Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WITCHCRAFT

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WITCHCRAFT

THE WESTERN TRADITION

Volume 1, A–D

Richard M. Golden, Editor

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Copyright 2006 by ABC-CLIO

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CONTENTS

Editor and Editorial Board xiiiContributors xvForeword xxv

Acknowledgments xxxiIntroduction xxxiii

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WITCHCRAFT:THE WESTERN TRADITION

Aberdeen WitchesAcculturation ThesisAccusationsAccusatorial ProcedureAcquittalsAdy, ThomasAffair of the Poisons (1679–1682)Africa (Sub-Saharan)Age of Accused WitchesAgobard of Lyons (ca. 779–840)Agrarian CrisesAgrippa von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius

(1486–1535)Aitken, MargaretAix-en-Provence NunsAlbizzi, Francesco (1593–1684)AlchemyAlciati, Andrea (1492–1550)AllotriophagyAlsaceAmsterdamAmulet and TalismanAnabaptistsAngelsAnhorn, Bartholomäus (1616–1700)AnimalsAnimistic and Magical ThinkingAnthropologyAntichristApocalypseAppealsApuleius of Madaura (b. ca. 125; fl. ca 155–60)Aquinas, St. Thomas (ca. 1225–1274)

AragonArdennesArrasArt and Visual ImagesAstrologyAugsburg, Imperial Free City ofAugsburg, Prince-Bishopric ofAugustine, St. (354–430)AustriaAustrian Western TerritoriesAuxonne Nuns (1658–1663)AvignonBaden, Margravate ofBaldung [Grien], Hans (1484–1545)Balearic IslandsBalkans (Western and Central)Bamberg, Prince-Bishopric ofBaphometBar, Duchy ofBaranowski, Bogdan (1915–1993)Basel, Council ofBasque CountryBavaria, Duchy ofBavarian War of the WitchesBaxter, Richard (1615–1691)Behringer, Wolfgang (1956– )Bekker, Balthasar (1634–1698)BenandantiBenevento, Walnut Tree ofBerkeley, Witch ofBermudaBernardino of Siena (1380–1444)Bérulle, Pierre de (1575–1629)

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BewitchmentBibleBibliomancyBilson BoyBinsfeld, Peter (1546–1598)Black MassBlackstone, William (1723–1780)BlåkullaBloodBodin, Jean (1529/1530–1596)Body of the WitchBoguet, Henri (ca. 1550–1619)Bohemia, Kingdom ofBohuslänBooksBordelon, Laurent (1653–1710)Borromeo, St. Carlo (1538–1584)Boucher, Jean (1548–1644)Bovet, RichardBrandenburg, Electorate ofBrazilBrenz, Johann (1499–1570)Breu, Jörg the Elder (1480–1537)Brochmand, Jesper Rasmussen (1582–1652)Brossier, Marthe (ca. 1573–?)Brueghel, Pieter the Elder (1525–1569)Buirmann, Franz (ca. 1590–ca. 1667)Bullinger, Heinrich (1504–1575)Burchard of Worms (ca. 965–1025)Burgundy, Duchy ofBurning TimesBurr, George Lincoln (1857–1938)Burton, Boy of (Thomas Darling, ca. 1584–?)Caesanus of Arles (470-71–543)Cagnazzo, Giovanni of Taggia (or Tabia)

(ca. 1450–ca. 1520)Calvin, John (1509–1564)Cambrai Nuns (1491) Campanella, Tommaso (1568–1639)Canisius, St. Peter (1521–1597)CannibalismCanon EpiscopiCapitalism Cardano, Girolamo (1501–1576)Caro Baroja, Julio (1914–1995)Carolina Code (Constitio Criminalis Carolina)Carpi, Possession in a Poor Claire’s ConventCarpzov, Benedict (II) (1595–1666) Casaubon, Meric (1599–1671) Cassini (Cassinis), Samuel de (ca. 1450–post 1510)Castañega, Martín deCats

CaulCauldronCelestina, La (1499)Cervantes (Saavedra), Miguel de (1547–1616)Cesalpino, Andrea (1519–1603)Channel IslandsCharmsChesapeake Children Christian IV (1577–1648)Chronology of Witchcraft TrialsCirceCiruelo, Pedro (1470–1548) Clark, StuartClergyClerical MagicCobham, Eleanor (ca. 1400–1452)CologneCommunal Persecution ConfessionsConfessorsConfiscations of Witches’ PropertyConrad of Marburg (ca. 1180–1233)Contemporary Witchcraft (Post 1800)Contraries, ContrarietyContzen, Adam, SJ (1571–1635)Convent CasesCooper, ThomasCorporeality, Angelic and DemonicCoton, Pierre (1564–1626)Cotta, John (ca. 1575–1650)CountermagicCourts, EcclesiasticalCourts, InquisitorialCourts, SecularCranach, Lucas (1472–1553)Crespet, Pierre (1543–1594)Crimen ExceptumCroatiaCrossroadsCunning FolkCunning Folk’s ManualsCursesD’Anania, Giovanni Lorenzo (ca. 1545–ca. 1608)Daneau, Lambert (ca.1530–1595)Danzig (Gdańsk)Darrell, John (1562–?)Dauphiné, Witchcraft Trials inDeception and MagicDecline of the Witch HuntsDee, John (1527–1608/1609)Defixiones

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Defoe, Daniel (1660–1731)Del Rio, Martín (1551–1608)Della Porta, Giambattista (ca. 1535–1615)DemonologyDemonsDenmarkDescartes, René (1596–1650)DevilDevil BooksDevil’s MarkDiabolismDiana (Artemis)Dionysus (Bacchus)Discernment of SpiritsDiseaseDivinationDodo, Vincente (late 15th–early 16th century)DogsDominican OrderDouglas, Mary (1921–)Drama, DutchDrama, ItalianDrama, SpanishDrugs and HallucinogensDuhr, Bernhard (1852–1930)Dürer, Albrecht (1471–1528)Duval, André (1564–1638)Ecclesiastical Territories (Holy Roman Empire)Eichstätt, Prince-Bishopric ofEllwangen, Prince-Abbey ofEndor, Witch ofEnglandEnlightenment“Enormous” CrimesEpiscopal JusticeErasmus, Desiderius (ca.1467–1536)Erastus, Thomas (1524–1583)ErgotismErrores GazariorumEssexEstoniaEthnologyEugenius IV (1383–1447; pope, 1431–1447)Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. (1902–1973)EveEvidenceEvil EyeExecutionersExecutionsExeter WitchesExodus 22:18 (22:17)Exorcism

Experiments and TestsEymeric, Nicolas (ca.1320–1399)Fairfax, Edward (d. 1635)FairiesFamiliarsFamilyFamily of LoveFaust, Johann Georg (ca. 1480–1540)Faversham WitchesFearFemale WitchesFeminismFerdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor (1578–1637,

ruled 1619–1637)Ferdinand of Cologne (Wittelsbach, 1577–1650)Ferrer, Dominga (“La Coja”) Fertility CultsFéry, Jeanne (1584)Feugeyron, PonceFilm (Cinema)Filmer, Sir Robert (ca. 1588–1653)FinlandFischart, Johann (1546–1590)Flade, Dietrich (1534–1589)Flight of WitchesFolkloreFourier, St. Pierre (1564–1641)FranceFranche-ComtéFrancken II, Frans (1585–1624) Fredegunde (ca. 545–597)Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939)Freude, Michael (ca. 1620–1692) Frey, Bernhard, SJ (1609/1610–1685)Freya (Freyja)Frisius, Paulus (ca. 1555–?)Fründ, Hans (ca. 1400–1469)Fugger FamilyFulda, Prince-Abbey ofGappit, PerrissonaGassendi, Pierre (1592–1655)Gassner, Johann Joseph (1727–1779)Gastaldo, Giovanni Tommaso (d. 1655)Gaule, John (ca. 1604–1687)Geiler von Kaysersberg, Johann (1455–1510)GenderGenevaGeography of the Witch HuntsGermanyGermany, Northeastern Germany, SoutheasternGermany, Southwestern

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Germany, West and NorthwestGerson, Jean (1363–1429)Gesualdo, Carlo (1566–1613)Gheyn II, Jacques de (1565–1629)GhostsGifford, George (d. 1620)Ginzburg, Carlo (1939– )Girard, Jean-Baptiste (1680–1733)Glanvill, Joseph (1636–1680)GoatGoedelmann, Johann Georg (1559–1611)Goldast, Melchior (1578–1635)Göldi, Anna (1734–1782)Golser, Georg (ca. 1420–1489)Goodwin Children (1688)Goya y Lucientes, Francisco José de (1746–1828)Graeter, Jacob (1547–1611)Gratian (fl. 1130–1150) Graubünden (Grisons), Canton ofGreek Magical PapyriGregory IX, Pope (1170–1241; pope, 1227–1241)Gregory of Valencia (1549–1603)Gretser, Jacob, SJ (1562–1625)Grillando (Grillandus), Paolo (Paulus) (1st half

16th century)Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863)GrimoiresGuazzo, Francesco MariaGui, Bernard (ca. 1261–1331)Gunter, Anne (1584–16??)HairHale, Sir Matthew (1609–1676)HalloweenHamburg and BremenHand of GloryHansen, Joseph (1862–1943)Hartlieb, Johann (ca. 1410–1468)HatHauber, Eberhard David (1695–1765)Hausmännin, Walpurga (ca. 1510/1527–1587)HecateHellHemlockHemmingsen, Niels (1513–1600)Henningsen, Gustav (1934–)Hepstein, JohannHerbal MedicineHeresyHermeticismHermogenesHesseHistoriography

Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679)Hogarth, William (1697–1764) Hohenems, Ferdinand Karl Franz von,

Count of Vaduz (1650–1686)HoldaHolinessHolt, Sir John (1642–1710)Holy Roman EmpireHomerHomosexuality HonorHoogstraten, Jacob van (1465–1527)Hopkins, Matthew (d. 1647)Horace (65–8 B.C.E.)Hovaeus, Antonius (Anton van Hove) (d. 1568) HungaryHungary and Southeastern Europe, MagicHungary and Southeastern Europe, WitchcraftHussites Hutchinson, Francis (1660–1739)IcelandIdentification of WitchesIdolatryImage MagicImagination Imperial Free CitiesImpotence, SexualIncubus and SuccubusIndiculus Superstitionum et PaganiarumInfanticideIngolstadt, University ofInnocent VIII, Pope (1432–1492)InnsbruckInquisition, MedievalInquisition, PortugueseInquisition, Roman Inquisition, SpanishInquisition, VenetianInquisitorial ProcedureInvocationsIrelandIsidore of Seville, St. (ca. 560–636)Islamic Witchcraft and MagicIsolani, Isidoro (1475–ca. 1528)ItalyJacquier, Nicolas (ca. 1400–1472)JailersJames VI and I, King of Scotland and England

