First Part of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe

            I thought that this reading, although informative, was very dry and extremely difficult to get through.  However, it did give a very detailed analysis of the reasons for the decline and eventual end of organized witch hunting in Europe.  The first of these reasons, and what I believe to be the most important, is that officials began to prosecute the crime of witchcraft less and less.  This was caused in part by a growing awareness that many of the witches that were being tried and executed had not actually committed the crimes they were convicted of.  This does not mean that officials stopped believing in witchcraft, it just means that they became aware of how hard it was to truly prove the crime.  I really liked that the authors did not argue that the witch-hunts came to an end because people stopped believing in witches and instead show that the belief in witches declined because prosecution declined.  It never made sense to me that a mass amount of people could go from believing in something one day and then the next day thinking that it was simply a made up story.  This reading really helped to track the progress of this type of thinking and what factors lead to such a drastic change. 

            The reading had a lot of examples, which helped to illustrate the authors’ points, but after awhile I had a very hard time concentrating on the specific people and places.  I like this specific examples in micro-histories, but in an overview like this I think that it was quite overwhelming and that the examples eventually lost their effect because there were so many of them.  One of the examples I did think was useful however was when the authors talked about the mass witch-hunts that happened in Sweden after 1668-1676.  I thought it was a good decision to use this event because it truly illustrated what the authors had been talking about, from mass witch-hunts fizzling out, to a lack of belief in child witnesses, unwillingness to persecute, and eventually the persecution of those who falsely accused others.  I enjoyed this reading because I learned a lot, but I really hope that the next chunk we read is a little bit more captivating.