Why did people believe in witchcraft in the seventeenth century?

Answer 1

Superstition and uneducated belief in the occult (which we now know to be just coincidences and explainable phenomena), coupled with the misleading education of the church of the time.

Answer 2

When Henry VIII left the Roman Catholic Church in favor of Protestantism, he never aligned his new church to a particular Protestant sect, but made his own by borrowing some aspects from the earlier abandoned Catholicism and some from the newly emerged Protestantism. When Mary I succeeded to the throne following the short reign of her half-brother, Edward VI--a king who attempted to create a more vigorous Protestant church by persecuting any remaining Catholic families--she reinstalled Catholicism as the state religion and began a new set of persecution this time directed against Protestants. When Elizabeth took the throne from Mary I, she made a proclamation, the Religious Settlement of 1559, which attempted to create an atmosphere of toleration amongst those who followed the Protestantism of Geneva (the soon-to-be-powerful Puritans), the Catholics, and those who had followed the earlier program set up by Henry VIII ( proto-Anglicanism). This unsteady truce was complicated by political intrigue in the form of various religious affiliations with France and Spain (Catholic), Holland and Geneva (Calvinist) and Scotland (Presbyterian). To complicate matters even more homegrown Protestant sects began to sprout up in England at this time (Diggers, Levellers, and Quakers to name three) and they also had political ideas about the State, which they were quite vocal about. The persecution of these smaller, less powerful groups really took off in the early part of the 1600s when the Puritans decided that reform had not gone far enough in England and in the English church. Ever since Henry VIII had changed the political-religious playing field by dropping the Catholic Church and deciding against any newly emergent form of Protestantism to create his own mongrel religion, the door for ongoing persecution was opened and would not be shut until after the death of Cromwell and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Ironically, if the persecuted Puritan extremists who left for America in 1620 had waited a mere twenty years they would have found their power consolidated and their situation so improved that they would have now been the ones in power and would have ruled with Cromwell during the interregnum.

Answer 3

Superstition and uneducated belief in the occult (which we now know to be just coincidences and explainable phenomena), coupled with the misleading education of the church of the time.

Answer 4

People were afraid of witches because they did not understand the magic and power which made them fear and belive they were dangerous.

Answer 5

At its core... religious intolerance.