Oh my this is going to puncture a few of my acquaintences balloons. In particular, the ones that are going to behuffing and puffing and trying to ignore this work are those oh so devout followers of Gerald Gardener, Z Budapest, Raven Grimassi, Starhawk and theories like there were 9 million witches burned or killed, and, the Inquisition was reponsible for the majority of witch deaths, or the Catholic Church was behind the burnings, and it was a mysoginist plot to rid the worls of women healers. Yup those pagans, are going to be pissed.

Too bad. It's about time that some solid historical research was done by serious trained historians. People who do not go into the study with preconceived notions of what they should find, or, rather, have those notions as they are the prevailing beliefs, but are prepared to throw them away in the face of evidence to the contrary. It appears there has been considerable scholarly research going on and a lot of sacred cows just got sent to the butchers.

My heartiest congratulations and thanks go out Jenny G at Mellisa's Wiccan Site for putting this overview of the research together.