ABSTRACT
Summers \vaS a historical mountebank who used original sources and did good research, but his gullibility was exceeded only by his faith. Except for his translations of demonological treaeises, his contribution to the stud), of the witch hunts is nil. Recent serious disclIssion of the geogr"pny of witch hunting began with Hugh Trevor-Roper's article "The European \";ritchCraze of the Sixteenrh and Seventeenth Cenwries,"l which argues that conflict between Protestants and Catholics \vas the major impetus in witch hunting; Protestants looked for Catholic witches, and vice versa. Later research has shown Trevor-Roper to be wrong-while religious zeal could serve as a powerful motivator, persecution often occurred where there was no confessional conflict, where magistrate and victim shared the same religion. Trevor-Roper is correct, however, in identifying Germany, Scotland, Switzerland, Franche-Comte, Lorraine, Alsace, some puts of northern Ital)", and territories north and south of the Pyrenees as regions of very active witch hunting, but he virtually ignored Scandinavia, save for Sweden, and thought that in eastern Europe only Poland persecuted wi tches to any extent.
