Main article: Witch trials in Early Modern Europe

The origins of the accusations against witches in the later Middle Ages are all present in earlier trials against heretics, especially the claims of secret meetings, orgies, and the consumption of babies. From the 17th century, the idea of a pact became importantone could be possessed by the Devil and not responsible for one's actions, but to be a witch, one had to sign a pact with the Devil, often to worship him, which was heresy and meant damnation.

The Malleus Maleficarum was influential in 17th-century European witch trials

By 1300, the elements were in place for a witch hunt, and for the next century and a half fear of witches spread gradually throughout Europe. At the end of the Middle Ages (about 1450), the fear became a craze which lasted more than 200 years. As the notion spread that all magic involved a pact with the Devil, legal sanctions against witchcraft grew harsher. Each new conviction reinforced the beliefs in the methods (torture and pointed interrogation) being used to solicit confessions and in the list of accusations to which these "witches" confessed. The rise of the witch-craze was concurrent with the rise of Renaissance magic in the great humanists of the time (this was called High Magic, and the Neoplatonists and Aristotelians that practised it took pains to insist that it was wise and benevolent and nothing like Witchcraft), which helped abet the rise of the craze. Witchcraft was held to be the worst of heresies, and early skepticism slowly faded from view almost entirely.

In the early 14th century, many accusations were brought against clergymen and other learned people who were capable of reading and writing magic; Pope Boniface VIII (d. 1303) was posthumously tried for apostasy, murder, and sodomy, in addition to allegedly entering into a pact with the Devil (while popes had been accused of crimes before, the demonolotry charge was new). The Templars were also tried as Devil-invoking heretics in 130514. The middle years of the 14th century were quieter, but towards the end of the century, accusations increased and were brought against ordinary people more frequently. In 1398, the University of Paris declared that the demonic pact could be implicit; no document need be signed, as the mere act of summoning a demon constituted an implied pact. Tens of thousands of trials continued through Europe generation after generation; the famous witches in Macbeth were committed to paper during the reign of James I, who hanged more witches than any other English monarch.

The craze took on new strength in the 15th century, and in 1486, Heinrich Institoris, a member of the Dominican Order, published the Malleus Maleficarum (the 'Hammer against the Witches'). Although this book was banned by the Church in 1490, it was nevertheless reprinted in 14 editions by 1520 and became one of the most influential books used by secular witch-hunting courts.

Persecution continued through the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, and the Protestants and Catholics both continued witch trials with varying numbers of executions from one period to the next. The "Caroline Code", the basic law code of the Holy Roman Empire (1532) imposed heavy penalties on witchcraft. As society became more literate (due mostly to the invention of the Printing Press in the 1440s), increasing numbers of books and tracts fuelled the witch fears.

The craze reached its height between 1560 and 1660. After 1580, the Jesuits replaced the Dominicans as the chief Catholic witch-hunters, and the Catholic Rudolf II (15761612) presided over a long persecution in Austria. Interestingly enough, the Jura Mountains in southern Germany provided a small respite from the insanity; there, torture was imposed only within the precise limits of the Caroline Code of 1532, little attention was paid to the accusations of or by children, and charges had to be brought openly before a suspect could be arrested. These limitations contained the mania in that area.

The nuns of Loudun (1630), novelized by Aldous Huxley and made into a film by Ken Russell, provide an interesting example of the craze during this time. The nuns had conspired to accuse Father Urbain Grandier of witchcraft by faking symptoms of possession and torment; they feigned convulsions, rolled and gibbered on the ground, and accused Grandier of indecencies. Grandier was convicted and burned; however, after the plot succeeded, the symptoms of the nuns only grew worse, and they became more and more sexual in nature. This attests to the degree of mania and insanity present in such witch trials.

In 1687, Louis XIV issued an edict against witchcraft that was rather moderate compared to former ones; it ignored black cats and other lurid fantasies of the witch mania. After 1700, the number of witches accused and condemned fell rapidly.

 Witch-Hunting Methods

It was extremely dangerous to be accused of being a "witch", since a common punishment was to be executed, sometimes by being burned at the stake, the standard punishment for heretics (and witchcraft was merely a form of heresy). Thousands of women and men were put to death as witches at various points in history. Some of the worst witchhunts were in Germany, though there are documented cases of torture and execution in the name of stopping witchcraft in nearly every European country as well as the American Colonies.

Some torments were designed to test the guilt of a witch. "Swimming" the witch (a survival of an ancient ordeal by water) involved tying the accused hand and foot and immersing her in deep water. If she sank, God's creature water accepted her and she was deemed innocent. If she floated, the water rejected her, and she was deemed guilty. Similarly, if the witch weighed less than a bible on a scale, she was guilty. Witches were thought to have insensitive spots where the Devil had (visibly or invisibly) marked them; the accused would sometimes be pricked all over with a sharp instrument in the search for such a spot.

Other, more traditional tortures were devised to elicit confessions and accusations against accomplices. These included thumbscrews, leg vices, whipping stocks with iron spikes, scalding lime baths, prayer stools furnished with sharp pegs, racks, and the strappado (where a prisoner's arms were tied with a rope attached to a pulley, and he or she was hoisted into the air, often with weights attached at the feet to pull the arms from the sockets). These tortures would be often accompanied by a long list of questions, most of which asked how and when the accused had committed a certain act of which they were accused, not whether they were innocent or guilty.