ABSTRACT
Although writing in Switzerland, one of the epicentres of the early modern witch-hunt, Ludwig Lavater did not focus on witchcraft a subject treated very marginally in his treatise perhaps because the witch-craze that inflamed that region started only in the early 1580s. Nevertheless, his treatise soon became very influential and came to be quoted by numerous authors writing on witchcraft in the following decades. The treatise displays continuity with Lavater's previous writings, which all served clear pastoral and devotional aims. These are of course not the only influences of Lavater's treatise and interestingly enough, none of these authors is ever mentioned again in the text, although Lavater quotes them now and then without acknowledging the details of each borrowing. Lavater's scepticism is strongest in the first part of his treatise when he discards everything that is not a real angelic or demonic apparition and specifically targets the machinations of the Catholic clergy bent on extorting money from their credulous flock.
