20. Witch Hunts Were Not a Feature of the Middle Ages
A common stereotype about the Middle Ages revolves around the assumption that it was an era of widespread superstition, in which church authorities burned witches left, right, and center. While it is true that people in the middle ages were quite superstitious, especially when compared to the modern era, their superstitions were not expressed in witch hunts. To be sure, there were some witch trials, but they were relatively rare. When they happened, they were usually done by the secular authorities, and were not directed by the church.
Indeed, throughout most of the era, the standard message disseminated by churchmen about magic was that it was silly nonsense that did not work. The European witch craze was more of a sixteenth and seventeenth-century phenomenon. It kicked off after Heinrich Kramer wrote the infamous Malleus Maleficarum in the late fifteenth century, in an attempt to convince a skeptical public that witches were real. When it first came out, the church actually condemned the book, and warned inquisitors not to believe what it said.
