The "burning times" is the name given to the period of witch hysteria that took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A thourough examinination of this takes place in Dreaming the Dark, in which Appendix A (36 pages) is entirely devoted to it. Starhawk's analysis is revealing. It was not just women (as suggested by certain feminists) who were targets of witch hysteria, but the common folk in general.
Estimates of Witches executed during this period
vary from 100,000 to 9,000,000. It is not disputed that people were
tried and executed for being witches. All that is in dispute is the
number (and they were not just women, plenty of men died too). And
just because a person was accused, it doesn't mean that they
were pagan. The witch hunting hysteria in Europe seems to have been
a way of finding scapegoats during hard times. Your crops failed?
Your wife cheated on you? Why not blame a witch? It was an easy way
out.
Starhawk's account shows that one of the driving forces behind such persecution was the changes in social structure that favoured the rich, the landed, and the new professional classes. Witch hunting was an effective way of enforcing these changes. If people resisted these changes, call them a witch and hang them!
At various times it was also fueled by greed. In Germany and elsewhere it was common practice that the prosecutors would gain a portion of property confiscated from convicted witches. The more convicted, the higher the return. Later, midwives became targets when a male dominated medical profession needed to establish itself. Witch hunting was an exercise in power, and in quashing dissent. The best discussion of this became self-sustaining that I've ever seen was in Carl Sagan's Candle in the Wind:
It quickly became an expense account scam. All costs of investigation, trial and execution were borne by the accused or her relatives, down to per diem for the private detectives hired to spy on her, wine for her guards, banquets for her judges, the travel expenses of a messenger sent to fetch a more experienced torturer from another city, and the faggots, tar and hangman's rope. Then there was a bonus to the members of the tribunal for each witch burned. The convicted witch's remaining property, if any, was divided between Church and State. As this legally and morally sanctioned mass murder and theft became institutionalized, as a vast bureaucracy arose to serve it, attention was turned from poor hags and crones to the middle class and well-to-do of both sexes.The more who, under torture, confessed to witchcraft, the harder it was to maintain that the whole business was mere fantasy. Since each `witch' was made to implicate others, the numbers grew exponentially.
pp 113-114
In general, we humans haven't learnt our lesson over this. People in different minorities have been persecuted like this for hundred of years. Ask any jew or Gypsy. Ask a Cambodian or non-Serbian. Ask someone guilty of "un-American activities". The bodies get piled just as high in the names of religion, culture, and state.
The burning times are still with us -- they haven't finished yet.