During the so-called Little Ice Age, medieval European were afflicted with bitterly cold winters and unusually mild summers. Extreme weather disasters became more common, bringing with them the scourges of disease and famine. Because we didn't entirely understand climate science back then, many blamed evil or magic for the prolonged cold snap.
"Witches" were persecuted all over Europe, but of course this did nothing to break the planet out of the Little Ice Age. Historical records show that Europe during the Little Ice Age struggled through a seemingly endless series of natural calamities. As one example, during the 16th and 17th centuries the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg — the most powerful and culturally important city-state in the Holy Roman Empire — regularly experienced intense floods, one of the harshest aspects of life in a society otherwise flourishing due to the German Renaissance.
