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While the perception of magic as harmful is age-old, the notion of witches gathering together in large numbers, overtly worshiping demons, and receiving instruction in how to work harmful magic as part of a conspiratorial plot against Christian society was an innovation of the early fifteenth century. The sources collected in this book reveal this concept in its formative stages. The idea that witches were members of organized heretical sects or part of a vast diabolical conspiracy crystalized most clearly in a handful of texts written in the 1430s and clustered geographically around the arc of the western Alps. Michael D. Bailey presents accessible English translations of the five oldest surviving texts describing the witches' sabbath and of two witch trials from the period. These sources, some of which were previously unavailable in English or available only in incomplete or out-of-date translations, show how perceptions of witchcraft shifted from a general belief in harmful magic practiced by individuals to a conspiratorial and organized threat that led to the witch hunts that shook northern Europe and went on to influence conceptions of diabolical witchcraft for centuries to come. Origins of the Witches' Sabbath makes freshly available a profoundly important group of texts that are key to understanding the cultural context of this dark chapter in Europe's history. It will be especially valuable to those studying the history of witchcraft, medieval and early modern legal history, religion and theology, magic, and esotericism.

This paper explores the suppression of ideas within an academic scholarship by academics, either by self-suppression or because of the efforts of other academics. Legal, moral, and social issues distinguishing freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry, and academic freedom are reviewed. How these freedoms and protections can come into tension is then explored by an analysis of denunciation mobs that exercise their legal free speech rights to call for punishing scholars who express ideas they disapprove of and condemn. When successful, these efforts, which constitute legally protected speech, will suppress certain ideas. Real-world examples over the past five years of academics that have been sanctioned or terminated for scholarship targeted by a denunciation mob are then explored.

This article underscored the human rights implications of witch-hunts in selected areas of South Africa and Zimbabwe. The thorny issue at the focus of this article is that, despite good harvests, technological developments and other economic progress worldwide, witch-killings are still a serious problem. The article argued that, in cases where people suspect foul play or do not understand what transpires in life, cultural and modern ordeals are resorted to in order to identify a ‘witch.’ These witch-hunts result in gross human rights violations. A synthesis of qualitative data collection methods and legal research methods were used to collect data. Participants in Zimbabwe and South Africa were selected through purposive and snowball sampling. The study employed a human-rights based approach. The study revealed that self-styled witch-finders’ practices are unethical, unlawful and a direct gross human rights violation. The study showed that the accusers often stand to gain in some way and exploit the vulnerability of those they accuse. The study recommended that peace officers and the judicial system should take stern measures to ensure that an urgent and holistic approach is adopted.

In two important books, the French philosopher Jacob Rogozinski analyses the logic of hatred underlying the great witch-hunt at the beginning of modern times, the period of terror following the French and the Russian Revolution and present-day djihadism. According to his analysis, the same logic of hatred is at work in these historical phenomena. The confrontation with the martyrs-murderers of djihadism, challenges the self-understanding of the defenders of democracy. Just as, on the level of religion, one must give up the dream of a reformation that would make Islam more « moderate », and help the Islamic believers become more radical, but otherwise than more fanatical, by rediscovering their forgotten treasures, on a political level, democracy too needs to be radicalized.

The theory of Darwinian cultural evolution is gaining currency in many parts of the socio-cultural sciences, but it remains contentious. Critics claim that the theory is either fundamentally mistaken or boils down to a fancy re-description of things we knew all along. We will argue that cultural Darwinism can indeed resolve long-standing socio-cultural puzzles; this is demonstrated through a cultural Darwinian analysis of the European witch persecutions. Two central and unresolved questions concerning witch-hunts will be addressed. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, a remarkable and highly specific concept of witchcraft was taking shape in Europe. The first question is: who constructed it? With hindsight, we can see that the concept contains many elements that appear to be intelligently designed to ensure the continuation of witch persecutions, such as the witches’ sabbat, the diabolical pact, nightly flight, and torture as a means of interrogation. The second question is: why did beliefs in witchcraft and witch-hunts persist and disseminate, despite the fact that, as many historians have concluded, no one appears to have substantially benefited from them? Historians have convincingly argued that witch-hunts were not inspired by some hidden agenda; persecutors genuinely believed in the threat of witchcraft to their communities. We propose that the apparent ‘design’ exhibited by concepts of witchcraft resulted from a Darwinian process of evolution, in which cultural variants that accidentally enhanced the reproduction of the witch-hunts were selected and accumulated. We argue that witch persecutions form a prime example of a ‘viral’ socio-cultural phenomenon that reproduces ‘selfishly’, even harming the interests of its human hosts.

