ABSTRACT

This book approaches witchcraft and demonology through literary records. The works discussed deal with the contemporary theories propounded by those who sought either to justify, or to refute persecution. Eight contributors of differing interests,a nd with different approaches to their subject, examine a selection of important, representative witchcraft texts – published in England, France, Germany, Italy and America – setting them within their intellectual context and analysing both their style and argument.

chapter |31 pages

Evident Authority and Authoritative Evidence

The Malleus Maleficarum

chapter |21 pages

Witchcraft and Magic in Renaissance Italy

Gianfrancesco Pico and his Strix

chapter |23 pages

Johann Weyer's De Praestigiis Daemonum

Unsystematic Psychopathology

chapter |30 pages

Jean Bodin's De La DÉmonomanie Des Sorciers

The Logic of Persecution

chapter |34 pages

Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft

Scepticism and Sadduceeism

chapter |16 pages

A Tudor Anthropologist

George Gifford's Discourse and Dialogue

chapter |26 pages

King James's Daemonologie

Witchcraft and Kingship

chapter |25 pages

Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World

Some Metamorphoses of Salem Witchcraft

chapter |19 pages

Two Late Scottish Witchcraft Tracts

Witch, Craft Proven and the Tryal of Witchcraft

chapter |2 pages

Epilogue

The Desiderata of Disbelief