For almost three centuries, from the late 1400s on, the best minds of church and state were hard at work ferreting out evidence against men and women accused of making pacts with the Devil, holding diabolic councils and diabolic orgies, using charms and spells and wax figures to kill kings, shipwreck fleets, blast crops and subvert the whole order of Christendom. There are no definitive figures because so many records have been lost, but certainly tens of thousands of people confessed, usually after prolonged torture, to acts of witchcraft and were hanged or drowned or burned alive. During the Spanish Inquisition alone, 100 persons might be burned as witches in a day. By the end of the 17th century, belief in the existence of witchcraft was fading among educated people, and with it went a fading in belief in the existence of witches.

— Robert Wernick