(1566–1625)Jesuits (Society of Jesus) JesusJews, Witchcraft, and Magic

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Joan of Arc (ca. 1412–1431)John of Salisbury (ca. 1115–1180)John XXII, Pope (ruled 1316–1334)Jonctys, Daniel (1611–1654)Jordanaeus, Johannes (d. 1650)Jorden, Edward (1569–1632)Joris, David (ca. 1501–1556)Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (1741–1790;

ruled 1765–1790)Junius, Johannes (1573–1628)KabbalahKempten, Prince-Abbey ofKepler, Johannes (1571–1630)Kiss of ShameKramer (Institoris), Heinrich (ca. 1430–1505)Kyteler, Alice (ca. 1260/1265–after 1324)Lambe, Dr. John (ca. 1545–1628)LamiaLamothe-Langon, Etienne-Léon de (1786–1852)Lancashire WitchesLancre, Pierre de (1533–1630)Langton, Walter (d. 1321)LanguedocLaplandLarner, Christina (1934–1983)Latvia Lausanne, Diocese of (Fifteenth Century)Laws on Witchcraft (Ancient)Laws on Witchcraft (Early Modern)Laws on Witchcraft (Medieval)LawyersLayenspiegel (1509)Laymann, Paul (1574–1635)Le Franc, Martin (1410–1461)Lea, Henry Charles (1825–1909)Lemnius, Levinus (1505–1568)Levack, Brian (1943–) LilithLille NunsLippe, County ofLiteratureLithuania, Grand Duchy ofLittle Ice AgeLiving SaintsLöher, Herman (1595–1678)Loos, Cornelius (1540 to 1546–1596?)Lord’s PrayerLorraine, Duchy ofLoudun NunsLouviers Nuns Love Magic Lowes, John (ca. 1565–1645)

Luther, Martin (1483–1546)Luxembourg, Duchy ofLycanthropyLynchingMacfarlane, Alan (1941–)MachiavellianismMackenzie, Sir George (ca. 1636–1691)Maffei, Scipione (1675–1755)Magic and ReligionMagic CircleMagic, LearnedMagic, NaturalMagic, PopularMagnus, Olaus (1490–1557)Mainz, Electorate ofMaldonado, Juan (1534–1583)Male WitchesMaleficiumMalinowski, Bronislaw Kasper (1884–1942)Malleus MaleficarumMaltaMandrakeMandrou, Robert (1921–1984)ManichaeismMarchtal, Imperial Abbey ofMaria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress

(1717–1780; ruled 1740–1780)Mary, the VirginMather, Cotton (1663–1728)Mather, Increase (1639–1723)Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria (1573–1651, ruled

1597–1651)Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (1459–1519,

ruled 1486/1493–1519)Mechanical PhilosophyMecklenburg, Duchy ofMedeaMeder, David (1545–1616)Medicine and Medical TheoryMelancholyMenghi, Girolamo (1529–1609)MennonitesMental IllnessMergentheim, Ecclesiastical Territory ofMerlinMetamorphosisMeyfart (Meyfahrt), Johann Matthäus (1590–1642)Michelet, Jules (1798–1874)Midelfort, H. C. Erik (1942–)Midsummer EveMidwivesMilan

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MilkMillenarianismMiller, Arthur (1915–2005)MiraclesMisconceptions about the Witch HuntsMöden, Johann (Jan) (ca. 1590s–1663)ModenaMolitor, Ulrich (1442–1508)MonstersMontaigne, Michel de (1533–1592)Monter, William (1936–)MoonMora WitchesMoraviaMore, Henry (1614–1687)MosesMotherhoodMountains and the Origins of WitchcraftMoura, Manuel Vale de (d. 1650)Muchembled, Robert (1944–)Münster, Prince-Bishopric ofMuratori, Ludovico Antonio (1672–1750)Murray, Margaret Alice (1863–1963)MusicNaples, Kingdom ofNassau-Saarbrücken, County ofNative AmericansNazi Interest in Witch PersecutionNecromancyNetherlands, NorthernNetherlands, SouthernNew EnglandNew FranceNew GranadaNew SpainNewbury Witch (1643)Nider, Johannes (ca. 1380–1438)Night Witch, or Night Hag NightmaresNightshadeNodé, PierreNördlingen, Imperial Free CityNormandy North Berwick WitchesNorwayNumber of WitchesNuremberg, Imperial Free CityNuss, Balthasar (1545–1618)Obry, Nicole (ca. 1550–?)OccultOffenburg, Imperial Free CityOintments

Opera OraclesOrdealOrigins of the Witch HuntsOrthodox ChristianityOsborne, John and Ruth (1751)Osnabrück, Bishopric ofOverbury, Sir Thomas (1581–1613)Oxford and Cambridge UniversitiesPact with the DevilPaderborn, Prince-Bishopric ofPalatinate, Electorate ofPalingh, Abraham (1588/1589–1682)Pamphlets and NewspapersPanPanicsPapacy and Papal BullsPappenheimer Family (1600)Paracelsus, Theophrastus Bombastus von

Hohenheim (ca. 1493–1541)Paris, University of Parlement of ParisPaulus, Nikolaus (1853–1930)Pedersdotter, Anna (1590)Peña, Francisco (ca. 1540–1612) People of the Night (Nachtvolk)Perkins, William (1558–1602)Perreaud, François (1572/1577–1657)Personality of WitchesPeruPeter of Bern (fl. ca. 1400)Pfalz-Zweibrücken, Duchy ofPico Della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco (ca. 1469–1533)PiedmontPiperno, PietroPittenweem WitchesPlaguePlantsch, Martin (ca. 1460–1533/1535)Pleier (Pleyer, Bleier), Cornelius (1595–16??)PoisonPolandPoltergeist Pomponazzi, Pietro (1462–1525)Ponzinibio, Giovanni Francesco/Gianfrancesco

(first half of the sixteenth century)Popular Beliefs in WitchesPopular Persecution PortugalPossession, DemonicPotions PoznańPrätorius, Anton (1560–1613)

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Prätorius, Johannes (1630–1680)Pricking of Suspected WitchesPrierias, Silvestro (ca. 1456/1457–ca. 1527)ProdigiesProof, Problem ofProtestant ReformationPrussiaPsychoanalysis PuritanismQuakersRabanus Maurus (ca. 780–856)Raemond, Florimond de (1540–1601)Rais, Gilles de (1404–1440)Ranfaing, Elisabeth de (1592–1649)Rategno, Bernardo of Como (d.–1510)RebelsReichshofrat (Imperial Aulic Court)Reichskammergericht (Imperial Chamber Court) Rémy, Nicolas (ca. 1530–1612) Renaissance Drama, EnglandRevenantsRiezler, Sigmund (1843–1927)Rings, MagicalRitual MagicRitual MurderRobbins, Rossell Hope (1912–1990)Roman Catholic Church Roman LawRosa, Salvator (1615–1673)Royal HealingRudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor (1552–1612)Rural WitchcraftRussiaSaar RegionSabbatSacraments and SacramentalsSaftleven, Cornelis (1607–1681)Salazar Frías, Alonso de (1564–1636)SalemSalzburg, Prince-Archbishopric ofSancta Clara, Abraham a (1644–1709)SatanismSattler, Gottfried (ca. 1569–1613)SaturnSavoy, Duchy ofSaxony, Electorate ofScapegoatsSchleswig-Holstein, Duchies ofSchultheiss, Heinrich von (ca. 1580–ca. 1646)Science and MagicScot, Reginald (1538?–1599)Scotland

Scott, Sir Walter (1771–1832)Scribonius, Wilhelm Adolf (ca. 1550–1600)ScryingSexual Activity, DiabolicShakespeare, William (1564–1616)ShamanismSherwood, Grace (ca. 1651–1740)SicilySienese New StateSight, Powers of (Second Sight)SilesiaSimon, Jordan (1719–1776)Simon MagusŠindelár, Bedřich (1917–1996)Sinistrar, Ludovico Maria (1632–1701)SkepticismSlanderSlovakiaSloveniaSocial and Economic Status of WitchesSocial ControlSoldan, Wilhelm Gottlieb (1803–1869)Somerset WitchesSorcerySources for Witchcraft TrialsSpainSpanish AmericaSpectral EvidenceSpee, Friedrich (1591–1635)SpellsSpidersSpina, Alphonso (Alphonsus, Alfonso) de

(d. ca. 1491)Spina, Bartolomeo della (1475/1479–1546)St. Maximin, Prince-Abbey ofSt. Osyth Witches (1582)Stearne, John (d. 1671)Sterzinger, Ferdinand (1721–1786)SticksStoeckhlin, Chonrad (1549–1587)Strasbourg, Diocese ofStrix, Striga, StriaSuicideSummers, Montague (1880–1948)SuperstitionSwedenSwieten, Gerard van (1700–1772)Swimming TestSwitzerlandSympathyTáltosTanner, Adam (1572–1632)

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Tartarotti, Girolamo (1706–1761)Tasso, Torquato (1544–1595)TearsTemplarsTeniers, David the Younger (1610–1690)TheophilusTholosan, Claude (d. ca. 1450) Thomas, Keith (1933–)Thomasius, Christian (1655–1728)Thorndike, Lynn (1882–1965) ThothThumm, Theodor (1586–1630)ThuringiaThyraeus (Thrace), Petrus (1546–1601)Tinctor, Johann (ca. 1405/1410–1469)ToadsTodi, Witch of (1428)Torrenté, Ulric de (d. 1444/1445)TortureTostado, Alonso (d. 1455) Trevor-Roper, Hugh (Lord Dacre of

Glanton, 1914–2003)TrialsTrier, Electorate ofTrithemius, Johannes (1463–1516)Tyrol, County ofUkraine, WitchcraftUkraine, Witchcraft TrialsUniversitiesUrban VIII, Pope (1568–1644)Urban WitchcraftVaduz, County ofValaisValencia, Pedro de (1555–1620)Vallées, Marie des (1590–1656) VampireVaud, Pays deVaudois (Waldensians)Veronika of Desenice (d. 1425/1428) VervainVicente, JoanViennaVinet, Jean (Vineti, Johannes)(d. ca. 1470)

