Women made up some 85 percent of those executed – old women, young women and children. Many writers have estimated the total number killed to have been in the millions.

In the Bishopric of Trier, in 1585, two villages were left with only one female inhabitant each. At Toulouse, four-hundred were put to death in a day. Nine-hundred witches were destroyed in a single year in the Wertzberg area, and 1000 in and around Como. One writer has estimated the number of executions at an average of 600 a year for certain German cities – or two a day, “leaving out Sundays. In the mid-sixteenth century the terror spread to France, and finally to England. The extent of the witch-craze is startling: In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries there were thousands upon thousands of executions – usually live burnings at the stake – in Germany, Italy and other countries. Witches represented a political, religious and sexual threat to the Protestant and Catholic churches alike, as well as to the state.

It was born in feudalism and lasted – gaining in virulence – well into the “age of reason.” The witch-craze took different forms at different times and places, but never lost its essential character: that of a ruling class campaign of terror directed against the female peasant population. “The age of witch-hunting spanned more than four centuries (from the 14th to the 17th century) in its sweep from Germany to England.

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