Witchcraft in Europe 400-1700: A Documentary History (Middle Ages Series)

About this book

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book for 2001 The highly-acclaimed first edition of this book chronicled the rise and fall of witchcraft in Europe between the twelfth and the end of the seventeenth centuries. Now greatly expanded the classic anthology of contemporary texts reexamines the phenomenon of witchcraft taking into account the remarkable scholarship since the books publication almost thirty years ago. Spanning the period from 400 to 1700 the second edition of Witchcraft in Europe assembles nearly twice as many primary documents as the first many newly translated along with new illustrations that trace the development of witch-beliefs from late Mediterranean antiquity through the Enlightenment. Trial records inquisitors reports eyewitness statements and witches confessions along with striking contemporary illustrations depicting the career of the Devil and his works testify to the hundreds of years of terror that enslaved an entire continent. Thomas Aquinas Martin Luther Thomas Hobbes and other thinkers are quoted at length in order to determine the intellectual perceptual and legal processes by which "folklore" was transformed into systematic demonology and persecution. Together with explanatory notes introductory essayswhich have been revised to reflect current researchand a new bibliography the documents gathered in Witchcraft in Europe vividly illumine the dark side of the European mind.