What was the churches attitude to witchcraft in the 17th century?

The Church was the primary instigator of witchcraft trials
and vigorously pursued them; it was later a secular movement which ended them after the
Church seemingly lost interest. Many of those accused of witchcraft belonged to groups
branded as heretics during the Reformation, since it was believed their ideas--and
support--came from the devil.

The Church's witchcraft
persecutions began with the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum
( href="http://history.hanover.edu/texts/mm.html">1486) by two Dominican
Friars, Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, at the behest of Pope Innocent VIII who
believed that a witch had made him impotent. The Malleus was
particularly harsh in its attitude toward women, stating in
part:

Woman
is more carnal than man….She always deceives….What else is woman but a foe to
friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a
desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature,
painted with fair colors….To conclude, all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in
women is
insatiable.

Skepticism slowly
grew as the public became more and more educated and abandoned superstitious beliefs.
Courts demanded more substantial proof of evil deeds, and torture was no longer
considered a reliable method of eliciting truthful testimony. The last witch was
executed in England in 1682, the same year that Louis XIV of France issued an edict
banning witchcraft trials. It was not the Church but an educated public that eventually
caused witchcraft trials to fall into disfavor.