Ages was tinctured.

A considerable treatise might be written upon the superstitions of
the English women; it would contain astonishing disclosures as to
the effect of the unreal world of fairies, goblins, and the like
upon woman's development and status during the Middle Ages. She was
undoubtedly influenced in her daily life, in almost all her duties and
undertakings, by the terrors with which her superstitions filled her.
The legacy of a pagan system was slowly thrown off, and, with all
the credulity of the religion of the times, it is to the credit of
the Church that, by its proscriptions as well as by its healthier
teaching, superstition in many of its forms lessened its hold upon
the minds of the people. And yet it was needful, if historical fact
denotes a social necessity, that these superstitions should culminate
in a belief in witchcraft, and woman, because of her credulity, become
the scapegoat of the gnomes and witches which existed in her simple
faith. Even so cultured a person as Augustine, one of the most
prominent of the Church Fathers of his time, declared it to be
insolent to doubt the existence of fauns, satyrs, and suchlike
demoniac beings, which lie in wait for women and have intercourse with
them and children by them. It was this belief which extended into a
labyrinth of darkness and superstition throughout the Middle Ages.
The reasoning of the Church was perfectly simple: if the miracles of
the Apostles and of Christ were of divine agency, then the marvels
performed by magicians before the astonished eyes of the heathen were
to be accredited to Satan. The Church never doubted the existence of
malignant spirits, but bent its endeavors toward persuading the people
to give up converse with them. If a woman gave herself over to Satan
or any of his minions, the only resource was to put her to death.
Horrible as were the witch burnings of the Middle Ages, the Church
sincerely believed that it was exorcising the Devil from the lives
of the people; and by the terrible examples it made of those who were
accounted as having sold themselves to the Evil One, it believed
it was placing a deterrent upon others who might be minded to yield
themselves to diabolical possession. The Church was but sharing the
universal belief of the times, and, as the guardian of the spiritual
interests of mankind, it sought the purification of society by severe
measures which, it felt, were alone suited to the gravity of the
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