Vintler, Hans (d. 1419)Visconti, Girolamo (Hieronymus Vicecomes)

(d. ca. 1478)Visions Voltaire (1694–1778)Vorarlberg Wagstaffe, John (1633–1677)Walpurgis (Walpurigs) NightWann, Paulus (ca. 1420–1489)Warboys, Witches of (1593)WarfareWars of Religion (France)Watching and WalkingWater, Holy Weather MagicWebster, John (1610–1682)Wenham, JaneWesley, John (1703–1791)Westerstetten, Johann Christoph von

(1563–1637)Weyer, Johann (1515–1588)Wiesensteig Wilhelm V “the Pious,” Duke of Bavaria

(1548–1626, ruled 1579–1597)William V, Duke of Cleves (1539–1592)Wind KnotsWinter, Anton (d. 1633-1634) Witch and Witchcraft, Definitions ofWitch CrazeWitch FindersWitch HuntsWitch Hunts, Modern Political UsageWitch-Bishops (Holy Roman Empire)Witch’s MarkWitekind, Hermann (1521/1522–1603)Witnesses Words, Power ofWürttemberg, Duchy of Würzburg, Prince-Bishopric ofYates, Frances Amelia (1899–1981)Ziarnko, Jan (ca. 1575–ca. 1628)Zugurramurdi, Witches of

Index I–1

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EditorDr. Richard M. GoldenProfessor of HistoryDirector, Jewish Studies ProgramUniversity of North TexasDenton, Texas

Wolfgang BehringerProfessor and Chair in Early Modern HistoryHistorisches InstitutUniversität des SaarlandesSaarbrückenGermany

Gustav HenningsenResearch DirectorDanish Folklore ArchivesCopenhagenDenmark

Brian LevackJohn E. Green Regents Professor in HistoryDepartment of HistoryUniversity of TexasAustin, TX

William MonterProfessorDepartment of HistoryNorthwestern UniversityEvanston, IL

James SharpeProfessorDepartment of HistoryUniversity of YorkYorkUnited Kingdom

Mary Wiesner-HanksProfessorDepartment of HistoryUniversity of Wisconsin at MilwaukeeMilwaukee, WI

EDITORIAL BOARD xiii

EDITOR ANDEDITORIAL BOARD

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xv

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Ray G. AbrahamsChurchill CollegeUniversity of CambridgeCambridgeUnited Kingdom

Michael D. BaileyAssistant ProfessorDepartment of HistoryIowa State UniversityAmes, IA

Jonathan BarrySenior Lecturer in HistoryUniversity of ExeterExeterUnited Kingdom

Thomas BeckerDirector, ArchivesUniversity of BonnBonnGermany

Wolfgang BehringerProfessor and Chair in Early Modern HistoryHistorisches InstitutUniversität des SaarlandesSaarbrückenGermany

Edward BeverAssociate ProfessorState University of New York, College at Old

WestburyOld Westbury, NY

Stephen BowdLecturer in European HistoryUniversity of EdinburghEdinburghUnited Kingdom

John BradleySenior LecturerDepartment of Modern HistoryNational University of IrelandMaynooth, Co. KildareIreland

Robin BriggsSenior Research FellowAll Souls CollegeUniversity of OxfordOxfordUnited Kingdom

Ivan BunnLowestoftUnited Kingdom

John CallowResearch FellowLancaster UniversityLancasterUnited Kingdom

Andrew CambersLecturerDepartment of HistoryOxford Brookes UniversityOxfordUnited Kingdom

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Nicholas CampionPrincipal LecturerDepartment of HistoryBath Spa UniversityBathUnited Kingdom

Hilary M. CareyKeith Cameron Professor of Australian HistoryUniversity College DublinDublinIreland

Carmel CassarSenior Lecturer in HistoryUniversity of MaltaMsidaMalta

J. H. ChajesLecturer in Jewish HistoryUniversity of HaifaHaifaIsrael

Stuart ClarkProfessor of Early Modern Cultural and Intellectual

HistoryUniversity of WalesSwanseaUnited Kingdom

Annibale CoglianoProf. Storia e filosofiaDirettore Centro studi e documentazione Carlo

GesualdoGesualdoItaly

Lesley CooteLecturer in Medieval and Renaissance

StudiesDepartment of EnglishUniversity of HullHullUnited Kingdom

Allison P. CoudertPaul and Marie Castelranco Chair in Religious

StudiesUniversity of California, DavisDavis, CA

Guido Dall'OlioProfessore AssociatoUniversità di Urbino "Carlo Bo"UrbinoItaly

Jane P. DavidsonProfessor of History of ArtUniversity of Nevada, RenoReno, NV

Owen DaviesReader in Social HistoryUniversity of HertfordshireHatfield, HertfordshireUnited Kingdom

Rainer DeckerStudiendirektorStudienseminar Paderborn IIPaderbornGermany

Andrea Del ColProfessorUniversità degli Studi di TriesteTriesteItaly

Oscar Di SimplicioProfessorUniversity of FlorenceFlorenceItaly

Johannes DillingerFB III Neuere GeschichteUniversität TrierTrierGermany

Peter DinzelbacherHonararprofessor am Institut für Wirtschafts - und

SozialgeschichteUniversität WienViennaAustria

Frances E. DolanProfessor of EnglishUniversity of California, DavisDavis, CA

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Matteo DuniProfessor of HistorySyracuse University in FlorenceFlorenceItaly

Jonathan DurrantSenior Lecturer in Early Modern HistorySchool of History, Law, & Social SciencesUniversity of GlamorganPontypridd, WalesUnited Kingdom

Kateryna DysaLecturerHistory DepartmentNational University of "Kiev-Mohyla Academy"KievUkraine

Kathryn A. EdwardsAssociate ProfessorUniversity of South CarolinaColumbia, SC

Peter ElmerSenior LecturerThe Open UniversityMilton KeynesUnited Kingdom

Germana ErnstProfessorDipartimento di FilosofiaUniversità di Roma TreRomeItaly

Sarah FerberSchool of History, Philosophy, Religion & ClassicsUniversity of QueenslandBrisbaneAustralia

Andrew FixCharles A. Dana Professor of HistoryLafayette CollegeEaston, PA

Gunther FranzStadtbibliothekTrierGermany

Nils FreytagAssistant ProfessorDepartment of HistoryUniversität MünchenMunichGermany

Ralf-Peter FuchsLudwig-Maximilians-UniversitätMunichGermany

Ronald FüsselMarburgGermany

Iris GareisInstitut für Historische EthnologieJohann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am MainGermany

Benoît GarnotProfesseur d'histoire moderneUniversité de BourgogneDijonFrance

Malcolm GaskillFellow and Director of Studies in

HistoryChurchill CollegeCambridgeUnited Kingdom

Gilbert GeisProfessor EmeritusUniversity of California, IrvineIrvine, CA

Gudrun GersmannUniversität zu KölnCologneGermany

Marion GibsonUniversity of ExeterExeterUnited Kingdom

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Raymond GillespieAssociate ProfessorDepartment of Modern HistoryNational University of Ireland, MaynoothMaynoothIreland

Richard GodbeerProfessor of HistoryUniversity of MiamiCoral Gables, FL

Richard M. GoldenProfessor of HistoryDirector, Jewish Studies ProgramUniversity of North TexasDenton, TX

Julian GoodareUniversity of EdinburghEdinburghScotlandUnited Kingdom

Klaus GrafFreiburg im Breisgau/AachenGermany

Jeremy A. GreeneFellow, Department of Social MedicineHarvard Medical SchoolBoston, MA

Daniela HackeHistorisches SeminarUniversität ZürichZürichSwitzerland

Rune Blix HagenAcademic LibrarianUniversity of TromsøTromsøNorway

Zakiya HanafiUniversity of Ca' FoscariVeniceItaly

Jörg Haustein (deceased)Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-UniversitätBonnGermany

Gustav HenningsenResearch DirectorDanish Folklore ArchivesCopenhagenDenmark

Tamar HerzigThe Hebrew UniversityJerusalemIsrael

Robert IrwinLondon UniversityLondonUnited Kingdom

Michael J. JarvisAssistant ProfessorUniversity of RochesterRochester, NY

Günter JerouschekChair of Penal Law, Criminal Procedure, and

History of LawFriedrich-Schiller-Universität JenaGermany

Jens Chr. V. JohansenKøbenhavns universitet, Saxo-instituttet, Afd.

for historieCopenhagenDenmark

Marguerite JohnsonSchool of HumanitiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle, New South WalesAustralia

Heinrich KaakBerlinGermany

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Louise Nyholm KallestrupAalborg UniversityAalborgDenmark

Henry KamenHigher Council for Scientific ResearchBarcelonaSpain

Edmund M. KernAssociate ProfessorDepartment of HistoryLawrence UniversityAppleton, WI

Valerie A. KivelsonProfessorUniversity of MichiganAnn Arbor, MI

Elisabeth Korrodi-AebliLic.Phil.Psychologin FSPSchulpsychologischer DienstSchaffhausenSwitzerland

Matevž KosirArhiv Republike SlovenijeLjubljanaSlovenia

Petr KreuzPrague City ArchivesPragueCzech Republic

Ildikó Sz. KristófSenior Research FellowInstitute of EthnologyHungarian Academy of SciencesBudapestHungary

Richard LandesProfessorDepartment of HistoryBoston UniversityBoston, MA

Thomas LangeHessisches Staatsarchiv DarmstadtDarmstadtGermany

Diana Laulainen-ScheinFaculty AssociateArizona State UniversityTempe, AZ

Vincenzo LaveniaAssegnistaScuola Normale SuperiorePisaItaly

David LedererLecturerNational University of Ireland, MaynoothMaynoothIreland

Christopher I. LehrichBoston UniversityBoston, MA

Brian P. LevackJohn E. Green Regents Professor in

HistoryDepartment of HistoryUniversity of Texas at AustinAustin, TX

Nicole K. LongenUniversität TrierTrierGermany

Sönke LorenzInstitut für Geschichtliche Landeskunde und

Historische Hilfswissenschaften der Eberhard-Karls-Universität-Tübingen

TübingenGermany

Machteld LöwensteynFree UniversityAmsterdamNetherlands

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T.M. LuhrmannMax Palevsky ProfessorUniversity of ChicagoChicago, IL

