indictment of witch hunts and of the mode of thought that can produce them, making even the victims complicitous in their own destruction by forcing the innocent to confess.
Brian P. Levack states that European witch-hunting was a judicial operation, and this effort was facilitated by a number of legal developments occurring between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. The secular and ecclesiastical courts had adopted a new, inquisitorial system of criminal procedure, and this made it easier for witchcraft cases to be initiated and prosecuted. These courts also acquired the right to torture persons accused of witchcraft, which made it easier to get a confession. Another change in the secular courts was that they acquired jurisdiction over witchcraft and could thus supplement and even replace the ecclesiastical courts as the judicial body involved in the witch-hunts. A final development was the fact that the prosecution of witches was generally entrusted to the local and regional courts which operated with a certain degree of independence from central or national control. This ensured a relatively high number of convictions and executions. However, Levack also notes that these developments even taken together were not enough to be considered a sufficient cause of the great witch-hunt but each was a necessary precondition to the hunt. These legal develo
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