Witches
Witches EuropeThe scapegoats of late medieval Europe. A witch was commonly, though not always, believed to be a female who practised maleficium, the art of doing harm by occult means. In league with the Devil and associated with wild and desolate places, she was thought to turn into a vampire or bird, or possess the power of flight, so as to attend a coven of her fellows, where they fed on the human flesh provided by one of their number. A delicacy was newly born babies.
Witches were not always hunted as heretics. Charlemagne had passed laws against witch hunts on the ground that belief in the existence of witches represented pagan superstition. The position changed in the thirteenth century when the Inquisition was established to search out and extirpate heresy. In 1252 Pope Innocent IV allowed the use of torture in trials, an instrument the inquisitors used to verify the existence of withchraft. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued the Bull...
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