In the same 1972 article mentioned earlier, Nelson argues that the early medieval church’s “tolerance” was largely a matter of institutional limits:
“It seems to me misleading to characterize [the Church’s] earlier attitude as ’relatively liberal’. Without adequate central co-ordination, internal organization or infrastructure, the early medieval Church had no alternative but to accommodate with regard to what our French colleagues term phenomenes folkloriques . It was only with the organization of rural parishes, in few areas effective before the tenth century, that the Church really got to grips with pagan survivals in the countryside. One significant index of a new offensive can be seen in the Church’s attitude to witchcraft and sorcery, which I suspect
were very widely-used instruments of social control in the early middle ages. The Church now asserted a monopoly of such instruments, identified witchcraft with heresy and later mobilized the Inquisition against both.”
