The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe

361 Pages·2006·6.593 MB·English

by  Brian Levack

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Fearlessly,Brian Levack tackles a vast,complex subject and reduces it to a concise and lucid THIRD
synthesis with consummate skill,challenging old assumptions and casting light into the EDITION
darkest corners … the essential starting point for the study ofearly modern witch-beliefs
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and witchcraft trials. H
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Dr Malcolm Gaskill,University ofCambridge
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Ofprevious editions:
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Now,at last,with Brian Levack’s careful scholarly and critical survey,a thoroughly reliable C
introduction to the whole literature is available. H
History Today -
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Levack’s logical sorting ofa prodigious amount ofmaterial has resulted in one ofthe most
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informative and comprehensive works ofits genre.
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American Historical Review
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Between 1450 and 1750 thousands ofpeople – most ofthem women – were accused, IN
prosecuted and executed for the crime ofwitchcraft.The witch-hunt was not a single
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event;it comprised thousands ofindividual prosecutions,each shaped by the religious
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and social dimensions ofthe particular area as well as political and legal factors.Brian
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Levack sorts through the proliferation oftheories to provide a coherent introduction to
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the subject,as well as contributing to the scholarly debate.The book: Y

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• Examines why witchcraft prosecutions took place,how many trials and victims there
were,and why witch-hunting eventually came to an end; O
• Explores the beliefs ofboth educated and illiterate people regarding witchcraft; D
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• Uses regional and local studies to give a more detailed analysis ofthe chronological
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and geographical distribution ofwitch-trials;
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• Emphazises the legal context ofwitchcraft prosecutions;

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• Illuminates the social,economic and political history ofearly modern Europe,and
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in particular the position ofwomen within it.
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In this fully updated third edition ofhis exceptional study,Levack incorporates the vast
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amount ofliterature that has emerged since the last edition.He substantially extends his
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consideration ofthe decline ofthe witch-hunt and goes further in his exploration of
witch-hunting after the trials,especially in contemporary Africa.New illustrations
vividly depict beliefs about witchcraft in early modern Europe.
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Brian P.Levackis the John Green Regents Professor in History at the University of E
Texas at Austin.He has written and edited many books,including The Witchcraft V
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Sourcebook(2004) and Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth
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Centuries(1999).
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Cover:'Execution 1555' (PAS II 12/49)
Zentralbibliothek Zürich,Graphische Sammlung. This book is undoubtedly the best one-volume introduction to its subject.It is outstanding for its
www.pearson-books.com
clarity ofexposition,its stress on witchcraft trials as judicial operations,and its careful chronology.
Julian Goodare,Director ofthe Survey ofScottish Witchcraft
THE WITCH-HUNT IN EARLY
MODERN EUROPE

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THE WITCH-HUNT IN
EARLY MODERN EUROPE
THIRD EDITION
BRIAN P. LEVACK

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PEARSON EDUCATION LIMITED
Edinburgh Gate
Harlow CM20 2JE
United Kingdom
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Website: www.pearsoned.co.uk
First published 1987
Second edition 1995
Third edition published in Great Britain 2006
© Pearson Education Limited 1987, 2006
The right of Brian P. Levack to be identified as author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN-13: 978 0 582 41901 8
ISBN-10: 0 582 41901 8
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Levack, Brian P.
The witch-hunt in early modern Europe / Brian P. Levack.
P. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-582-41901-8 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 0-582-41901-8 (pbk.)
1. Witchcraft—Europe—History. I. Title.
BF1571.L48 2006
133.4'3'094—dc22
2005044468

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
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issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London
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CONTENTS
List of tables vi
List of plates vii
Preface to the third edition ix
Preface to the second edition xi
Preface to the first edition xii
1. Introduction 1
2. The intellectual foundations 30
3. The legal foundations 74
4. The impact of the Reformation 109
5. The social context 134
6. The dynamics of witch-hunting 175
7. The chronology and geography of witch-hunting 204
8. The decline and end of witch-hunting 253
9. Witch-hunting after the trials 289
Bibliography 309
Index 333
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LIST OF TABLES
1. Regional execution-rates in witchcraft trials 23
2. Sex of accused witches 142
3. Ages of accused witches 149
4. Marital status of accused female witches 155
5. Last executions and last trials for witchcraft 280
MAP

Europe in the early seventeenth century xiv
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LIST OF PLATES
1. A disease of the eyes attributed to sorcery 6
2. Depiction of the witches’ sabbath, 1613 10
3. Ritual magician summoning up a demon 38
4. Witches burning and boiling infants 45
5. Witches changed into animals 50
6. Witches showing subjection to their master, the Devil 58
7. The Devil rebaptizing a witch after the conclusion of the pact 58
8. Witches trampling on the cross 59
9. The torture of a prisoner by means of the strappado 83
10. The hanging of the Chelmsford witches, 1589 93
11. Depiction of witches, young and old, playing leapfrog 150
12. The Devil seducing a woman into making a pact with him 153
13. The death of a stable groom by witchcraft 181
14. The execution of Urbain Grandier at Loudun, 1634 185
15. The Devil and witches flying on broomsticks 222
16. The swimming of Ruth Osborne by a mob at Tring,

Hertfordshire, 1751 291
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PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
The main reason I decided to prepare this third edition was to take into ac-
count the large volume of publications on the subject since I completed work
on the second edition in 1993. Despite many predictions to the contrary, the
profusion of witchcraft studies that began in the 1970s still shows no sign of
abating. It would of course be impossible to keep up with all this literature,
which is grounded in many different disciplines. I remain confident, how-
ever, that the breadth of my reading as well as my own archival work in Scot-
tish and English records provides a sufficiently broad foundation for the
arguments I advance here. Neither those arguments nor my approach to the
topic has changed radically in the course of three editions. In particular, I
have found no cause to reduce my emphasis on the legal context of witchcraft
prosecutions, which is probably the most distinctive feature of the book. Nor
have I seen fit to retreat from the position I have taken regarding the pur-
ported connection between state-building and witch-hunting, which I have
discussed more fully in other publications.
The main structural change in this edition is the division of the final chap-

ter of the first two editions, ‘Decline and survival’, into two separate chapters.
I have devoted the first of these chapters entirely to the decline and end of
witch-hunting. This chapter is informed by a long essay I published in 1999
in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. The
new Chapter 9, ‘Witch-hunting after the trials’, also includes a considerable
amount of new material, especially on witch-hunting in contemporaryAfrica,
where witch-hunting has reached an intensity comparable to that recorded
in some German territories in the early decades of the seventeenth century.
I have also rewritten substantial portions of the other chapters, especially Chap-
ter 5. In a few chapters I have added some material on demonic possession,
about which I have written elsewhere and which is the subject of my current
research. I have also made a downward estimate of the total number of witch-
craft prosecutions and executions. When I published the first edition in 1987,
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