text: 2000 BC \n Babylon's Code of Hammurabi instructs, "If a man has laid a charge of witchcraft and has not justified it, he upon whom the witchcraft is laid shall go to the holy river; he shall plunge into the holy river and if the holy river overcome him, he who accused him shall take to himself his house." \n \n3rd cent. AD \n Under the pre-Christian Roman Empire, punishment of burning alive was enacted by the State against witches who brought about another person's death through their enchantments. \n \n306 AD \n The Christian Council of Elvira (Canon 6) refuses last rites to those who had killed a man by a magical spell because such a crime could not be effected "without idolatry" (i.e. the help of the devil). \n \n313 \n Conversion of Emperor Constantine; Christianity is granted official toleration by the Roman Empire. \n \n314 \n Canon 24 of the Council of Ancyra imposes five years of penance upon those who consult magicians. Here, the offence lies in participation in paganism. \n \n785 \n The Council of Paderborn rules that sorcerers are to be reduced to serfdom and made over to the service of the Church. \n \n906 \n The document De ecclesiasticis disciplinis ascribed to Regino of Prüm describes popular notions of witchcraft and states it is the duty of priests to "instruct the people that these things are absolutely untrue and that such imaginings are planted in the minds of misbelieving folk, not by a Divine spirit, but by the spirit of evil." \n \n1080 \n Pope Gregory VII writes a letter to King Harold of Denmark forbidding witches to be put to death upon presumption of their having caused storms, failure of crops or pestilence. \n \n1225 \n In Germany, the secular law code "Sachsenspiegel" designated death by fire as the proper punishment for witchcraft. \n \n1258 \n Pope Alexander IV instructs, "The Inquisitors, deputed to investigate heresy, must not intrude into investigations of divination or sorcery without knowledge of manifest heresy involved." "Manifest heresy" is defined as: "praying at the altars of idols, to offer sacrifices, to consult demons, to elicit responses from them... or associate themselves publicly with heretics." \n \n1275 \n The first "witch" is burned to death after judicial sentence of an inquisitor, in Toulouse, France. Her name was Hugues de Baniol and she "confessed" to having given birth to a monster after intercourse with an evil spirit and to having nourished it with babies' flesh which she procured in her nocturnal expeditions. \n \n1300-30 \n Beginning of the witch trials in Europe. \n \n1334 \n Large-scale witch trial in Toulouse, France, in which 63 persons were accused. Of these, eight were handed over to the state to be burned and the rest were imprisoned. \n \n1374 \n Pope Gregory XI declares that all magic is done with the aid of demons and thus is open to prosecution for heresy. \n \n1400 \n Peter de Gruyères, a secular judge, carries out large-scale witch trials in Bern, Switzerland. \n \n1435-50 \n Number of witch trails rises sharply. \n \n1484 \n Pope Innocent VIII publishes the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus ("Desiring with the Greatest Ardor") condemning witchcraft as Satanism, the worst of all possible heresies. The bull also officially grants Heinrich Krämer and James Sprenger, Dominican inquisitors, the right to prosecute persons of any class or any form of crime. \n \n1486 \n Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger publish Malleus maleficarum ("The Hammer of Witches"), a learned but misogynistic book blaming witchcraft chiefly on women. It was reprinted many times thanks to the newly-invented printing press and was a major influence on the witch-hunt hysteria of the next two centuries. It was regarded as the standard handbook on witchcraft until well into the 18th century. \n \n1530s \n Prosecutions for witchcraft begin in Mexico. \n \n1532 \n T