Eric-Oliver MaderUniversität des SaarlandesSaarbrückenGermany

Armando MaggiAssociate ProfessorUniversity of ChicagoChicago, IL

Wolfgang MährleHauptstaatsarchiv StuttgartStuttgartGermany

Victor H. MatthewsProfessor of Religious Studies and Associate DeanMissouri State UniversitySpringfield, MO

Peter G. Maxwell-StuartDepartment of Modern HistoryUniversity of St. AndrewsSt. AndrewsUnited Kingdom

Georg ModestinMonumenta Germaniae HistoricaMunichGermany

Katrin MoellerMartin-Luther-Universität Halle-WittenbergHalleGermany

Lynn Wood MollenauerAssistant ProfessorUniversity of North Carolina–WilmingtonWilmington, NC

William MonterProfessorDepartment of HistoryNorthwestern UniversityEvanston, IL

Marina MontesanoUniversità di GenovaGenoaItaly

Franco MormandoAssociate Professor, Italian StudiesBoston CollegeChestnut Hill, MA

Robert MuchembledProfessorUniversité de Paris XIII (Paris-Nord)ParisFrance

Gerald MüllederVienna Austria

Hans Eyvind NaessProfessor of History Senior Advisor, National Archivesof NorwayOsloNorway

William G. NaphySenior LecturerUniversity of AberdeenAberdeenScotlandUnited Kingdom

Franco NardonArta Terme, UDItaly

Marko NenonenAssistant ProfessorDepartment of HistoryUniversity of TampereTampereFinland

Lawrence NormandPrincipal Lecturer in English Literary StudiesMiddlesex UniversityLondonUnited Kingdom

Maximillian E. NovakDistinguished Professor of English, EmeritusUniversity of California, Los AngelesLos Angeles, CA

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Jutta NowosadtkoUniversität GH EssenEssenGermany

Caroline OatesInformation Officer/LibrarianThe Folklore SocietyLondonUnited Kingdom

Peter OestmannDirector, Institut für

RechtsgeschichteMünsterGermany

Daniel OgdenReader in Ancient HistoryUniversity of ExeterExeterUnited Kingdom

Mary R. O'NeilAssociate ProfessorDepartment of HistoryUniversity of WashingtonSeattle, WA

Martine OstoreroUniversité de LausanneLausanneSwitzerland

José Pedro PaivaProfessorUniversity of CoimbraCoimbraPortugal

Gian Maria PanizzaMinistero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali:

Archivio di Stato di AlessandriaAlessandriaItaly

Jonathan L. PearlAssociate ProfessorUniversity of TorontoToronto, OntarioCanada

Ludolf PelizaeusAssistant ProfessorDepartment of General and Modern HistoryJohannes Gutenberg-Universität MainzMainzGermany

Edward PetersHenry Charles Lea Professor of HistoryUniversity of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, PA

Parsla PetersoneRigaLatvia

Giovanni PizzaSenior Researcher, Lecturer in Medical AnthropologyUniversità di Perugia, Dipartimento

Uomo & TerritorioPerugiaItaly

Éva PócsProfessorDepartment of Ethnology and Cultural

AnthropologyUniversity of PécsPécsHungary

Paolo PortoneSocietà Storica ComenseComoItaly

Diane PurkissSenior English FellowKeble CollegeUniversity of OxfordOxfordUnited Kingdom

Anita RaithHead, Documentary Film Centre ArchiveStuttgartGermany

Robert RapleyIndependent ScholarOttawa, OntarioCanada

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Francesc RieraMajorcaSpain

Alison RowlandsSenior Lecturer in European HistoryUniversity of EssexColchesterUnited Kingdom

Walter RummelLandeshauptarchiv KoblenzKoblenzGermany

Jeffrey Burton RussellProfessor of History, EmeritusUniversity of California, Santa BarbaraSanta Barbara, CA

W. F. RyanWarburg Institute, School of Advanced

Study University of LondonLondonUnited Kingdom

Geoffrey ScarreDepartment of PhilosophyUniversity of DurhamDurhamUnited Kingdom

Jürgen Michael SchmidtInstitut für Geschichtliche Landeskunde

und HistorischeUniversität Tübingen TübingenGermany

Corinna SchneiderHistorikerinTübingenGermany

Rolf SchulteChrisitan-Albrechts-Universität zu KielKielGermany

James SharpeProfessorDepartment of HistoryUniversity of YorkYorkUnited Kingdom

David J. SilvermanAssistant ProfessorDepartment of HistoryGeorge Washington

UniversityWashington, DC

Maryse SimonHistory FacultyUniversity of OxfordOxfordUnited Kingdom

Jacqueline SimpsonThe Folklore SocietyLondonUnited Kingdom

Gordon Andreas SingerGreenbelt, MD

Natalia Uladzimirauna SlizhAssociate ProfessorIntitute of Modern KnowledgeGrodnaBelarus

Per SörlinDepartment of HumanitiesMid Sweden UniversityHärnösandSweden

Walter StephensCharles S. Singleton Professor of Italian

StudiesJohns Hopkins UniversityBaltimore, MD

Constanze Störk-BiberUniversität Tübingen TübingenGermany

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Krzysztof SzkurlatowskiCollegium GedanenseGdåńskPoland

María TausietIES "Prado de Santo Domingo"MadridSpain

Olina ThorvardardottirPrincipalJunior College of IsafjordurIsafjordurIceland

Robert W. ThurstonPhillip R. Shriver Professor of HistoryMiami UniversityOxford, OH

Daniel TolletIngénieur de recherche et Directeur de recherches Secrétaire général, Institut de recherches pour

l'étude des religionsUniversité de Paris IV-SorbonneParisFrance

E.R. TruittHarvard UniversityCambridge, MA

Manfred TschaiknerVorarlberger LandesarchivBregenzAustria

Christa Agnes TuczayÖsterreichische Akademie der WissenschaftenUniversität WienViennaAustria

Kathrin Utz TrempUniversité de Lausanne, SwitzerlandStoatsarchiv Freiburg,Switzerland

Michaela ValenteUniversità "La Sapienza"RomeItaly

Dries VanysackerProfessorKatholieke Universiteit LeuvenLouvainBelgium

Trpimir VedrišHistory DepartmentUniversity of ZagrebZagrebCroatia

Rita VoltmerLecturerDepartment of HistoryUniversität TrierTrierGermany

Hans de WaardtVrije UniversiteitAmsterdamNetherlands

Gary K. WaiteProfessor of Medieval and Early Modern

HistoryUniversity of New BrunswickFredericton, New BrunswickCanada

Robert Walinski-KiehlSenior Lecturer, School of Social, Historical

and Literary StudiesUniversity of PortsmouthPortsmouthUnited Kingdom

Rainer WalzProfessorRuhr-Universität BochumFakultät für GeschichtswissenschaftLehrstuhl Neuere Geschichte IBochumGermany

Richard WeismanAssociate ProfessorYork UniversityToronto, OntarioCanada

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Merry Wiesner-HanksProfessorDepartment of HistoryUniversity of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeMilwaukee, WI

Manfred WildeHead of Museum, Castle of DelitzschDelitzschGermany

Gerhild Scholz WilliamsThomas Professor in the HumanitiesWashington UniversitySt. Louis, MO

Melvyn WillinPost-Doctoral ResearcherGreat LeighsUnited Kingdom

Karin WohlschlegelBretzfeldGermany

Elliot R. WolfsonAbraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew

and Judaic StudiesNew York UniversityNew York, NY

Juliette WoodCardiff UniversityCardiffWalesUnited Kingdom

David WoottonAnniversary Professor of HistoryUniversity of YorkYorkUnited Kingdom

Thomas WorcesterAssociate ProfessorCollege of the Holy CrossWorcester, MA

Wanda WyporskaHertford CollegeOxfordUnited Kingdom

Avihu ZakaiProfessor of Early Modern History and Early

American HistoryThe Hebrew University of JerusalemJerusalemIsrael

Gabriella ZarriProfessor of Modern HistoryUniversità di FirenzeFlorenceItaly

Charles ZikaProfessorUniversity of MelbourneMelbourneAustralia

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The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition isan indispensable resource at the dawn of the third mil-lennium. Above all, it provides reliable answers to satis-fy the sharp curiosity of our contemporaries, who aresurrounded by an atmosphere that is softly but strong-ly tinted with magic—the magic of dreams, of success-ful books such as Harry Potter, and of innumerablefilms and television series featuring witches, werewolves(lycanthropy), and vampires. This new work will beboth necessary and extremely useful in bringing orderto an often incomprehensible flood of information andmisinformation and providing meaning for a vast riverof symbols, emotions, and ideas that carry some truthsbut also a great many errors. It will also help readerslocate the elements of truth within the vast literaturedevoted to diabolical sensationalism by distinguishingbetween hysterical fantasy and historical truth, enablingthem to understand better the ways in which magic andwitchcraft have left a profound cultural imprint ontoday’s Western world.

Moreover, this encyclopedia appears at an appro-priate moment to fill a huge void. In its breadth of sub-ject matter, its international and collective character,and its completeness, it has no equivalent. A few dic-tionaries of diabolism and magic exist in various lan-guages; in 1959, for example, Rossell Hope Robbinspublished the 570-page Encyclopedia of Witchcraft andDemonology. But until now, no multivolume survey,bringing together contributions from 172 specialistsre p resenting twenty-eight countries, has ever beenattempted. Like Denis Diderot’s famous eighteenth-century Encylopédie, this work offers mature collectivewisdom about the topics it surveys. The time has final-ly come to consider carefully and seriously the greatestenigma of Western civilization between the 1420s and1750: the executions of witches, whose flamboyanttraces still haunt our imaginations in both Europe andAmerica. We know today that there were not 100,000

executions, as Voltaire claimed, but barely one-third asmany. Most of them occurred within the boundaries ofpresent-day Germany, and most witches died in west-ern Europe between 1560 and 1630.

Witchcraft and magic are universal human phe-nomena; they can be found on any continent at anytime. However, only the West has ever burned greatnumbers of witches, after legally constituted trials thatwere approved by political authorities and fully accept-ed by established churches. Women generally constitut-ed around 80 percent—at times more—of thoseaccused and condemned, although there were excep-tions to this rule in places such as Finland or the Frenchprovince of Normandy. This astounding imbalancebetween the genders makes the mystery even moreimpenetrable, because at that time, witchcraft (alongwith infanticide) became the female capital crime parexcellence; generally, women accounted for only a verysmall minority of all defendants in courtroom trials,rarely exceeding 20 percent.

