final year,as Europe marked the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, thousands of words were penned by people trying to figure out that grim era when the continent found itself plunged into bloody clash between the Catholic and Protestant versions of Christianity.Peter Leeson and Jacob Russ, and two American economists,own come up with an unlikely take by focusing on one particular aspect of the clash: witch trials. The so-called “great age of witch trials began around 1550, as the Reformation was gathering pace, and did not close until around 1700. By that time 80000 people had been tried for sorcery,and half of them executed. The great majority of the victims were female. Messrs Leeson and Russ believe that an upsurge in trials reflected “non-price competition” between the Catholic and Protestant churches. That competition was for the hearts and minds of a population that was pious, superstitious and easily persuaded of the need to stamp out evil. In the preceding centuries, anddinary folk had...
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Source: economist.com