Chapter Eight
The Witch Hunts: The End of Magic and Miracles 1450 - 1750 C.E.
The Reformation did not convert the people of Europe to orthodox Christianity through preaching and catechisms alone. It was the 300 year period of witch-hunting from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, what R.H. Robbins called "the shocking nightmare, the foulest crime and deepest shame of western civilization,"1 that ensured the European abandonment of the belief in magic. The Church created the elaborate concept of devil worship and then, used the persecution of it to wipe out dissent, subordinate the individual to authoritarian control, and openly denigrate women. The witch hunts were an eruption of orthodox Christianity's vilification of women, "the weaker vessel," in St. Peter's words.2 The second century St. Clement of Alexandria wrote: "Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman. "3 The Church father Tertullian explained why women deserve their status as despised and inferior human beings: