What was the reformation & what impact did it have on witch-hunting?

How did it contribute to the greater numbers of accusations of women?What was the reformation %26amp; what impact did it have on witch-hunting?
The Reformation was started by Martin Luther, who was hostile towards certain practices of the Catholic Church. He caused a breakaway movement, some countries abandoned the Catholic church and formed independent Protestant churches, especially in many of the German states, in Switzerland, in the Netherlands, in Scandinavia, and eventually in Scotland and England. Other countries remained Catholic.





Some countries had fewer witch-hunts than others, the numbers in Spain and Italy were noticeably low for instance, and the greatest number were in Germany. However, the church was generally not the impetus behind witch-hunts, they tended to start at a local level, with people generally being accused of witchcraft by their own neighbours, who were inclined to blame misfortunes like bad harvests and outbreaks of sickness on supernatural activity by ill-wishers.





Courts were often reluctant to try witchcraft cases on account of the difficulty of obtaining proof, overall about 50% of defendents in witchcraft cases were acquitted. Altogether some 50,000 people are thought to have been put to death for witchcraft over the period of 1450-1750, with the peak period being the 1580s-1620s.





Witchcraft and heresy were not considered to be the same thing, and the Catholic and Protestant churches were both much more interested in suppressing heretics than they were in hunting witches.What was the reformation %26amp; what impact did it have on witch-hunting?
The Reformation began with Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. It spread with the efforts of John Calvin in Geneva, and others around western Europe. The Catholic Church, among other responses, hunted out ';witches'; as an evil influence of the devil, which was the cause of the spread of the ';heretics';, as all Protestants were regarded. Some of the Protestants also went on witch hunts, taking the position that those following idolatrous ';popery'; must be misled by Satan.
I must offer a corrective to Tham. Charges of witchcraft were not related to heresy after the Protestant Reformation. Though there had been many who believed in the existence of witches throughout the centuries. Most common sense pastors, especially confessors who dealt directly with those worried about witches, recognized this as a manifestation of superstition. Why this superstitious fear was so prevalent after the Reformation is a good question. But it is important to recognize that both sides, Catholic and Protestant, recognized heretics as those who held heterodox beliefs and tried them as such.





I don't know if anyone has undertaken a scholarly and balanced study of post-Reformation witch hunts.