*****The past is not dead. It weighs on those living

today—and not just in vivid sensations that remaindeeply embedded in our memories or in museum col-lections such as those at Salem. It endures more subtlythrough the impact of strong images, which I prefer tocall cultural matrices, that carry their symbolic baggagefrom century to century. One of the most powerful ofthese images, the great European enigma of the witch atthe stake, drives this encyclopedia. No one person canresolve this enigma in such a short space. I simply wantto direct readers’ attention to some paths of researchand give them a desire to sample this work in the sameway that Vo l t a i re tried to guide readers of hisDictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary,1764): Here also, one article refers to another, and read-ers can best absorb their ultimate meanings by linkingtogether multiple entries.

FOREWORD

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The problem at the heart of these volumes is enor-mously complicated, and no single answer or approachcan resolve it. But like any great question, it can be sim-plified by seeking its most basic core: The witch huntswere so terrible and so intense that simply retelling theirhistory reveals something fundamental about the men-tality of the western Europeans who conducted them.And without any general consensus among historiansfor explaining the persecution of witches, I hope toenrich its significance by placing it among the forma-tive myths that slowly but profoundly shaped the cul-tural and social foundations of early modern Europe.

*****Attempts to explain the persecution of witches have

multiplied since the end of the witchcraft trials.Obviously, the judges and most other people believedpurely and simply that witchcraft demonstrated theunleashed power of the Devil, a kind of prelude to theApocalypse; in their eyes, the witches constituted as e c ret society of deviant devil-worshippers, payinghomage to Satan and fornicating with him at theirSabbats. Those who dared to express doubts on thistopic, as Johann Weyer did, were few. The eighteenth-century philosophes tried to eradicate such superstitionsby talking about madness or, more cleverly, about dia-bolical suggestion; skeptics such as Daniel De f o eargued that the Devil had no physical power but simplyinsinuated his venom into human minds. Nevertheless,a residue of demonology has survived at various intel-lectual levels; it ranges from today’s abundant overtlysatanic literature to historical accounts and theologicaldiscussions, with each genre serving the specific needsand cultural conventions of its special audience. Until1960 (and sometimes later), the dominant explanationin the Anglo-Saxon world came from the works of theEgyptologist Margaret Murray, who saw the witches’Sabbat as a very real but secret ceremony demonstratingthe clandestine survival of a cult of a pre-Christianhorned god. Without going that far, Carlo Ginzburgfollowed a parallel path when investigating the benan -danti of Friuli and suggested, unconvincingly, thatshamanism profoundly influenced the witches’ Sabbat.

A major turning point occurred in the 1970s.Influenced by events such as opposition to the VietnamWar or the French student uprising of 1968, someresearchers followed smoke signals from the Devil’sgrass (cannabis or peyote) and explained the experi-ences of witches as hallucinogenically induced dreams.Others took more novel paths. In France, RobertMandrou explained the end of witchcraft persecutionslong before the Enlightenment through increasingskepticism among the ruling classes. In England, Alan

Macfarlane and Keith Thomas built an anthropologi-cal model, in which witches were often accused of cast-ing spells on people who had previously refused themcharity. For these British scholars, neighborhood and asense of guilt seemed more important than the Devil,whose presence was never elicited through torture, as itwas on the Continent. A response followed quicklyfrom H. C. Erik Midelfort, who used massive statisti-cal information from an epicenter of persecution insouthwestern Germany to build a highly useful modeldescribing the variations in witchcraft persecutionwithin a region where confessional rivalry appeared tomultiply witch burnings. With youthful enthusiasm, Idevised a two-sided acculturation model, using witch-craft trials from the Sp a n i s h - ruled s o u t h e rnNetherlands. One part merged the British/anthropo-logical explanation with a then-fashionable type ofMarxism, stressing that the richer inhabitants of villagesencouraged their overlords to persecute poorer residentsby offering to pay the costs of witchcraft trials. Theother part described how confessional churches andemerging absolutist states targeted witches as prime andparticularly dangerous transmitters of an outdated oralculture, heavily charged with what these authoritiescalled superstitions. My model proved too schematic toapply successfully throughout Europe, but it containedsome still-valid elements, including an explanation forthe predominance of women among witches.

While the effervescent intellectual climate of the1970s led to some intellectual collisions, otherresearchers working in the Jura region, Scotland, theSpanish Basque Country, and New England patientlycollected information that enabled us to gain a betteroverall grasp of the dimensions of the witch hunt insome widely scattered places. However, too mucharchival work of the 1970s was carried out in parts ofwestern Europe other than Germany—the “mother ofso many witches,” in Friedrich Spee’s evocative phrase.A major revival of interest in witchcraft trials occurredin West Germany only after 1980, when the amazingcollection made by the Nazi Hexenkommando finallycame to scholars’ attention. Subsequently, this materialhas been used to shape some fresh and persuasive inter-pretations of the phenomenon in its heartland, mostp rominently Wo l f g a n g Be h ri n g e r’s corre l a t i o n sbetween climatic disasters, famine, and major witch-craft persecutions.

The years since 1990 have marked a new stage inthe journey down this long road. Se veral generalaccounts of the witch hunt have been published, usual-ly without privileging any single interpretation. Eventhe outstanding Lorraine-based investigation empha-

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sizing quarrels within villages (Briggs 2001) offers“many reasons why” when trying to explain witchcraftpersecutions throughout Europe. But if a historian’smost fundamental task is to establish some hierarchyfor the information he or she provides, then a multi-plicity of explanations, each of roughly equal weight,ultimately remains unsatisfactory. Mo re ove r, somerecent developments have significantly clarified ourknowledge of this topic, including works highlightingthe idea that witchcraft persecution had a center withseveral peripheries, the specificity of demonic posses-sion in convents such as Loudun and its hidden con-nections to witchcraft prosecutions, and especially thefundamental importance of gender for comprehendingthis theme.

The geography of witch hunting now seems clear:The phenomenon was centered in the German-speak-ing Holy Roman Empire (plus Switzerland). This coreregion also produced the Protestant Reformation, pio-neered the system of confessionalism, and enduredEurope’s bloodiest religious war until 1648. But therewere also various types of “witchcraft peripheries,” threeof which should be noted in particular. Most ofProtestant northern Europe, apart from Scotland andnorthern Sweden after 1668, seems to have been rela-tively immune to extensive witch hunting; one excep-tionally prosperous region, the United Provinces of theNetherlands, abandoned witch hunting much soonerthan any other area. Another little-affected region com-prised the solidly Catholic lands of southern Europe(Spain, Italy, and Portugal), where Inquisitions avoid-ed putting witches to death, and France, whoseappellate courts permitted relatively few executions forthis crime. Finally, eastern Europe constituted a veryd i f f e rent sort of periphery. T h e re, trials and exe c u-tions of witches occurred much later than in westernEurope, but they were confined to Latin Christianity;Ort h o d ox Christendom remained almost entire l yimpervious to this phenomenon, and Islamic regionswere completely so.

It is abundantly clear that witch hunts were veryunevenly distributed throughout Europe. The heart-lands of witchcraft persecutions lay mostly in parts ofwest-central Eu rope, which we re sharply disputedbetween Protestants and Catholics between 1560 and1630, and there were later prolongations in easternEurope during the post-1650 Catholic reconquest andin a few overseas colonies such as New England. Majoroutbreaks of witchcraft trials were distributed widelyamong both Protestants and Catholics during theapogee of confessionalization, but few obvious subpat-terns emerged along confessional fault lines. Europe’s

very worst witchcraft panics tended to cluster between1585 and 1630 in Germany’s Catholic ecclesiasticalt e r ri t o ri e s (principalities), especially those, such asCologne, ruled by electoral prince-arc h b i s h o p s .Meanwhile, the most intensive (per capita) and regular(per annum) witchcraft trials in western Europe afflict-ed the Protestant Pays de Vaud. The best general ruleone can discover is a negative correlation: The layjudges who burned most of Europe’s witches were usu-ally the furthest removed from the centers of politicalpower in major monarchies such as France or Spain.

The theme of witchcraft probably requires the sortof multilaye red approach pioneered by Fe r n a n dBraudel (Braudel 1980). At the short-term or “con-junctural” level, we must identify the local circum-stances: Sometimes, the most serious outbreaks ofwitch hunting were prompted by climate changes andharvest failures, and at other times, they were triggeredby the actions of unusually zealous judges, among themPierre de Lancre or Henri Boguet. At a multigenera-tional intermediate level, they developed against a back-ground of prolonged confessional rivalry and strife,which seems to have been most intense in the HolyRoman Empire. The lion’s share of the prosecutionsoccurred in regions ruled by Catholics, who, in onesense, had a head start because the papacy had appar-ently endorsed the Malleus Ma l e fic a rum (T h eHammer of Witches, 1486) a century before the worstoutbreaks began; after the Council of Trent, Jesuitsincluding Juan Maldonado rediscovered and empha-sized the profound links between heresy and diabolicalwitchcraft. The purely Catholic phenomenon ofdemonic possession in nunneries led to some spectacu-lar dramas: For example, at least two nuns from theconvent of the Verger in Artois were burned as witchesaround 1614 (Muchembled 2003a, 250–263), afterwhich Catholic authorities made a much stronger sep-aration between witches and “possessed” women.

At the deepest, long-term level of explanations forwitchcraft, the subject of gender relations in Europebetween the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries—andbeyond—deserves very close attention, not just becausebooks on the subject seem to multiply, giving one theimpression of a passing fashion, but also because if theove rwhelming majority of convicted witches we rewomen, it is impossible not to ask why. Back in the1970s, a few male scholars, myself included, madetimid allusions to this problem, without attractingmuch attention. Only recently has feminist scholarshipemphasized the strongly feminine character of thecrime of lèse-majesté divine or treason against god—andsome current defenders of this approach have not

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improved its credibility by talking about “gynocide” orgrossly exaggerating the numbers of women killed forthis crime at a time when religious massacres, not tomention famines and p l a g u e, truly decimatedEuropean populations.

