‘We Can Get the Witch-Doctor but We Cannot Get God' Witchcraft in the Low Countries

During the troubled years 1550-1650 there was in the Low Countries an intermittent and rather inefficient attack on alleged witches by legal means, and a relatively modest persecution very largely driven by local demands rather than by the rulers. The courts in the new Republic in the North soon refused to pass death sentences while the death rate in the South was significantly higher. Virtually all trials took place in normal secular courts, with only minimal clerical involvement. The greatest historical interest of Low Countries' witchcraft lies in the wealth of surviving evidence for witchcraft as a shared belief system across all social groups below the educated elites.