In support of what Joan said, I would point out that a lot of the apparent "intolerance" of the trials comes from a misunderstanding of what "witch" meant to our ancestors. To modern people, a witch is someone who uses magic. So when we read books and trial records about "witches", we often assume that that's what the word means. But it isn't -- in the trial records OR in modern history books. Most of our ancestors cut a sharp division between "white" witches (or cunning folk) and "black" witches. Far from being hated, "white" witches were generally respected by their communities. In fact their popularity infuriated the clergy. Ministers, priests, and divines all fumed about how popular "good" witches were. For instance John Stearne complained that no one objected to helpful witches: "Men rather uphold them and say why should any man be questioned for doing good." The clergy believed that there was no difference between a "good" and a "bad" witch. But as Keith Thomas notes (in _Religion and the Decline of Magic_), their view never prevailed. "The attempt by the theologians to wipe out the distinction between black and white witches by branding them both as diabolical never got through to the people to whom these witches ministered. On the contrary, they were more likely to believe that the cunning folk were taught by God, or that they were helped by angels, or even that they possessed some divinity of their own." (pg. 266) "Black" witches, the people who ended up charged with witchcraft, were almost always people believed to be magical criminals. "Black" witches were hated and feared -- for the same reason we hate and fear murderers. This is why witch trials almost invariably involve damage to people and property: because most people didn't think a witch was bad unless she hurt people. The clergy and the law might say that anyone who had magical power served Satan, but relatively few people agreed with them. Ironically, since most history books focus on the trials, most of them tell us next to nothing about the "real" witches. You have to look for books on magic generally to learn what life was like for cunning folk. (Some good books on the subject include Keith Thomas' _Religion and the Decline of Magic_ for England; Richard Godbeer's _The Devil's Dominion_ for America; and Robin Briggs' _Witches and Neighbors_ which focuses on France but has a lot of generally applicable information.) Perhaps the strongest argument against intolerance is the fact that witches supported the witch trials, too. Oh, not "black" witches -- the people accused defended themselves with every breath in their bodies. But the "real" witches, the cunning folk, were active supporters of the persecution of "black" witches. When people suspected they were bewitched, it was a wise man or a wise woman that they turned to to confirm their suspicions. Traditional healers frequently diagnosed "bewitchment" when a child or animal was sick. And many "white" witches were willing to divine the identity of the "black" witch. The Great European Witch Hunt was not a conflict between witches and non-witches. Robin Briggs (_Witches and Neighbors_), one of the few historians to research this question, discovered that in France a "white" witch was far more likely to be an witch-accuser than a victim of the trials. So to summarize, I think that our ancestors were terrified of a non-existant Satanic conspiracy. The witches they feared didn't exist; the witches that existed weren't feared. Moreover the real witches (cunning folk) feared and hated these non-existant witches as much as everybody else. Jenny Gibbons