'Top Down' Approach

Historians:

- Brian Levack

- Salazaar

- Peter Broedel

- Scarre and Callow

- Montague Summers

- Norman Cohn

- Robert Thurston

Advantages:

- demonologies provided a 'metanarrative' for those seeking to understand the world in which they lived

- Malleus Maleficarum was a tool for waging war on the Devil and his confederates

- can explain the rise of the hunts ("the matter started there after Fray Domingo de Sardo came there to preach about these things" - demonologies)

- those in authority to be the prime movers in bringing about changes

- hierarchical power to spread ideas to influence the masses

- allowed the hunts to be better documented

- shows the role of secular authorities (how they prosecuted witches, etc.)

- also shows how the elite contributed in bringing the decline of the witch-hunts…