Witch

choi

In the title of the book review, "the wicked" and "fly" are the subject and verb, respectively.

Tom Shippey, The Wicked Fly at Night; From the early 15th century to the late 18th, some 40,000 to 60,000 people were put to death for witchcraft in Europe. Wall Street Journal, Oct 31, 2017
https://www.wsj.com/articles/rev ... at-night-1509402732
(book review on Ronald Hutton, The Witch; A history of fear, from ancient times to the present. Yale University Press, 2017)

Note: There is no need to read the rest.
(a) "With Halloween upon us, one can see them [witches] on every street, with a standard set of accessories: pointy hat, black cloak, broomstick, possibly a magic wand and hag mask. And all witches are female, we know. Harry Potter has a broomstick, but he's not a witch; he's a wizard."
(b) "What, though, is a witch? In his detailed study 'The Witch,' Ronald Hutton, a historian at the University of Bristol, gives the standard academic definition right away: 'someone who causes harm to others by mystical means.' He then notes immediately that this formulation will be rejected by at least three groups in modern society. First, those who believe that there are good witches as well, or as Mr Hutton call them, 'service magicians.' Granny Weatherwax and her colleagues in Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' books are service magicians. They act as midwives, provide herbal medicine, and protect against supernatural intruders, elves, fairies and worse. [The other two groups are small in number and insignificant.]"

Terry Pratchett
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett
(c) "While belief in witches (as defined academically) is all but universal across the world, Mr Hutton observes, it's surprisingly variable. * * * Belief often remains strong to this day, with outbreaks of panic and repression in many places, notably South Africa and Central America. * * * The root cause of belief in witches may well be a reluctance to believe that misfortune just comes by chance. When something bad happens, someone must have done it, someone who can be blamed. This impulse gets worse in times of stress, but ut needs an element of prevbelief to focus on."

choi

(d) "The Old Testament shows little interest in witches -- apart from the Witch of Endor in 1 Samuel -- and even the famous verse from Exodus 22, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,' may be a mistranslation. What it was recommending was probably not death but exile from the community."  
(i) Witch of Endor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_of_Endor
(was a woman who summoned the prophet Samuel's spirit, at the demand of King Saul of the Kingdom of Israel in the First Book of Samuel, chapter 28: 3–25)
(ii)
(A) suffer (vt):
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suffer
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/suffer
(B) suffer fools gladly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffer_fools_gladly

(e) The WSJ book review continues from the very end of (d): "By contrast, ancient Rome was witch-obsessed, with early records of mass executions, for, as Roman administrator Pliny wrote, 'nobody [sic; should be capitalized N] is unafraid of falling victim to an evil spell.' Christianity, however, long remained rather tolerant. The great theologian and saint Thomas Aquinas held that harmful magic was the work of demons, but popes and bishops for centuries showed no great zeal in rooting out its practitioners.  Things changed rather suddenly, and Mr Hutton pins the place and time down to the 1420s, in the alps and Pyrenees. [The 2-sentence explanation in the review is not convincing.]"
(i) Pliny the Elder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Elder
(23-79)
(ii) Thomas Aquinas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas
(1225 – 1274; Italian; The name Aquinas identifies his ancestral origins in the county of Aquino in present-day Lazio)
(iii) Pyrenees
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrenees
highest peak  Aneto (elevation 3,404 m); section 1 Etymology)

(f) "Whatever the combination, the result was centuries of witch-burning, from 1424 to a final case in Switzerland in 1782, causing some 40,000 to 60,000 deaths in Europe, some of them concentrated in the decades from 1560 to 1640.  National statistics are patchy. England, with a strict and skeptical legal system, accounted for about 500. Lowland Scotland was far more dangerous. Highland Scotland and Ireland -- where fairies were the danger, not witches -- were almost unaffected. Much depends on local beliefs onto which inquisitors could hook accusations. * * * Torturers told the victims what to confess ro and forced them to accuse their neighbors.  And then it stopped ['spontaneously (at least on the official level)' in Europe].  What, one wonders, took away the fear and turned witches into Halloween playtime? Whatever it was, we can be grateful for it."

confess (vt and vi): "(vi) ADMIT, OWN <confess to a crime>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/confess

two examples in Oxforddictionaries.com: he confessed to a lifelong passion for food; he gave himself up [to the authority] after confessing to a priest