Through the luxury of time, we are able to look back on the concept of witchcraft and determine several things about it, the most important being the derivation of the word itself, a fact that will help us as we pursue the witch hunters with the an academic zeal similar to the religious zeal with which they pursued witches. Most linguists today concur that the word ôwitchö comes to us from the Middle English word ôwyccheö which in turn came from the Old English ôwicceö (for women) or ôwiccaö for men. Although most dictionaries today claim that ôwiccaö refers to neo pagans who perform sorcery, or magic, the actual Old English root word, ôwyö meant to twist or weave, and referred specifically to people who tended to create thatched huts out of grass, reeds, mud and boughs. (This ancestry gives us words such as ôwicker,ö and ôwickedö (which originally meant highly complex) (Barstow, 1994; Boyer & Nissenbaum, 1974).
Now how does this relate to witches and witchcraft? The connection goes like this. The people who built their homes from reeds, grass, and mud, i.e., the wiccans, were poor and unable to afford many of the luxuries of life. So instead of going to a doctor, for instance, they would learn to create medicines out of herbs, and instead of going to a physician to aid in birthing, would perform mid-wifery.
Until the Eleventh Century, these people, when mentioned at all, were considered harmless peasants or fools and more to be pitied than bothered. Roughly in the Twelfth Century, certain priests (the only ones who had the intelligence or training to read) began to take notice of these people for the very simple reason that members of their flock could often be found going to these wiccans for medicines, poultices, and often advice.
Along about the same time, the English and French nobility, in collusion with the Catholic (or Mother Church) began a series of Crusades in which they set out to protect...