What was the reformation & what impact did it have on witch-hunting?
The Reformation was started by Martin Luther, who was hostile towards certain practices of the Catholic Church. He caused a breakaway movement, some countries abandoned the Catholic church and formed independent Protestant churches, especially in many of the German states, in Switzerland, in the Netherlands, in Scandinavia, and eventually in Scotland and England. Other countries remained Catholic. Some countries had fewer witch-hunts than others, the numbers in Spain and Italy were noticeably low for instance, and the greatest number were in Germany. However, the church was generally not the impetus behind witch-hunts, they tended to start at a local level, with people generally being accused of witchcraft by their own neighbours, who were inclined to blame misfortunes like bad harvests and outbreaks of sickness on supernatural activity by ill-wishers. Courts were often reluctant to try witchcraft cases on account of the difficulty of obtaining proof, overall about 50% of defendents in
