More On My Views.

“Between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the European clergy caused as many as half a million people to be tortured and murdered on the grounds of witchcraft and heresy. The victims ranged from old, widowed women to political and social deviants—Jews, Muslims, heretics, and critics of the political and religious leaders of the time. Fear of witchcraft helped to divert the attention from the real source of many of their problems—corrupt popes and tyrannical princes—by shifting the responsibility to imaginary demons in human form.”

Ian Robertson.

I also wanted to add in addition the above quote, what I read around 1990 in a copy the Malleus Maleficarum. Heinrich Kramer, the author of that book, says at one point basically the same thing. It's been a while since I read it, but he trails off at one point and explains that the witch hunts are or could be used that way. And then he continues condemning women for being weak, sinful and inferior.