I'm dead tired of this myth of common witch hunts in europe. Funny that term witch hunt came much later during french "enlightenment" from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other authors of "Encyclopédie". The constant hate towards previous eras and gloryfication of ancient times give the french rationalist this shitty thought that the end justifies the means. So what they did was clear propaganda towards middle ages. Just for example in England during 1440 and 1750 there was 200 executions for witchcraft (1/4 of those were man, and 180 cases went without church participation, half of the executions were done by hanging and other half by decapitating, there were only three cases when woman was burned [Margery Jordeimaine, witch from Eye, was burned alive for murdering with brutality on 27 october 1441 in Smithfield, Isabella Billington which body was burned after hanging in 1650 in York and other one was Isabel Cockie burned in1596.]) Very rarely people were burned alive, (most of those burnings came during world war 2 on German occupied territory in eastern Europe). Most of people who were accused for witchcraft was deemed innocent (almost 80% of all cases). And very rarely there were gatherings of "angry mob" to see execution which mostly took place outside of cities and were quite deserted. There are many good historical books about those misconceptions, for example Malcolm Gaskill Witchfinders.
Sorry for the long post