Bible states 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'- used by preachers and judges to justify campaign against witchcraft

Salem form of theocracy that was devoutely Puritan and strove for moral purity- Bridget Bishop came under attack for working in an inn where gambling took place

Martin Luther and Calvin stressed the Devil's presence- Luther saw his whole life as a struggle against Satan- spurred Protestants to act against witches

Early years of the reformation, the period from 1520-60 witnessed very few witchcraft prosecutions

In France witchcraft prosecutions declined during the wars of religion and were at their height during periods of peace

Witch hunting began nearly a century before the start of the reformation in 1517

Malleus Maleficarum- 1486- reprinted over 20 times- based on investigations of 2 Dominican friars- Kramer and Sprenger- lent new urgency to eradication of witches saying it was the worst of all crimes

Papal Bull of 1484- Pope Innocent VIII declares witchcraft to be a crimen exceptum (an exceptional crime)- allowed torture in cases where evidence difficult to find

Jean Bodin's On the Demon Mania of witches (1580)- one of Europe's most finest thinkers- regarded witchcraft as major threat and urged Christians to resist Satan's forces

Johann Weyer's The Deceptive Tricks of Evil Spirits (1563)- famous 16th century critic- claimed the killing of witches was nothing but a massacre of the innocents- claimed maleficia of witches could be explained by natural causes

Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft 1584- attack on witchcraft persecutions- could find no biblical foundation for witch hunting

Malleus Maleficarum published 100 years before the majority of large scale witch hunts

Women considered more likely than men to be seduced by the charms of the Devil based on the example of Eve in the garden of Eden

In Russia about 900 witches, the majority of whom were male,

Particular concern about growing numbers of unmarried women not under the supervision of a man- widows usually made up 10-20% of the total but could rise to 30%- men more likely to die in war- perceived as a threat to social order

Link between the role women played in midwifery and their persecution as witches- writing in 1973, Ehrenreich and English argued that the witch hunts were part of a plan to prevent women practising traditional forms of medicine to give a monopoly to male doctors

Rowlands writes that midwives were far more likely to assist in the prosecution of infanticide than to find themselves accused of using witchcraft to kill the infants they delivered