ABSTRACT
D URING THE last half-century or so, scholars have produced a virtual plethora of studies of the phenomenon of the witch trials that swept like wildfire across Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. To some degree this outpouring of scholarly interest may have been inspired by some frightening similarities between the witch craze and the scapegoating that was so prominent in the Nazi Holocaust. But scholars no doubt have likewise been inspired by what is simply a fascinating historical puzzle-how it could be that at the height of the Renaissance. in the wake of the Reformation, a maniacal medieval system such as the witch trials could emerge, become dominant for two centuries, and then fade from the scene almost totally?
