Witchcraft in Europe, 1100-1700: A Documentary History

by Alan Charles Kors, Edward Peters

In bringing together a rich collection of contemporary accounts of the period, this volume chronicles the rise and fall of the cult of witchcraft that swept through Europe between the 11th and 18th centuries.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Occult, Religion, European History, Witchcraft

382 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1972

About the author

Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught the intellectual history of the 17th and 18th centuries. He has received both the Lindback Foundation Award and the Ira Abrams Memorial Award for distinguished college teaching. Kors graduated A.B. summa cum laude at Princeton University in 1964, and received his M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1968) in European history at Harvard University.
Kors has written on the history of skeptical, atheistic, and materialist thought in 17th and 18th-century France, on the Enlightenment in general, on the history of European witchcraft beliefs, and on academic freedom. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, which was published in four volumes by Oxford University Press in 2002.
Kors co-founded – with civil rights advocate Harvey A. Silverglate – and served from 2000 to 2006 as chairman of the board of directors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

Reviews

[JLJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now, dear child, here you have all my confession, for which I must die. And they are sheer lies and made-up things, so help me God. For all this I was forced to say through fear of the torture which was threatened beyond what I had already endured. For they never leave off the torture till one confesses something; be he never so good, he must be a witch.

Through a short summary of the different periods and relevant excerpts of judicial, clerical and ecclesiastical texts, the author draws a portrait of the evolution of witchcraft as a theological and judicial concept, how it became linked to heresy and how it evolved into the European witch-craze and persecutions.

Be forewarned, the material is, understandably, very dry, as the original texts were meant for religious scholars, and reading them is maddening, since we know now that they were pure self-serving misogynistic fallacy. However they serve to better understand the context of the witch-craze, and they provide first hand accounts of the torment and treatment inflicted on no less than 50 000 thousand innocent victims, most of them women, and this is a conservative estimate.

The last section "Scepticism, Doubt and Disbelief" shows excerpts of great thinkers who, by logic and reason, sought to denounce the witch persecutions and witch beliefs, and thank God it wrapped up this book, because the rest is depressing (if still extremely informative).

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice one-volume go-to on the subject. Keep in mind, most of the documents here are ecclesiastical, clerical, and/or juridical and don't really offer much on actual folk practice or whatever you want to call it. There are a few tidbits of that here and there, but this is mostly a resource to see how insane (and familiar) persecution was (and is). A good documentary resource for how ideas can easily become more valuable than a human life. Has excerpts from "The Hammer", papal missives, and trial notes.

[Josh Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The primary sources were great, but there was very little analysis of those sources. It would be a very useful text for someone looking for resources on a bigger project.

[Astralgravy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the synopses are too brief, and any Aquinas (in my opinion) Is too long, but overall, a great desk reference of sorts, and worth every penny for the incredible collection of illustrative and photographic plates alone.