ABSTRACT
Historical studies of European witchcraft have been remarkably quiet concerning the impact of urbanization on the structure of magical beliefs and practices. The work which has been done on witchcraft in urban areas of early modern Europe does suggest, however, that this would be a fruitful area for future study. Ruth Martin, for example, in her work on Venice, found an absence of “traditional” maleficium associated with agricultural production. She also noted that much witchcraft activity centred instead “on the main commodity of interest to an urban and a commercial society—money.” 1 Jens Christian Johansen also found that in Danish towns, witches were more often accused of bewitching trade and business than in rural areas. There was also less agriculturally related witchcraft. Rural witches, for example, were charged with souring milk three times as often as urban witches. 2 What these brief observations indicate is that the urban environment does seem to have had an effect on the nature of witchcraft accusations. This encourages one to look more closely at the possibility that as urban societies expanded and underwent profound economic and social change, so this also wrought equally profound transformations in the structure of witchcraft accusations and beliefs.
