Note 442 — Chapter XIV

Witchcraft in Italy grew the more formidable the closer it approached the German frontier. It seems to have assumed the features of an epidemic at the close of the fifteenth century. Up to that date little is heard of it, and little heed was paid to it. The exacerbation of the malady portended and accompanied the dissolution of medieval beliefs in a population vexed by war, famine and pestilence, and vitiated by ecclesiastical corruption.