how-protestantism-fuelled-europes-deadly-witch-craze/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140528233841/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/dominicselwood/100269271/how-protestantism-fuelled-europes-deadly-witch-craze/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=2014-05-28 |title=How Protestantism fuelled Europe's deadly witch craze |first=Dominic |last=Selwood |author-link=Dominic Selwood |newspaper=[[The Telegraph (website)|The Telegraph]] |date=2016-03-16 |df=dmy-all}}</ref>}}<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fUqcAQAAQBAJ |title=The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church |last=Cross |first=Livingstone |date=2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780192802903 |page=1769}}</ref> Although [[Pope John XXII]] had later authorized the Inquisition to prosecute sorcerers in 1320,<ref>[[Jeffrey Burton Russell]], ''A History of Medieval Christianity'' (173).</ref> inquisitorial courts rarely dealt with witchcraft save incidentally when investigating heterodoxy.

In the case of the [[Madonna Oriente]], the Inquisition of [[Milan]] was not sure what to do with two women who, in 1384, confessed to have participated in the society around Signora Oriente or [[Diana (mythology)|Diana]]. Through their confessions, both of them conveyed the traditional folk beliefs of white magic. The women were accused again in 1390, and condemned by the inquisitor. They were eventually executed by the secular arm.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cohn |first=Norman |year=2000 |orig-year=1993 |title=Europe's Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom |edition=Revised |publisher=University of Chicago Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/europesinnerdemo00cohn_0/page/173 173]–174 |title-link=Europe's Inner Demons}}</ref>

In a notorious case in 1425, [[Hermann II, Count of Celje]] accused his daughter-in-law [[Veronika of Desenice]] of witchcraft – and, though she was acquitted by the court, he had her murdered by drowning. The accusations of witchcraft are, in this case, considered to have been a pretext for Hermann to get rid of an "unsuitable match," Veronika being born into the lower nobility and thus "unworthy" of his son.

A Catholic figure who preached against witchcraft was popular Franciscan preacher [[Bernardino of Siena]] (1380–1444). Bernardino's sermons reveal both a phenomenon of superstitious practices and an over-reaction against them by the common people.<ref>See Franco Mormando, ''The Preacher's Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, Chapter 2.</ref> However, it is clear that Bernardino had in mind not merely the use of spells and enchantments and such like fooleries but much more serious crimes, chiefly murder and infanticide. This is clear from his much-quoted sermon of 1427, in which he says:
<blockquote>One of them told and confessed, without any pressure, that she had killed thirty children by bleeding them ... [and] she confessed more, saying she had killed her own son ... Answer me: does it really seem to you that someone who has killed twenty or thirty little children in such a way has done so well that when finally they are accused before the Signoria you should go to their aid and beg mercy for them?</blockquote>
Perhaps the most notorious witch trial in history was the [[trial of Joan of Arc]]. Although the trial was politically motivated, and the verdict later overturned, the position of Joan as a woman and an accused witch became significant factors in her execution.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |title=Joan of Arc : a life transfigured |last=Harrison, Kathryn |year=2014 |isbn=9780385531207 |edition=1st |location=New York |oclc=876833154}}</ref> Joan's punishment of being burned alive (victims were usually strangled before burning) was reserved solely for witches and heretics, the implication being that a burned body could not be resurrected on [[Last Judgment|Judgment Day]].<ref name=":2" />