Course outline and short bibliography
GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE CLASS
See below for preliminary BIBLIOGRAPHY
Description of written work to be done
during semester
| JANUARY READINGS for Week 2, Week 3 |
| 1. W 16: introductory session: key concepts and methods; the semester's task described. |
| 2. M 21: approaches to witchcraft and the occult |
| 2. W 23: what was a witch? Class discussion |
| 3. M 28: the theological and religious context |
| 3. W 30: a world of signs and portents |
| FEBRUARY READINGS for Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7 |
| 4. M 4: the classical and medieval background |
| 4. W 6: the Malleus maleficarum, its social and intellectual context |
| 5. M 11: what did it mean, to be bewitched? How was it to be cured? |
| 5. W 13: what did it mean, to confess to witchcraft? How should we read confessions? |
| 6. M 18: Marsilio Ficino and the impact of neo-Platonism |
| 6. W 20: learned magic and astrology |
| 7. M 25: regional variation in the prosecution of witchcraft |
| 7. W 27: who was accused, and why? |
| MARCH READINGS for Week 8, Week 9, Week 10 Help with essay drafts until Wednesday |
| 8. M 4: Paracelsus, philosophical alchemy and its critics |
| 8. W 6: folk beliefs: the benandanti, the donas de fuera, vampires, and werewolves |
| SPRING BREAK You MUST hand in the first essay before the break |
| 9. M 18: gender and witchcraft |
| 9. W 20: women and men as accused and accusers |
| 10. M 25: demonic possession |
| 10. W 27: medicine, witchcraft and possession |
| APRIL READINGS for Week 11, Week 12, Week 13, Week 14, Week 15 |
| You are strongly advised to hand in your second essay by the first class after the break. |
| 11. W 2: Scottish beliefs and trials: the North Berwick witches |
| 12. M 7: English beliefs and trials |
| 12. W 9: the Hopkins trials and the Lowestoft witches |
| EASTER BREAK You MUST have settled your final essay topic by the break |
| 14. M 22: New England: beliefs and events |
| 14. W 24: New England: interpretations |
| 15. M 29: continuing beliefs, after the trials |
| MAY Last chance to show draft versions of final essay for comment |
| 15. W 1: the uses of the past by neo-pagans, feminists and historians |
 |
| MONDAY, MAY 6: 9-10 A.M. Final meeting, instead of exam; absolutely LAST hand-in essay time |
COURSE BOOKS All three of these are available in paperback and should be purchased.
Robin
Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: the Social and Cultural Context of European
Witchcraft (1996)
Peter G. Maxwell-Stuart (ed.), The Occult in Early
Modern Europe: a Documentary History (1999)
Darren
Oldridge (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader (2001)
SHORT GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY, with annotations
Fuller bibliographies are available elsewhere on this site. Guidance will be given on the resources that might prove helpful for the exploration of specific topics, according to students' interests. This short bibliography is intended to help students locate topics that might be suitable for essays or book reviews. Remember that three essays will be required: a book review of an academic monograph; an essay surveying secondary literature on some topic; a primary source study. If you feel confident reading texts in a language other than English, do ask for suggestions.
Explore the library's holdings and find things for yourselves! The more widely you read, the more likely you are to produce good work. One of the best ways to find an innovative approach is to identify a methodology used fruitfully in one area and then apply it to primary texts from another area or period. For guidance on how to read different sorts of text, see page on reading.
Please let me know of any books missing from the Notre Dame library, or any suggestions for books worth including in this list. Here is a link to a good bibliography for a University of Edinburgh course on this topic. Above the Edinburgh bibliography, on the same page, you will find some essay topics for that course, which may help you to think of subjects that will interest you.