My own reading of European cultural and socialhistory in the early modern period suggests a slow andsubtle modification, at the very deepest level, in therelationship between the sexes. The onset of witchcraftpersecution at the end of the Middle Ages, which hasbeen analyzed less thoroughly than its peak, coincidedwith what feminists describe as the development of a“paternalist-misogynist” model. One might just as easi-ly call it a reinforcement of masculine privilege, anattempt to confine women more strictly than beforewithin the bounds of “propriety,” meaning, first andforemost, the control of their sexual impulses. Exceptfor a handful of princesses and fashionable courtisans,women of that period were subjected to a more inten-sive and intrusive surveillance of their sexual behavior,which was insistently defined as naturally malevolentand sinful. Any woman found guilty of disposing freelyof her own sexuality suffered extreme consequences.Extramarital sexual activity enhanced a man’s reputa-tion, but it invariably had tragic consequences for anywoman unlucky enough to be caught concealing herpregnancy; for example, in France, following a royaledict of Henry II in 1557, women were fifteen timeslikelier to be executed for this crime than burned as awitch in the vast district of the Parlement of Paris.

Moreover, only during the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries did the consensus of Eu ro p e a nthinkers agree that a pact with the Devil could not bebroken. Instead of the famous medieval miracle ofTheophilus, who outwitted the Devil, the dominantmotif became the pact of Dr. Faustus (Johann GeorgFa u s t ) , who was eternally damned (Mu c h e m b l e d2003b). Although both Theophilus and Faustus weremen, the consequences of the change weighed over-whelmingly on women. The ultimate metaphor becamethe one-sided and unbreakable pact between an oldwoman and the Devil, confirmed not in writing but byan act of sexual intercourse, which male authors andjudges invariably described as painful.

*****Of course, no single explanation can cover a phe-

nomenon so important, so spectacular, and so terrifyingas witchcraft persecution, which has left indelible traceson Western civilization. But we must not shrug ourshoulders in defeat or retreat behind a confusing multi-plicity of causes. In fact, European witchcraft betweenthe fifteenth and eighteenth centuries offers an excel-

lent terrain for attempting a total history, at every levelfrom local to global. The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft thuscomes at the right time to shine a spotlight on manythings, especially two notions that have been too oftenneglected recently: first, the essential role ofChristianity in encouraging the persecution of witches,and second, the reinforced legal subordination and sur-veillance of women in early modern European society.The evidence for both phenomena is so overwhelmingthat they have all too often remained hidden in plainview, obscured by multicausal approaches and thusminimized by even the best specialists. The deepest rea-son for this neglect probably lies in the ways in whichgreat cultural myths usually work: They touch essentialmatters but without drawing attention to them becausea myth that is too easily understood has little effect onany given society.

I believe that Western witchcraft from the 1420s toaround 1750 carried the cultural baggage of one of ourgreatest myths: male supremacy, powerfully reinforcedat that time by a religious ethic that placed increasingemphasis on a man’s duty to supervise his female com-panions, whose cold and damp natures were inclinedtoward evil and were dangerous for the collective salva-tion of humanity. A witchcraft trial involved a woman,frequently widowed or otherwise unsupervised by malekin, who was accused of giving herself—in both bodyand soul—to the Devil. This fact cannot be understoodwithout setting it in the religious context of that age, asdifferent confessional churches rivaled each other inincreasing supervision over the female imagination(including a stronger indoctrination of c h i l d re n) .Burning a witch in public concealed a veritable forest ofsymbols, the most essential being the relationshipbetween genders. The idea of the evil woman was oneof the most fundamental Western myths until the eigh-teenth century—and beyond. Myths die hard .Im a g i n a t i ve cinematographers such as Alfre dHitchcock or David Lynch re-created an image of thedangerously perverse blonde, capable of the very worstsexual transgressions, closely resembling the figure ofthe witch punished by early modern European males.

Have we reached a crossroads? In this millennium,the social and cultural importance of Christianity isdeclining at an accelerated rate in Europe, althoughmuch more slowly in the United States, while in bothplaces, women are increasingly demanding their placein the sun. After more than five centuries, the myth ofthe witch as the sexual slave of Satan, eating babies andraising hailstorms, seems to be disintegrating. Radicaland profound mutations in gender relations, includingmarital relations and family values, have surely played a

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major role in this disintegration. When civilizationsshift at their deepest levels, fundamental myths shiftwith them. In both Europe and the United States, nowsafely insulated from infant mortality and food short-ages, the old myth of a happier life after death isincreasingly challenged by the contemporary myth ofimmediate and total individual gratification: I want ithere, I want it now, I want it all . . .

For anyone seeking reliable information about thisbasic Western myth, the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft pro-vides exactly that: We have it here, we have it now, andwe have it all.

—Robert MuchembledInstitute for Advanced Study, Princeton

October 2003

References and further reading:Braudel, Fernand. 1980. On History. Translated by Sarah

Matthews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Briggs, Robin. 2001. Witches and Neighbors: The Social and

Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.Muchembled, Robert. 2003a. Passions des femmes au temps de

la Reine Margot, 1553–1615. Paris: Seuil.———. 2003b. A History of the Devil: From the Middle Ages to

the Present. Translated by Jean Birrell. Cambridge: Polity.

Note: Words marked in bold refer to the encyclope-dia’s entries.

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This encyclopedia entailed more work than I couldhave imagined and required more help than I hadexpected. So many people have assisted me over thesepast six years that I fear I will omit someone here; if Ido, I hope that person will forgive me. Those I mustthank comprise three groups: scholars, ABC-CLIOstaff, and family.

I have been fortunate indeed to have had a superbeditorial board consisting of excellent scholars:Wolfgang Be h r i n g e r, Gustav Henningsen, Brian P.Levack, William Monter, James Sharpe, and MerryWiesner-Hanks. The members of the board helped medevelop the initial lists of entries by correspondenceand in two meetings at the University of York in April2001. They wrote entries themselves, provided advice,and answered questions. I and at least one member ofthe editorial board read each entry in the encyclopedia.While I did the final editing, the comments of theboard members proved invaluable, and they will seemuch of their handiwork when they read the publishedencyclopedia.

T h ree historians provided me with exc e p t i o n a lhelp and saved me from innumerable missteps. Bi l lMonter read eve ry entry, and he did so quickly, we e kto week, month to month, and year to ye a r. He was,as he likes to say, my éminence grise. He is a master ofc o m p a r a t i ve history, and he frequently improve dentries by calling my attention to issues that contrib-utors might well include in their articles. Bill morethan once vo l u n t e e red to write entries when contrib-utors reneged or when I could not locate suitableauthors. Fi n a l l y, after declining to be editor himself,he had the wisdom or folly to recommend me toABC-CLIO. Wolfgang Behringer put his enormousk n owledge of witchcraft at my disposal; whenever Ihad a question, often arcane, he responded immedi-ately and corre c t l y. He is, in large part, responsible forthe blanket coverage of Germany in our encyc l o p e d i a

and for the multiplicity of Germans who wro t eentries. In addition, he authored more entries thana n yone else. My fellow Texan Brian Levack also serve das a sounding board, contributed entries when Id e s p a i red of locating authors, and settled many witch-craft matters in long telephone conversations. Hi se x p e rtise in legal history proved invaluable. He, alongwith Bill Mo n t e r, even helped by reading some of thepage proofs.

In my career, I have found that historians ofEurope have been friendlier and kinder than most othergroups of people I have encountered. My work on thisencyclopedia confirmed that view. The contributors tothe encyclopedia have been affable and cooperative.C e rtain contributors warmed my heart with theireagerness to help and their supreme kindness. TheseMenschen include Michael Bailey, Robin Briggs, CarmelC a s s a r, Yossi Chajes, Jane P. Davidson, Oscar DiSimplicio, Johannes Di l l i n g e r, Sarah Fe r b e r, Ju l i a nGoodare, Rune Hagen, Tamar Herzig, Valerie Kivelson,David Lederer, Victor Matthews, Georg Modestin,C a roline Oates, Ma rtine Os t o re ro, Ed w a rd Pe t e r s ,Alison Rowlands, Will Ryan, Jürgen-Michael Schmidt,Walter Stephens, Michaela Valente, Dries Vanysacker,Rita Voltmer, and Charles Zika. Edward Bever gave meextraordinary help throughout but especially by writingsome difficult entries on short notice during the finalstages of production.

Numerous were those who did not write entriesbut who patiently answered my questions, suggestedcontributors, and helped me in other ways: Guy Chet,Harvey Chisick, Geoffrey Dennis, Chad Gunnoe, TomKuehn, Dan Magilow, Alfred Mierzejewski, DavidNicholas, Carles Salazar, Jonathan Schick, Laura Stern,John Tedeschi, Carmen Terry, and Martin Yaffe.

Many at ABC-CLIO have participated in thisextensive project. Todd Hallman, acquisitions editor,approached me about editing the encyclopedia after

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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xxxii acknowledgments

speaking to Bill Monter. I have worked closely withAllison Miller, assistant developmental editor, and thenPatience Melnik, developmental editor. Both have beenutterly professional, smart, and efficient. Martha Whittand Anna Kaltenbach, production editors, have beenon top of their jobs. Cisca Schreefel, associate produc-tion editor, gave great help, as did production editorMartha Gray. The copy editors caught some mistakesand often rightly asked for more information: SilvineFarnell, Anne Friedman, Beth Partin, Kathy Delfosse,and Joan Sherman. Ellen Rasmussen, media editor,facilitated my selecting the encyclopedia’s illustrations.Elaine Vanater in marketing did her job extremely well.Terry Buss and then Wendy Roseth handled contribu-tor relations after Patience Melnik. Art Stickney andDon Schmidt, editorial directors, watched over thisproject. Ron Boehm, chief executive officer of ABC-CLIO, has been gracious and supportive in my conver-sations with him.

I am grateful to the University of North Texas forgiving me a semester’s Faculty Development Leave towork on this encyclopedia.

Fi n a l l y, I owe—I really do—gargantuan amountsof gratitude to my family. My wife, Hilda, allowe dme to withdraw to my upstairs office days, nights,and weekends to work on the encyclopedia. T h ehouse deteriorated somewhat during my seeminglyceaseless and grinding work, but she rarely calledupstairs for me to do a chore or to come up (dow n )for air. She demonstrated great marital wisdom byn e ver asking me when I would finish or when wecould go on a decent vacation. Love is never havingto badger. My children, Davina, Irene, and Je re m y,also never complained (about the encyclopedia, any-way), and while they did not stop making demandson my time, they did show greater forbearance. I oweall of my family much time, which I shall duly re p a ywith intere s t .

