Explore the vast range of titles available.

In comparison with the estimated number of about 60,000 executed so-called witches (women and men), the number of executed and punished witch-priests seems to be rather irrelevant. This statement, however, overlooks the fact that it was only during medieval and early modern times that the crime of heresy and witchcraft cost the life of friars, monks, and ordained priests at the stake. Clerics were the largest group of men accused of practicing magic, necromancy, and witchcraft. Demonology and the media (in constant dialogue with trials) reveal the omnipresence of the devil’s cleric with his figure possessing the quality of a ‘super-witch’, labelled as patronus sagarum. In Western Europe, the persecution of Catholic priests played at least two significant roles. First, in confessional debates, it proved to Catholics that Satan was assaulting post-Tridentine Catholicism, the only remaining bulwark of Christianity; for Protestants on the other hand, the news about the devil’s clergy proved that Satan ruled popedom. Second, in the Old Reich and from the start of the 17th century, the prosecution of clerics as the devil’s minions fueled the general debates about the legitimacy of witchcraft trials. In sketching these over-lapping discourses, we meet the devil’s clergy in Catholic political demonology, in the media and in confessional debates, including polemics about Jesuits being witches and sorcerers. Friedrich Spee used the narratives about executed Catholic priests as vital argument to end trials and torture. Inter alia, battling the devil’s clergy played a vital role in campaigns of internal Catholic church reform and clerical infighting. Studying the debates about the devil’s clergy thus provides a better understanding of how the dynamics of the Reformation, counter-Reformation, Catholic Reform, and confessionalization had an impact on European witchcraft trials.

Edward Bever's book The Realities of Witchcraft addresses a fundamental historiographical issue, namely the extent to which early modern magical practices really functioned. Most scholars dismiss the idea that magical rites have real efficacy, or argue that the only reality that should be considered is contingent on historical cultural structures. Bever asserts that magic, and particularly harmful witchcraft, really worked, sometimes by physical means, but often by influencing neurobiology. In this forum section, five scholars respond to and critique Bever's arguments, and Bever responds.

The conflict about the reality of witchcraft between Peter Binsfeld and Cornelius Loos took place against the backdrop of some of the worst witch-hunting early modern Europe would ever see. Accused as a heretic by an ecclesiastical tribunal, Loos was forced to revoke his work of (anti-)demonology in 1593. In 1580, Peter Binsfeld, was finally confirmed as provost of St Simeon. There can be no doubt that Binsfeld's demonology was part of a wider effort to promote Catholic reform in the Trier archdiocese, in which he joined forces with the Jesuits who had established themselves in Trier around 1560. The suffragan bishop equipped his demonology with additional confessions from newly condemned witches, partly from the jurisdiction of the electorate, but mostly from St Maximin. Whether the Dutch priest had read the first edition during his time as librarian in Mainz, or whether he had already begun work on his own (anti-)demonology before his arrival in Trier, cannot be determined.