ABSTRACT
It is not surprising that the history of witchcraft should have attracted considerable attention.1 Nor is it difficult to see why such a subject should have aroused so much emotion in those who studied it. Trials for witchcraft contain much that is brutal, much that is sexually perverted, and much that seems at first sight either ludicrous or fantastic. There are disagreements among authorities over all the fundamental problems concerning the history of this phenomenon: when witchcraft accusations and beliefs began and ended; what caused the apparent increase of accusations during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Europe; what led to the apparent decline in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; whether there really were ‘witches’; whether any particular group of people can be held responsible for the prosecutions and beliefs. Among the subjects upon which there is most disagreement, although this is usually implicit rather than explicit, are the very terms ‘witchcraft’ and ‘sorcery’. Since many subsequent arguments have arisen from divergence of definitions, it is important to state as early as possible the meaning ascribed to various words.
