ABSTRACT
The documents included in this collection describe European beliefs regarding witchcraft and record the trials of individuals for allegedly engaging in this activity. Most of the texts were written between 1400 and 1750, when European secular and ecclesiastical courts tried and executed tens of thousands of people for the crime of witchcraft. This collection also includes several texts that were written in ancient and medieval times. The witch beliefs and magical practices of those earlier chronological periods deserve to be studied in their own right, but in this collection they are included mainly because of their relevance to the later prosecutions. The only document written after 1750 is a twentieth-century drama regarding a case of witchcraft that took place in the late sixteenth century.
