ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the connections between the performance of harmful magic and demonology developed across the medieval centuries, as an essential basis for understanding how various components of the collective concept of witchcraft functioned during the witch hunts of the early modern period. The fully developed idea of diabolical, conspiratorial witchcraft that framed most of the major European witch trials, however, only emerged in the fifteenth century. Church law stressed the demonic elements of magic in general and witchcraft in particular far more than secular law codes. William of Auvergne was one of the most important figures in the development of scholastic demonology. Throughout the Middle Ages, Christian authorities linked most forms of magic to the demonic. Early medieval law codes certainly allowed for strict penalties, up to and including the death sentence for the performance of harmful magic, but they also expressed some skepticism about certain popular ideas of what might constitute “witchcraft.”
