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eBook
Origins of the Witches’ Sabbath
2021
Overview
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or out-of-date translations, show how perceptions of witchcraft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.