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xxxiii

Witchcraft is a topic of enduring interest for a variety ofreasons. Many and probably most human societies,from primitive bands through civilizations, have prac-ticed and still practice forms of witchcraft (and its closerelations magic and religion) and/or believe in the con-cept of a witch, defined as someone who uses supernat-ural means to cause harm or misfortune. When benefi-cent as well as malevolent power is subsumed in thedefinition of witchcraft, then the concept of witchcraftis universal, historically and geographically.1 For soci-eties or segments of societies that mistakenly believeonly “the Other” employs witchcraft, the topic mayhave interest as an entrée into the minds and behaviorsof the backward, the superstitious, or the ignorant.Witchcraft, a part of the occult, fascinates, perplexes,and offers vicarious experience with the dark, deadly,and dangerous. Thus, in Western civilization, someskeptical Romans, medieval and early modern peoples,and the transoceanic societies that comprise the con-temporary West have expressed their feelings of superi-ority as well as their fascination and fear of witchcraft,perceived to be joined to its Siamese twin, evil. The per-ception of witchcraft can function to mark cultural andreligious boundaries, to label or cleanse a society of thesocially and/or the religiously indigestible, and to dis-tinguish the good from the bad, offering a partialtheodicy to cope with humankind’s Hobbesian lives.

All topics are on the scholars’ table, although theydo not always realize the seemingly endless varieties ofapproaches and subjects—hence, historiography andspectacular alterations in scholarship that can oftenbewilder those more comfortable with static knowledgeand with understanding through faith in authority. Ourcomprehension of perceptions of witchcraft—histori-cally and culturally—and witchcraft itself changes tem-porally and geographically. The En c yclopedia ofWitchcraft: The Western Tradition, approximately sixyears from conception to publication, reflects these

fast-paced changes in re s e a rch, knowledge, andapproach. Indeed, in editing the 757 entries, I foundthat articles often had to be reworked because contrib-utors did not and frequently could not know results ofnew research that has appeared in a wide variety of lan-guages and that subsequently has been incorporatedinto different entries.

Scholars, to be sure, have studied witchcraft acrossthe planet and from prehistory to the present. However,since the eighteenth century, arguably more research onwitchcraft (and related subjects) has been done in theWest than elsewhere. Such research and writing hastaken place in Western societies, spread now over theworld, because the West is where the more than twodozen democracies exist and thus where relative free-dom of expression and research is possible. The twenty-eight nations represented by the 172 contributors tothis encyclopedia are all in the West—and not onlybecause the volumes deal with the Western tradition.An encyclopedia of witchcraft that covers the globewould doubtless have Westerners as the overwhelmingmajority of contributors.

*****Witchcraft interests the academic world partly

because it is extraordinarily interd i s c i p l i n a ry :A n t h ropologists, ethnologists, folklorists, historians,linguists, philosophers, political scientists, sociologists,and scholars of literature, medicine, religion, and theol-ogy have contributed to this encyclopedia. The centralfocus of the encyclopedia is the European witch huntsthat occurred between the early fifteenth century andthe late eighteenth century. These centuries encom-passed those developments that make the Westernwitchcraft experience unique: the emergence of the so-called cumulative concept of witchcraft and the prose-cution of upwards of 100,000 people for witchcraft,most of them for diabolical witchcraft—meeting withthe Devil (sometimes at Sabbats, which witches usually

INTRODUCTION

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xxxiv Introduction

traveled to by flight), signing a pact with the Evil One,and subsequently working maleficium (harmful magic)in a revolt that aimed to topple Christian civilization.

Many scholars have come to the period of thewitch hunts to investigate persecution and religiousintolerance, linking the pursuit of witches in the “per-secuting society” that was late medieval and early mod-ern Europe to the maltreatment of Jews, lepers, homo-sexuals, and those Christians labeled as heretics byother Christians. In fact, there was little persecution ofdiabolic witches, for those prosecuted as serving theDevil did not (and could not) do so. There is absolute-ly no evidence of a devil-worshipping sect in latemedieval and early modern Europe, but empirical evi-dence, of course, is irrelevant to faith (or prejudice). Yetdiabolic witches, like the Islamic Ottoman Empireentrenched in southeastern Europe and often expand-ing into central Europe, instilled great fear in LatinChristendom as threats that could literally destroyChristian society. Somewhere between 35,000 and50,000 accused witches were executed or lynched; wewill never know the exact number. Anyone, even apope, could be accused as a witch, though in this, as inall of life, probability counted: People were more plau-sibly denounced as witches if they were women, relatedto another accused witch, old, single, and possessed ofa quarrelsome reputation. But there was no certain safe-ty; many entries in the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft detailexceptions to the familiar image of the witch and notethe urban and high social status of some of those exe-cuted. Gi ven these fears, superimposed on theomnipresent structural threats of hunger and cold,scholars have lately wondered why many more witcheswere not killed. After all, the numbers of individualswho were institutionally or extralegally killed as witch-es pale in comparison to the millions of victims oftwentieth-century genocides.

The issue of the persecution of women as witcheshas attracted feminist scholars (not to mention Neo-Pagans) to the topic, and they have signific a n t l yincreased our knowledge of gender relations and sexu-ality, even though women were not prosecuted simplyfor being women, unlike Jews victimized for beingJews, lepers for having leprosy, or homosexuals forbehaving as homosexuals. Nevertheless, the prosecutionof thousands for concluding a pact with the Devil, kiss-ing his anus, flying to his Sabbat, and having frigid andpainful intercourse with him explains much of theattraction of the subject of witch hunts because theprosecutions and the lynchings were of people judgedguilty of an impossible crime. While Jews, heretics, andhomosexuals were guilty of being Jewish, heretical, and

homosexual—common enough states and sometimeschosen voluntarily—no one can meet or mate with aconcept such as the Devil. Thus, scholars have soughtto understand the exotic, neurotic, and erotic mind-setsof Europeans, so seemingly different from those amongour contemporaries influenced by the Enlightenment.2

Along with trying to comprehend the mental structuresof Europeans in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries,historians and others have researched legal, political,social, and cultural systems in order to explain the play-ing out and representations of early modern belief sys-tems.

*****The Encyclopedia of Witchraft’s entries investigate

the origins of the beliefs and practices of the early mod-ern witch hunts; thus, many entries, certainly impor-tant in their own right, cover antiquity (the HebrewBible, Greece, and Rome); primitive Christianity; andthe Early, central (High), and late Middle Ages. Somearticles provide comparative perspectives (for example,“Africa, Su b - Saharan,” “Na t i ve Americans,” and“Islam”), but this is definitively not an encyclopedia ofworldwide witchcraft, which would have re q u i re dmany more entries and would have taken several moreyears to finish. I dismissed the idea of such an encyclo-pedia because it would have turned the focus away fromEurope’s witch hunts, leaving several peripheries insearch of a core. This encyclopedia excludes modernwitchcraft, except for entries necessary to understandthe period of the witch hunts (such as “Nazi Interest inWitch Persecution,” “Halloween,” and “ContemporaryWitchcraft [Post-1800]”) and for coverage at the end ofsome entries of the modern West.

There are diverse types of entries: biographies, ele-ments of folklore, religion and theology, art, music,film, literature, theater, gender and sexuality, law, poli-tics, institutions, and geography (cities, regions, states).The geographic entries usually include the dates of thefirst and last witchcraft trials and executions, the totalnumber of accused witches executed, the gender of theaccused or executed, and the population (in order tomeasure the intensity of prosecutions). However, thesources necessary to provide these types of informationmay not be extant, and the sources available do notalways answer the questions scholars pose; thus, manyentries could not incorporate all these data. There wereinevitable limitations to the list of entries: Some sub-jects or areas have not been researched; for other topics,I could not locate contributors. To give one example,there are several entries on drama (England, Spain, and so forth), but other regions did not find theircontributors.

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Introduction xxxv

The starting point for this encyclopedia was RossellHope Robbins’s 1959 Encyclopedia of Witchcraft andDemonology. This magnificent, single-authored workre flects the scholarship current in the 1950s, isAnglocentric, and, as we know currently, is often incor-rect. Research on the age of the witch hunts has ren-dered Robbins’s encyclopedia obsolete, but it remainsuseful as a source of some factual information and as agood read. Subsequent encyclopedias in English havebeen less ambitious than Robbins’s. The Encyclopedia ofWitchcraft: The Western Tradition, however, containsboth broader coverage geographically and historicallyon the witch hunts and more entries than any previousencyclopedia or dictionary of witchcraft. For instance,it more than triples the number of entries in Robbins’sEn c yclopedia of Wi t c h c raft and De m o n o l o gy, w h i c h ,moreover, omits most of Europe behind the Iro nCu rtain. Ro s e m a ry Eileen Gu i l e y’s En c yclopedia ofWitches and Witchcraft (1989) has 416 entries, but itoffers as much if not more on modern witchcraft as onthe era of the witch hunts. Two fine recent works arealso limited by size and by being single-authored:Michael Ba i l e y’s Historical Dictionary of Wi t c h c ra f t(2003) has brief entries on fewer than 200 pages, whileWilliam E. Burns’s Witch Hunts in Europe and America(2003) is less than one-fifth the size of our Encyclopediaof Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, and does not haveits range of entries.

Ro b b i n s’s 227 entries provided the starting point forthe six members of our editorial board and for me as edi-t o r. We then went to indexes in major books on witch-craft and compiled a list of possible entries, from whichwe selected those we thought appropriate. We addedother topics. Fi n a l l y, many contributors suggested entries.In actuality, the selection of entries continued while timepermitted. Like early modern political absolutism, thee n c yclopedia seemed always to be in the making.

Germany, known famously as the heartland of thewitch hunts, is the subject of the most entries (bothgeographical and biographical)—127. There are 70entries covering England and Scotland; 62 on France;50 on Italy; 24 on the Iberian Peninsula; 20 on easternand southeastern Europe (Poland, Russia, Hungary, theBalkans, Slovenia, Croatia, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia,and Lithuania); 20 on Austria, pre s e n t - d a yLiechtenstein, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia; 18 ontoday’s Low Countries; 17 on Switzerland; 17 onScandinavia (including Iceland); 15 on the Americas; 2on Ireland; and 1 on Malta. There would have beenadditional entries on eastern Europe and some other ofEurope’s islands had I been able to locate scholars tomake those contributions.

While the bulk of entries covers the late MiddleAges and early modern Europe, the idol of origins willbe appeased by the 25 entries on antiquity and 17 onthe Early and High Middle Ages. These numbers sig-nificantly underplay the scope of the coverage of theperiods prior to the witch hunts because numerous the-matic and geographic entries discuss the ancient andmedieval background.

