One interesting factoid: Centuries before the big witch hunts started, the Christian church had tried to debunk the idea that witches existed!
I remember reading that somewhere, too.
Then it sounds like Catholic clergy and people found to be practicing Catholicism were just as persecuted as witches were.
Well, they were, because Catholicism became linked with treason, after 1570, when the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth I and absolved her subjects of their allegiance to her. The Protestants in power believed that the Catholics were told they would not be committing a sin if they assassinated the queen--I can't remember if that was true or not, but the Protestant English certainly believed it, so maybe it doesn't matter whether or not it was true. All of the plots against the queen were Catholic-based. And then in 1572. just across the Channel in France, occurred the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, when thousands of French Protestants were murdered by their Catholic fellow countrymen. All of this built on memories of the persecution of ordinary Protestant folks, housewives and shoemakers and so forth, during Bloody Mary's reign--memories that were kept alive by the best-selling
Acts and Monuments, by John Foxe, more familiarly known as Foxe's
Book of Martyrs. So Roman Catholicism became equated with treason and murder in the popular mind.
Anyway, meanwhile, I just read the short personal memoir about "filter fish," by the late Oliver Sacks, in the Sept. 14 issue, and also Atul Gawande's appreciation for Sacks, in The Talk of the Town. I recommend them both.