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.

A powerful novel about three young women caught in the hysteria of their own times. In 1628, Veronica and her brother flee for their lives into the German woods after their father is burned at the stake. At the dawn of the eighteenth century, Scottish maid Katherine is lured into political dissent after her parents are butchered for their beliefs. In present-day Australia, Paisley navigates her way through the burning torches of small-town gossip after her mother's new-age shop comes under scrutiny.

This chapter provides a description of the witch trials centered in Salem Village, MA, in 1692–1693 and overviews the main strands of interpretation of the causes of the witch craze. The focus of the chapter is on the primary sources of our knowledge of the trials, including the trial records as well as the contemporaneous eyewitness accounts and commentaries. The chapter argues that while these writings have been studied closely by historians, they have yet to receive careful attention from literary, rhetorical, and text‐historical perspectives.

This article contributes to methodological discussions on gatekeeping issues encountered during fieldwork on stigmatized practices. Here, negotiating gatekeeping becomes particularly relevant, as access to a research population is often mediated via institutions. The situation is further complicated given the location of research, where the researcher has to navigate unfamiliar social and cultural norms of conduct. The paper examines gatekeeping during data collection and investigates resulting complications, focusing on the ways researchers negotiate class, gender, and ethics-related power dynamics in the field. Using examples of interactions with three groups of gatekeepers in a multiyear ethnographic study, the author finds that the constituencies that have the least amount of formal bureaucratic power are the ones that perform the most problematic kind of gatekeeping. Finally, strategies are offered that can help researchers maintain control over data, develop allies, manage potentially problematic interactions with powerful gatekeepers, and ultimately achieve success in fieldwork in contentious terrains.

En el presente artículo nos proponemos dar un paso más en la indagación sobre la brujería en la literatura hispánica, abordando en esta ocasión la narrativa histórica española desde 1970 hasta nuestros días. Las novelas seleccionadas han sido Retrato de una bruja de Luis de Castresana; La herbolera de Toti Martínez de Lezea; Ars Magica de Nerea Riesco; Las maléficas de Mikel Azurmendi y Regreso a tu piel de Lus Gabás. En un trabajo en gran parte descriptivo, se presentarán estos cinco relatos, resaltando los aspectos más llamativos que tratan sobre la brujería y las tesis que se vierten sobre este fenómeno y sobre la caza de brujas. Por tanto, se facilita al lector una panorámica acerca de los textos que ahondan en esta temática y se muestra que, en la actualidad, sigue muy vigente el interés por estas prácticas y su persecución, debido a lo complejo y controvertido del asunto y al drama que se vivió en los siglos XV, XVI y XVII, y que estos escritores han querido reflejar.Abstract: This article attempts to take a further step towards the investigation of witchcraft in Hispanic literature, now dealing with the Spanish historical narrative from 1970 to the present day. The novels that have been selected for such purpose are Luis de Castresana’s Retrato de una bruja, Toti Martinez de Lezea’s La herbolera, Nerea Riesco’s Ars Magica, Mikel Azurmendi ‘s Las maléficas and Luz Gabás’ Regreso a tu piel. In this article, which is mainly descriptive, these four stories will be presented highlighting the most remarkable aspects dealing with witchcraft together with the theses given about this phenomenon and the witch hunt. Therefore, the reader is offered an overview of the texts that delve into this subject and shows that, today, the interest in these practices and their prosecution is still alive not only thanks to the complexity and controversy of this matter, but also due to the tragic events that took place in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, which these writers have tried to reflect in their books.