ABSTRACT
All witchcraft was taken as proof of a covenant with satan and a heresy. But the major liability, during the long season of the witch-hunt, was that a successful prosecution for a crime such as heresy or the otherwise harmless 'white magic' of witchcraft would require the defendant's confession; a defendant no longer possessing the power of counter-suit. With the advent and increased authority of Christianity in the West, ecclesiastical courts would blunt the ancient distinctions between harmless and 'black' magic. In 1466, the faculty of University of Paris is deputized by the King to determine whether a collection of magic books were 'consonant with the Christian faith'. The greater the tolerance of the Church toward the view that natural magic is both compatible with and useful to the teachings of the church, the greater will be a movement toward explications based on natural phenomena.
