ABSTRACT
Demonology’s confessional regime had two sides, one practical and the other theoretical. Moreover, witchcraft trials and witchcraft theory worked in tandem: the former functioned as an elaborate machinery for generating confession while the latter disseminated and interpreted witches’ confessions from trials. With the Old Testament’s injunctions against witchcraft thus functioning as a kind of master-source, Jean Bodin constituted his dossier of evidence documenting witchcraft through the ages along with a practical ‘how to’ manual for prosecutors. Bodin for his part acknowledges that the crimes committed by witches seemed fantastic: ‘Often judges are puzzled by the confessions of witches and are reluctant to base a sentence on them, given the strange things that they confess, because some think that they are telling fables.’ The chapter relates the experiences of a ‘friend’ who received the gift of prophecy, but it is not difficult to see that this is a largely transparent conceit for relating an autobiographical account of Bodin’s own experiences.
