Why were theologians intent on proving the existence of witches?
“Why was Joseph McCarthy intent on proving that communists infiltrated the U.S. government? One senses that something is not right with the system. It’s vulnerable. It doesn’t work perfectly. So it must be being undermined by extremely powerful and crafty enemies. The difference is that the United States in the 1950s had just won the greatest military victory ever, while Europe in the 1450s was recovering, just gradually, from one of the worst centuries of all time. “It’s true that the Russian and Chinese threat looked pretty credible in the 1950s despite the successes of World War II. But the 14th century had had the Black Plague, which killed about one-third of the European population. It had the Hundred Years’ War, which, though intermittent, was even longer than its name suggests. It had at times as many as three men claiming to be the true pope. And on and on and on, for every kind of social and natural evil you can imagine, including spectacular infant mortality, which is why the
