ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that nothing inherently Catholic or Protestant about the prosecution of witches. There were, however, differences of emphasis in the treatment of witchcraft across the various religious confessions, based largely on the Protestant determination to root out “superstitious” magic. The chapter suggests that interdenominational conflict intensified anxieties about witchcraft, along with the determination to create “true” Christian societies. English witchcraft authors plainly shared these views and, since many of them were of ‘puritan’ persuasion they tended to express them forthrightly. In essence, therefore, the Protestant accusation that Catholicism was a religion based on witchcraft arose from questioning the sense in which specific religious rituals could be said to be efficacious. The views of the early modern sectaries concerning witchcraft are a neglected subject. As in continental Europe, the religious radicals of mid-seventeenth-century England were accused of weakening witchcraft belief.
