And here's some more from Murray!

"In the thirteenth century the Church opened its long drawn-out conflict with Paganism in Europe by declaring "witchcraft" to be a "sect" and heretical. It was not till the fourteenth century that the two religions came to grips. The bishop of Coventry in 1303 escaped probably because he belonged to both faiths, but the next trial was fought out to the end. In 1324 the bishop of Ossory tried Dame Alice Kyteler in his ecclesiastical court for the crime of worshipping a deity other than the Christian God. The evidence proved the truth of the accusation, which the lady apparently did not deny, but she was of too high rank to be condemned and she escaped out of the bishop's hands. Not so her followers, who paid at the stake the penalty of differing from the Church. The next step was the investigation into the Old Religion at Berne, given to the world in Nider's Formicarius. Here again the Church could seize only the poorer members, those of high rank were too powerful to be sent to their deaths and went free. The fifteenth century marks the first great victories of the Church. Beginning with the trials in Lorraine in 1408 the Church moved triumphantly against Joan of Arc and her followers in 1431, against Gilles de Rais and his coven in 1440, against the witches of Brescia in 1457. Towards the end of the century the Christian power was so well established that the Church felt that the time had come for an organised attack, and in 1484 pope Innocent VIII published his Bull against "witches." All through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the battle raged. The Pagans fought a gallant, though losing, fight against a remorseless and unscrupulous enemy; every inch of the field was disputed. At first victory occasionally inclined to the Pagans, but the Christian policy of obtaining influence over the rulers and law-givers was irresistible. Vae victis was also the policy of the Christians, and we see the priests of the Papacy gloating over the thousands whom they had consigned to the flames while the ministers of the Reformed Churches hounded on the administrators of the law to condemn the "devil-worshippers". What can have been the feelings with which those unhappy victims regarded the vaunted God of Love, the Prince of Peace, whose votaries condemned them to torture and death? What wonder that they clung to their old faith, and died in agony unspeakable rather than deny their God." (pp. 7-8)

All I have to add to this is one of Julian's lyrics:

"And every Sunday Sheela the Witch
Praising her god, but never explaining which"

Oh, and neither FourWinds nor myself are single!