Editing Witch hunt (section)

====Transition to the early modern witch-hunts====
[[File:12.Garden-Brutal Myths.jpg|thumb|The ''[[Malleus Maleficarum]]'' (the 'Hammer of Witches'), published in 1487, accused women of destroying men by planting bitter herbs throughout the field.]]
[[File:Wickiana5.jpg|thumb|[[Death by burning|Burning]] of three witches in [[Baden, Switzerland|Baden]], Switzerland (1585), by [[Johann Jakob Wick]]]]
The resurgence of witch-hunts at the end of the medieval period, taking place with at least partial support or at least tolerance on the part of the Church, was accompanied with a number of developments in Christian doctrine, for example, the recognition of the existence of witchcraft as a form of Satanic influence and its classification as a heresy. As [[Renaissance magic|Renaissance occultism]] gained traction among the educated classes, the belief in witchcraft, which in the medieval period had been part of the [[folk religion]] of the uneducated rural population at best, was incorporated into an increasingly comprehensive theology of Satan as the ultimate source of all ''maleficium''.{{efn|Early Christian theologians attributed to the Devil responsibility for persecution, heresy, witchcraft, sin, natural disasters, human calamities, and whatever else went wrong. One tragic consequence of this was a tendency to demonize people accused of wrongs. At the instance of ecclesiastical leaders, the state burned heretics and witches, burning symbolizing the fate deserved by the demonic. Popular fears, stirred to fever pitch in the 14th and 15th&nbsp;centuries, sustained frenzied efforts to wipe out heretics, witches, and unbelievers, especially Jews.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Hinson |title=Historical and Theological Perspectives on Satan |magazine=[[Review & Expositor]] |volume=89 |issue=4 |page=475 |date=Fall 1992}}</ref>}}{{efn|Trevor-Roper has said that it was necessary for belief in the Kingdom of Satan to die before the witch theory could be discredited.<ref>{{cite book |last=Larner |article=Crime of witchcraft in early modern Europe |editor=Oldridge |title=The Witchcraft Reader |page=211 |year=2002 |publisher=Routledge}}</ref>}} These doctrinal shifts were completed in the mid-15th century, specifically in the wake of the [[Council of Basel]] and centered on the [[Duchy of Savoy]] in the western Alps,{{efn|We are reasonably confident today that the 'classical' doctrine of witchcraft crystallized during the middle third of the 15th century, shortly after the Council of Basel, primarily within a western Alpine zone centred around the duchy of Savoy (Ostorero et al. 1999).<ref name="Behringer 2004 18–19">{{cite book |last=Behringer |title=Witches and Witch-hunts: A global history |year=2004 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |pages=18–19}}</ref>}} leading to an early series of witch trials by both secular and ecclesiastical courts in the second half of the 15th century.{{efn|By the end of the 15th century, scattered trials for witchcraft by both secular and ecclesiastical courts occurred in many places from the Pyrenees, where the Spanish Inquisition had become involved, to the North Sea.<ref name="Behringer 2004 18–19"/>}}

In 1484, [[Pope Innocent VIII]] issued ''[[Summis desiderantes affectibus]]'', a [[Papal bull]] authorizing the "correcting, imprisoning, punishing and chastising" of devil-worshippers who have "slain infants", among other crimes. He did so at the request of inquisitor [[Heinrich Kramer]], who had been refused permission by the local bishops in Germany to investigate.<ref>Levack, ''The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe'', (49)</ref> However, historians such as [[Ludwig von Pastor]] insist that the bull neither allowed anything new, nor was necessarily binding on Catholic consciences.{{efn|"The Bull contains no dogmatic decision of any sort on witchcraft. It assumes the possibility of demoniacal influences on human beings which the Church has always maintained, but claims no dogmatic authority for its pronouncement on the particular cases with which it was dealing at the moment. The form of the document, which refers only to certain occurrences which had been brought to the knowledge of the Pope, sh[o]ws that it was not intended to bind any one to believe in the things mentioned in it. The question whether the Pope himself believed in them has nothing to do with the subject. His judgment on this point has no greater importance than attaches to a Papal decree in any other undogmatic question, e.g., on a dispute about a benefice. The Bull introduced no new element into the current beliefs about witchcraft. It is absurd to accuse it of being the cause of the cruel treatment of witches, when we see in the ''Sachsenspiegel'' that burning alive was already the legal punishment for a witch. All that Innocent VIII. did was to confirm the jurisdiction of the inquisitors over these cases. The Bull simply empowered them to try all matters concerning witchcraft, without exception, before their own tribunals, by Canon-law; a process which was totally different from that of the later trials. Possibly the Bull, in so far as it admonished the inquisitors to be on the alert in regard to witchcraft may have given an impetus to the prosecution of such cases; but it affords no justification for the accusation that it introduced a new crime, or was in any way responsible for the iniquitous horrors of the witch-harrying of later times."<ref>{{cite book |first=Ludwig |last=von Pastor |author-link=Ludwig von Pastor |title=The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages |volume=5 |pages=349–350}}</ref>}} Three years later in 1487, Kramer published the notorious ''[[Malleus Maleficarum]]'' (lit., 'Hammer against the Evildoers') which, because of the newly invented printing presses, enjoyed a wide readership. It was reprinted in 14 editions by 1520 and became unduly influential in the secular courts.<ref>{{cite book |editor1=Jolly |editor2=Raudvere |editor3=Peters |title=Witchcraft and magic in Europe: the Middle Ages |page=241 |year=2002}}</ref>

In Europe, the witch-hunt craze was negligible in Spain, Poland, and Eastern Europe; conversely, it was intense in Germany, Switzerland, and France.<ref>{{cite journal |author1=[[Nachman Ben-Yehuda]] |title=The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist's Perspective' |journal=[[American Journal of Sociology]] |date=July 1980 |volume=86 |issue=1 |pages=6–7 |url=http://www.jstor.com/stable/2778849 |access-date=8 April 2023 |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |language=en |issn=0002-9602 |quote=he witch-hunts were conducted in their most intense form in those regions where the Catholic church was weakest (Lea 1957; Rose 1962) (Germany, Switzerland, France). In areas with a strong church (Spain, Poland, and eastern Europe) the witch craze was negligible.}}</ref>