Not long ago, a historian lamented that the more we learn about malefic witchcraft, diabolism, and its prosecution, the harder it becomes to generalize about it. What was the relationship between sorcery and popular Christianity? To what extent was “witchcraft” the projection of societal anxieties and stereotypes? Even today, after many decades of scholarly research and analysis, perhaps the only point of universal agreement is that no single explanation fully grasps the phenomena of European witch belief and persecution in all their multifaceted diversity. This course is designed to familiarize students with the main contours of witch belief, magical practice, and the prosecution of malefice as they evolved on the European continent from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. It is organized around a series of debates over the origins, causes, and characteristics of witch-persecution—beginning with debates over the very character of witchcraft as a historical phenomenon.  As we will see, the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century persecutions of witchcraft reflected a series of changes in European society, culture, and politics—including changes in relationships between “popular” and “learned” religion; the formation of the modern state and the rise of “social discipline”; changes in assumptions about the nature of gender and the formation of modern patriarchy; and so on. Again, the primary emphasis will be on central Europe, where most of the witch trials took place, but students should not think of this focus as a constraint on their own interests.

Course Outline
Course Readings
Course Objectives
Requirements
Evaluation
Suggestions for Paper Topics

Why does the historical study of witchcraft matter today?

Research Guides:

• The History of Witchcraft: A Research Guide
• Witchcraft and Witch-Hunting in Europe and America (Jason Coy, College of Charleston)
• Historicum.net: Hexenforschung (in German)

Primary Source Collections:

• Early Modern Europe: The Witch Hunts (Hannover College, Internet Archive of Texts and Documents)
• Witchcraft Documents, 15th Century (Internet Medieval History Sourcebook)
• The On-Line Malleus Maleficarum (1487)
  
• Lorraine Witchcraft Trials (in English)
• The Cornell University Witchcraft Collection: Digital Witchdraft Collection (Cornell University Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections)
• Project Gutenberg: Witchcraft Bookshelf
• Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project (University of Virginia)

  Databases & Digital History Projects:

• Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database (University of Edinburgh)
• Witches in Early Modern England: A Digital Humanities Project for Unveiling Witchcraft Narratives (Kristen C. Uszkalo)

  Bibliographies:

• The Witchcraft Bibliography Project
• Arbeitskreis Interdisziplinäre Hexenforschung (AKIH), Literaturhinweise (in German)
• Allgemeine Bibliographie zu Hexenprozessen (Hexenprozesse in Kurmainz) (in German)

  Published Source Collections:

• E. William Monter, ed., European Witchcraft (New York: Wiley, 1969)
• Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters, eds., Witchcraft in Europe, 1100-1700: A Documentary History, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001)
• Barbara Rosen, ed., Witchcraft in England, 1558-1618, 2nd ed. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991)
• Witches and Witch-Hunters: A Reprint of A Treatise of Witchcraft (Wakefield: S.R. Publishers, 1971)
• Marion Gibson, ed., Early Modern Witches: Witchcraft Cases in Contemporary Writing (New York: Routledge, 2000)
• Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts, eds., Witchcraft in Early Modern Scottland (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000)
• James Sharpe and Richard M. Golden, eds., English Witchcraft, 1560-1736, 6 vols. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2003)
• Brian P. Levack, ed., The Witchcraft Sourcebook, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2004)
  
  
  

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  Department of History