ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a model setting out the stages of decision-making through which a witchcraft prosecution had to pass in order to succeed. The model applies principally and initially to individual prosecutions, taking in decision-making within the community as well as within the courts. Some of the processes were different in panics, since the formation of a community reputation was no longer always needed. The concept of a witchcraft panic is vital for the understanding of witch-hunting, so it is surprising that so little trouble has been taken to define one. Witch-hunting was part of the experience of life for very many people in early modern Europe, and for some the experience was intense. Finally, William Monter endorses the idea of witch-hunting from a qualified way. Monter takes you into village society itself, drawing attention to the way in which inequalities in power and status among villagers were relevant to the dynamics of forming witchcraft reputations and demanding prosecutions.
