At least in that case there were real bodies; most male "witches", like their female counterparts, had done nothing more than annoy their neighbours. "Innocent I came to jail, innocent I was tortured, innocent I must die," wrote one condemned man in 1628. "They stripped me, bound my hands behind me, and drew me up in the torture. Then I thought heaven and earth were at an end." Similar testimonies make the witch craze seem like a wicked delusion. But Apps and Gow sound a note of caution. It is easy to exaggerate the pathological dimensions of the panic; we need to remember that, for early modern Europeans, the existence of evil magic was a foregone conclusion, as self-evident as the earth's orbit around the sun is for us. They did not "believe" that witches existed: they knew it, and they acted accordingly.