Be yond exploring the subject matter contained inthe entries, readers of the En c yclopedia of Wi t c h c ra f t :The We s t e rn Tra d i t i o n should appreciate the type ofquestions scholars now ask about the field of witch-craft studies, see what areas recent scholarship hasexamined, and hopefully perc e i ve what topics anda reas still need to be re s e a rched. This encyclopedia isve ry much a product of the first years of the twe n t y -first century; many cities and regions in the West needto be explored, new sources consulted, and coverage ofwide-ranging topics expanded beyond the scope of asingle scholar’s expertise. The encyclopedia re flects thea reas of expertise of its contributors, who (withoutfalse academic modesty) re p resent most of the leadinge x p e rts in the Western world professing this special-ization. Of course, solid experts on a subject in onegeographic area, say France, England, or Ge r m a n y,we re often reluctant to ve n t u re beyond those bound-aries to make entries truly Continent-wide. T h e i rreluctance is understandable, given the explosion ofc o n t e m p o r a ry scholarship, the difficulty in keepinga b reast of re s e a rch in any topic, and the rightful andwe l l - c o n s i d e red hesitation of academics to discussa reas in which they lack significant know l e d g eg rounded in their personal re s e a rch. One can contrastthis humble realization of limitations with the eager-ness of talking heads, movie stars, politicians, “t h eperson on the street,” letter writers to newspapers andmagazines, and random citizens to offer opinions onjust about any subject, re g a rdless of their know l e d g e .A truly ignorant person is one who does not know hisor her own ignorance.

This encyclopedia has great value not only in show-casing witchcraft scholarship at one point in time butalso in allowing anyone to compare rather quickly theskills, approaches, methodologies, and contributions ofmost of the best witchcraft scholars in the West. Suchcomparison was previously possible only through greatand time-consuming efforts, if at all. It is my hope thatthe Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition willbridge the gap between scholars and the general publicby making the vast scholarship on witchcraft readilyaccessible. This encyclopedia offers a means for enjoy-ment, a singularly instructive (if mostly pessimistic)

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exploration of the human condition, and a milepost forour successors to see where they can now advance thefield of witchcraft and witch-hunt studies.

—Richard M. Golden

Notes1. Ronald Hutton, reviewing recent anthropologi-

cal and historical studies on witchcraft, has constructeda model of a witch that has the following characteris-tics: a person who employs nonphysical means to bringmisfortune or injury; harms neighbors or kin, notstrangers; reaps social disapproval; works within a tradi-

xxxvi introduction

tion; and can be opposed by others. Hutton did notconsider “g o o d” witchcraft, which is discussed innumerous entries in the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft. Seehis “Anthropological and Historical Approaches toWitchcraft: Potential for a New Collaboration?”Historical Journal 4, no. 2 (2004): 413–434.

2. While witchcraft scholars do not discuss thepossibility of the Devil’s existence in history (at least inthis encyclopedia), polls in 2004 indicated that 70 per-cent of Americans believed in the Devil and that 78percent believed in angels. See Dallas Morning News,July 3, 2004, G1.

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Awith charming by a session held under the auspices ofthe Kirk, as the national church of Scotland is called,b e f o re she came to a criminal trial. Charges therealleged magical cures, love charms, and inflicting deathupon humans and animals. Isobel Cockie killed horsesby touching them. Marjorie Mutche destroyed cattleand made people sick. Both we re also accused, withothers, of dancing with the Devil. Andrew Ma n ,h owe ve r, was different from the rest. He claimed thathe had a sexual relationship with the fairy queen andhad several children by her. In return, she gave him thegift of foreknowledge and the ability to cure almost anykind of illness. Andrew also had highly unort h o d oxreligious views and spoke often of his attendant spiritChristsonday—not a familiar in the English sense, butan angelic companion. (This spirit was also claimed byanother of the accused, Marion Grant.) Like many ofthe others, Andrew was convicted of some of the itemson his dittay and acquitted of others. He too wasexecuted.

Twenty-three women and two men were executed forwitchcraft during this episode. Six others, five womenand one man, were acquitted altogether, and in the caseof three of these, the principal witness against them wasa r rested and charged with malicious prosecution. T h euse of torture is recorded in only one case, and its use inthat case may have been illegal. Over thirty others wereformally named as witches, but we do not know whathappened to them subsequently. It is difficult to knowwhy this series of prosecutions broke out when it did.T h e re was a constant undert ow of magical dealing insociety as a whole during the medieval and early mod-ern periods. Local tensions and fears might easily reachthe breaking point at any time and burst into a flurry ofwitchcraft charges, with each suspect being encouragedto name her or his accomplices. Individuals within thec h u rch or state might also feel called upon to initiatewitchcraft proceedings for personal, religious, or politi-cal reasons. It may be no coincidence that betwe e n1596 and1597 violent confrontation was seen betweenJames VI and the Kirk over who should govern whom.It is fruitless, however, to seek a single explanation forany outbreak of witchcraft prosecution; what is clear isthat the role of tort u re in witchcraft trials in Scotlandhas often been overplayed.

Aberdeen Witches 1

Aberdeen WitchesOne of the fullest collections of sixteenth-centuryScottish source material relating to witchcraft, theAberdeen shire records, cover a period from 1596/1597to 1598 and contain a commission (authority to hold atrial), documents from pretrial investigations, formalindictments (dittays) listing the charges against variousindividuals, and the confession of one accused male. Anentry in the Aberdeen burgh accounts tells us that exe-cuting two of the women cost £7. 14s. 0d., roughlyspeaking the equivalent of nine days’ wages for a masonand his boy at the same period. Despite what is oftensaid, the incident was almost certainly not set off by thepublication of James V I ’s witchcraft tre a t i s e ,Daemonologie (Demonology, 1597), which was proba-bly published after the prosecutions started.

The charges against those concerned, who includedmen as well as women, were varied. The Wishart fami-l y, living in Ab e rdeen, consisted of Janet, married toJohn Leis, one son (Thomas), and three daughters( Elspeth, Violet, and Janet). T h e re we re thirt y - o n echarges listed in Janet Wishart’s dittay. These includedhens dropping dead, cows falling sick, humans con-tracting illness, unexplained and frightening noises in ahouse, and prolonged attacks by a dog that entere ds o m e o n e’s bedroom. Janet Leis was further accused ofraising storms, inflicting diseases that ended fatally, andbeing able to foretell the future. The period covered bythe accusations was twenty years and more. T h o m a sLeis, described as a common witch and sorc e re r, wasimprisoned with his mother. The Devil came to thewindow of their cell and told them to deny everythingin court. Meanwhile, he and his sister Violet collaborat-ed in a magical operation to banish an evil spirit from ahouse. For this, Violet had to go to the city gallows atmidnight, cut down the corpse hanging there, removeparts of the body, and burn the rest. Janet Wishart wasconvicted of eighteen of the thirty-one charges againsther and executed. Execution of witches in Scotlandtook place by strangulation, after which the dead bodywas burned, and the person’s movable goods were con-fiscated. Thomas, too, was executed. The rest of thefamily was banished.

Most of the accused came from elsew h e re inAb e rd e e n s h i re. Helen Fraser had twice been charged

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Witches were also brought to trial in Aberdeenshire,as elsewhere in Scotland, during the seventeenth centu-ry, under different religious, social, and political cir-cumstances. Modern scholarship strongly suggests thateach episode of witchcraft, wherever it happened, needsto be studied as a discrete, local event before attemptsare made to relate it to outbreaks elsewhere.

P. G. MAXWELL-STUARTSee also: FAIRIES; JAMES VI AND I, KING OF SCOTLAND AND

ENGLAND; SCOTLAND; SORCERY.References and further reading:Goodare, Julian. 2001. “The Aberdeenshire Witchcraft Panic of

1597.” Northern Scotland 21:17–37.Levack, Brian P. 2002. “The Decline and End of Scottish Witch-

Hunting.” Pp. 166–181 in The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context.Edited by Julian Goodare. Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress.

Maxwell-Stuart, P. G. 1998. “Witchcraft and the Kirk inAberdeenshire, 1596–97.” Northern Scotland 18:1–14.

———. 2001. Satan’s Conspiracy: Magic and Witchcraft inSixteenth-Century Scotland. East Lothian, UK: Tuckwell.

Acculturation ThesisThe concept of acculturation has been employed to tiein witchcraft persecutions with allegedly fundamentalchanges in European culture. The term acculturationbegan its life when anthropologists coined it to describethe effect of Western culture on the American Indians;later it was applied to other cultural relationshipsbetween so-called “advanced” and “primitive” peoples.It implies a model of cultural change in which a domi-nant culture appears in an aggressive role, operatingthrough a mixture of direct force and seduction toinduce major changes in a subordinate culture. Thescheme has naturally been influential among historiansseeking to understand witchcraft persecution, becauseone possible explanation for this phenomenon is as anattack on vital aspects of popular culture. In practice,attempts to apply the idea directly have not proved veryconvincing, but it has generated some valuable insightsinto the broader context in which both beliefs and per-secution might flourish.

In the 1970s the model was applied to early modernEu rope, most notably by the French historian Ro b e rtMuchembled, to describe an allegedly all-perva s i veform of modernization. He linked the development ofthe state, religious reform, and socioeconomic tre n d s ,then sought to describe a cultural revolution in whicholder forms of popular culture were repressed and frag-mented. Lawyers and clerics appeared as the mainagents of this change at the local level, with the villageelites cowed or shamed into a rather half-hearted com-pliance. Muchembled laid out the theory in a distinctlyschematic fashion in a 1978 book, later translated intoEnglish as Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France,1 4 0 0 – 1 7 5 0 . In later works, such as L’ In vention de

l’homme moderne (The Invention of Modern Man) andLe Temps des supplices (The Time of Tortures), he mod-ified his original position substantially. It is regrettablethat these more sophisticated and plausible versions ofthe modernization thesis have remained little know noutside France, in comparison with a first statementwith which the author has made his own dissatisfactionplain. In terms of the Catholic Reform movement moregenerally, the extensive writings of Jean Delumeau rep-resent a similar interpretation, with pastoral techniquesbuilt on fear allegedly instilling powe rful feelings ofguilt among ordinary believers.

W h e re witchcraft persecution is concerned,Muchembled has always insisted that so wi

Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition

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