The correct answer is C) Men and women accused of being witches were considered heretics and often killed.
During the Reformation, at the beginning of the Modern Era, the Catholic Church established a link between sorcery and heresy in order to use it as a political tool to keep the Catholic orthodoxy among the people. This political tool consisted in extending fear of the Devil and of the punishment (torture and murder) by the Inquisition for adhering to heretic doctrines. The belief in this connection was rapidly adopted by the new Protestant churches and witch hunt was widespread across Europe from the 16th century to the 18th century. Most of the condemned people were women, with an estimated of nearly 100 thousand people killed for witchcraft.
