From 1450 to 1750, witch hunts were rampant around areas in Europe that were already ravaged by conflict. Witch hunts were roused by paranoia among both the layman and the religious authorities alike.
The typically uneducated layman were easy prey for an intense paranoia and needed an outlet to blame. Sommerville, a modern historian, wrote a paper for other historians with a more neutral viewpoint than the fearful people of the past, detailing how women reaching for power was seen as evil and that was a part of how they were associated with witchcraft (Source 1). At the time, women were often treated as if they were a part of a lower class to be subjugated, and like when any member of a lower group tries to ascend to a higher one, they…show more content… Martin Luther, the man who accidentally started the protestant reformation that spread religious conflict around Europe, gave a sermon explaining the evil deeds done by women who worship the devil, even though the devil doesn’t need them (Source 6). Ironically, Martin Luther started the protestant reformation which gave women more respect than the catholic church had, singled them out as the ones who are corrupted by the devil’s influence, revealing that there was still some paranoia about them in his mind. Tom Ogden, a historian, wrote how two german friars wrote a book over a quarter million words in length on what witches do, and what to do to them to get a testimony and sentence them (Source 3). The fact that two people worked together to write a book over a thousand words long on a subject like witchcraft shows how much the thought of the devil’s corruption of other people haunted their minds. The authorities of religion anger and paranoia against witchery had added fuel to the fire that was the witch hunts.
The paranoia within the average people and the religious leaders had incited the witch hunts in Europe. Paranoia was rampant within areas with religious conflict, which is why whey were the most active in the hunts while areas that were calm had nearly no victims of the hunts. Distrust bred by paranoia had cost tens
