# data[].attributes.body
The average person that was accused of witchcraft in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was an old, isolated, very poor woman. These women were targets because of their vulnerability and poverty.

# data[].attributes.body
As the fear of witches and witchcraft increased in Europe the Catholic Church included in its definition of witchcraft as anyone with knowledge of herbs as 'those who used herbs for cures did so only through a pact with the Devil, either explicit or implicit' (Linda Alchin).
Women before the Renaissance who had knowledge of plants and herbs were called healers, they were highly respected members of the community. Healers were the medical professionals of there time.
As the culture in Europe changed during the enlightenment, people began to view healers as witches and blamed them for anything they could not explain.

# data[].attributes.body
Between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries, as many as one million individuals in Europe were executed for the crime of witch craft.
Scotland liked to torture the witches more than other countries and offered more severe punishments by giving the accused a more painful and slower death. They “preferred to burn witches at the stake”.

# data[].attributes.body
The hysteria in the witch-hunts of Renaissance Europe ended by the late eighteenth century with 9 million women burned and hung as witches after about 270 trials took place.
European witch trials declined after 1680, though Poland and Eastern Europe experienced one more wave of persecution in the early eighteenth century. England abolished the death penalty for witchcraft in 1736.
Its a sad thought that many innocent men and women suffered the consequences of a crime that they not only never committed, but is also a very far fetched idea.
These trials and persecutions should have never taken place, the power to blame is the Catholic Church.
The church is to blame for these murders because, without the Popes influence, the general public would have never been convinced that innocent victims were doing Satanic magic.
Persecuting suspected witches was an elite plot against the poor; practicing witchcraft a mode of peasant resistance. This goes to show how powerful the church is and they can lead follower to the worst of actions.