The Overthrow of the Church and the Rise of Witchcraft

For those us of who rely on sources other than The Da Vinci Code for our history, knowing as we do that witch hunts were an early modern, i.e. Protestant, phenomenon rather than medieval, i.e. Catholic, one, Maria Elena Vidal's post on "a novel which shows how the rise of witchcraft of sixteenth and seventeenth century England coincided with the dearth of the Catholic religion and doctrine, liturgy and mysticism which it provided," will be of interest — The Rise of Witchcraft.

"At times, the historian would have been almost willing to maintain that the man had overthrown the Church chiefly because it was feminine," wrote America's greatest man of letters — The Education of Henry Adams. "After the overthrow of the Church, the woman had no refuge." Except, it seems, in witchcraft.

"Mary's treatment of respectable and law-abiding people who had no favours to ask, and were reasonably confident of getting to heaven by the regular judgment, without expense, rankled so deeply that three hundred years later the Puritan reformers were not satisfied with abolishing her, but sought to abolish the woman altogether as the cause of all evil in heaven and on earth," he also wrote — Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams. "The Puritans abandoned the New Testament and the Virgin in order to go back to the beginning, and renew the quarrel with Eve."