ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to redress the historiographical balance by assessing the impact of demonology on witch-trials in the German territory of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, using the records of the twenty-eight cases involving accusations, allegations, and self-confessions of witchcraft that were tried by the Rothenburg city council, in its capacity as the highest criminal court of the territory, between 1561 and 1709. In several cases, allegations of witchcraft were prosecuted as slander and it was the accuser, not the supposed witch, who was punished. Due legal procedure in Rothenburg meant adherence to the Carolina, the imperial criminal law code of 1532 which defined witchcraft as harmful magic and made no mention of demonic pacts or any other elements of the newly elaborated concept of witchcraft as a heretical conspiracy. Walther thus followed Francisci in adopting a more extreme spiritualized definition of witchcraft in the first half of his Consilium.
