ABSTRACT
Witchcraft beliefs may have been fluid, variable, and contested, but they were inseparable from the overarching mental framework. This fluid, variable, and contested nature of early modern witchcraft beliefs should also make very cautious about any monocausal interpretations of the witch-hunts. In the large-scale witch-panics, like Salem in 1692 or in East Anglia in 1645, the normal restraints on prosecuting witches broke down, and something like the witch-hunts of the modern imagination broke out. But more generally, in both England and New England, people had an informed and relatively sophisticated view of witchcraft. The witch-craze has frequently been connected to some of the major developments in late medieval and early modern Europe: the impact of the Reformation, the arrival of rural capitalism and the concomitant break-up of the village community, and the all-pervasive patriarchy and misogyny of the period. The theoretical and methodological complexities confronting the historian of witchcraft seem capable of infinite expansion.
