ABSTRACT
Before the sixteenth-century and the outbreak of the great witch craze, documentation illustrating the history of European witchcraft is rare. Yet, among extant sources from the late-medieval and early Renaissance period are the sermons of Franciscan friar Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444). Bernardino was one of the most successful and most influential popular preachers of the century, and his sermons shed much light on this whole realm of European lived, daily experience. In this study I will examine some of the most important witch-related pages in the Bernardino sermon corpus that summarize his involvement in what he describes as a sensational witch trial held in the city of Rome, most likely in the year 1426. I shall also include in my examination five other fifteenth-century sources (Italian, German, and Swiss) which mention the trial, thereby testifying to the notoriety of this episode in the early history of the European witch hunts. 1
