Between 1400 and 1780, an estimated 100,000 people, mostly women, were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe. About half that number were executed – killings motivated by a constellation of beliefs about women, truth, evil and magic.
But the witch hunts could not have had the reach they did without the media machinery that made them possible: an industry of printed manuals that taught readers how to find and exterminate witches.
