ABSTRACT
Study of witchcraft, and of the demons who activated it, were at the cutting edge of an expanding and sophisticated area of research in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the concept of witchcraft was formulated in a way that would enable witch-hunting to spread. Rejection of witchcraft belief, by contrast, would have threatened some of the foundations of orthodox Christianity as demonologists often pointed out. With such debates, demonology thus became a field of expanding intellectual enquiry. Intellectual demons also entered the imaginations of orthodox thinkers through the Renaissance scholarly movement known as Neoplatonism. However, the intellectuals' theory of how witchcraft was identified relied on preternatural feats accomplished by demons, not on village quarrels. Witches had remarkable powers. They could accomplish amazing feats that were hard to explain by ordinary understandings of the natural world or so said the demonologists. Demonologists described witches working at the sabbat to prepare ointments or powders for future malefices.