General surveys See below for selected regional studies and for selected primary documents
Sydney Anglo (ed.), The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft (1977) [a somewhat elderly collection, but contains good essays on various demonologists]
Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (eds.), Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries (1991) [essays on various countries, especially in Northern Europe, usually neglected: Sicily, Hungary, Estonia, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Portugal]
Jonathan
Barry et al. (eds.), Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (1996)
[several excellent essays, mostly papers given at a conference held to
reconsider the significance of Keith Thomas's classic work on English material,
Religion
and the Decline of Magic]
Anne L. Barstow, Witchcraze: a New History of the European Witch Hunts (1994) [a fairly strong presentation of a feminist position, abandons some old chestnuts but a little cavalier with figures]
Wolfgang Behringer, 'Weather, hunger and fear: the origins of the European witch persecution in climate, society and mentality', German History, 13 (1995) [one of the best historians of German witchcraft pushes a materialist explanation in terms of panics being caused by crop failures]
Susan Burghartz, 'The equation of women and witches', in Richard J. Evans (ed.), The German Underworld: Deviants and Outcasts in German History (1988) [a fairly good feminist study]
Peter
Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1978) [not
a study of witchcraft as such, but useful for context; a little too rigid
in the division between popular and elite cultures; see also his other
works on Renaissance culture and society]
Stuart Clark, 'Inversion, misrule and the meaning of witchcraft', Past and Present, 87 (May 1980) [a classic essay by the leading historian of demonology, exploring the reason for some of the odder details of the descriptions of the sabbat and witchcraft generally; good for thinking with]
Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: the Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (1997) [a superb but massive study of demonology, too long to read in full perhaps but very useful to consult; the survey chapters are useful and stimulating, though not always precise; the case studies are excellent] cf. review article by John Bossy, 'Thinking with Clark', Past and Present, 166 (Feb. 2000)
Norman Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons (1975; 2nd edn., 1993) [like the early work of Richard Kieckhefer, a pioneering study of the early trials in central Europe]
Betty J.T. Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius: the Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought (1991) [the major work on the alchemical philosophy of the great biblical chronologist and natural philosopher]
Brian Easlea, Witch Hunting, Magic and the New Philosophy: an Introduction to the Debates of the Scientific Revolution, 1450-1750 (1980) [quite useful as an introduction to the intellectual implications of demonology, and its context amid other disciplines; some dated concepts]
Claire Fanger (ed.), Conjuring Spirits: Texts and
Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic (1998)
Lucien Febvre, 'Witchcraft: nonsense or a mental revolution?',
in Lucien Febvre, A New Kind of History, ed. Peter Burke (1973)
[very much a ground-breaking piece, by one of the founders of French social
history]
Valerie I.J.Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval
Europe (1991) [comprehensive study which is especially good on religion
and magic, attacked by Kieckhefer, in American Historical Review]
Valerie I.J.Flint, 'The transmission of astrology in the early Middle Ages', Viator 21 (1990)
Eugenio Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life (1983)
Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Brian P. Levack and Roy Porter, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1999) [a volume in a new series of synthetic essays]
Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra et al. (eds.), Illness and Healing Alternatives in Western Europe (1997) [several essays that help to connect magic, miracles and healing]
Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath (1991) [a much disputed work by a leading historian of Italian witchcraft, which argues that the idea of the sabbat came from folk memories of shamanism]
Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300-1500 (1976) [produced independently of Cohn's book, this came to similar conclusions about the social origins of the early trials and the fraudulence of some of the documents relied upon by earlier historians to show continuity with heresy-hunting]
Richard
Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (1989) [short, authoritative
general survey]
Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: the Age of the Witch-Hunts (1985) [a widely cited but rather unreliable general survey, still used as a textbook; worth taking a section, such as his "Classic Witches", as an older orthodoxy to argue against]
John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Régime (1977) [useful to understand where torture stood in the trial process, why it was used and what was the position of evidence gained by it]
Brian
P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (2nd edn., 1995)
[slightly outdated survey but good on social dimensions]
Thomas Moore, The Planets Within: the Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino (1982) [a psychotherapeutic interpretation of Renaissance neo-Platonism]
Edward Peters, The Magician, the Witch and the Law (1982) [study of medieval legal procedures]
Lawrence
M. Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and his Alchemical Quest
(1998) [the recovery of the alchemical project of the "Father of
Chemistry"; includes primary material]
Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (1996) [a study by a literary critic, in three parts: uses of the history by neo-pagans, feminists and historians; women's self-understanding in accusations and confessions; some stage representations in England]
Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (1994) [several of the essays in this book are excellent on German witchcraft, considering what the meaning of it was for accusers and confessing witches] cf. also Lyndal Roper, '"Evil imaginings and fantasies": child-witches and the end of the witch craze', Past and Present, 167 (May 2000)
Geoffrey R. Quaife, Godly Zeal and Furious Rage: the Witch in Early Modern Europe (1987) [a survey with somewhat tendentious sections and some weak explanations]
Jeffrey
B. Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (1972) [some key
arguments discredited by Cohn and Kieckhefer, but still contains much useful
material on pre-Malleus period]
Laura Ackerman Smoller, History, Prophecy, and the Stars: the Christian Astrology of Pierre d'Ailly, 1350-1420 (1994) [study of a cardinal whose astrological prophecies influenced Columbus]
Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1969) [one of the first books to treat the witch-trials seriously as an intellectual phenomenon, but not now generally regarded as authoritative by serious scholars; still of interest, however]
D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (1981) [a major historian of Renaissance magic tackles demonic possession; a little too quick to accuse the bewitched and possessed of fraud, perhaps]
D.
P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella
(1958; republ. 2000) [a classic study of the relationship between
neo-Platonist learned magic and demonology]
Charles Webster, From Paracelsus to Newton: Magic and the Making of Modern Science (1982) [masterly series of lectures on prophecy, spiritual magic and demonic magic]
Andrew Weeks, Paracelsus: Speculative Theory and the Crisis of the Early Reformation (1997)
Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972) [a thorough but not always reliable study of the career of philosophical alchemy, from the early seventeenth century onwards]
A selection of regional studies
Wolfgang Behringer, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria (1997) [now finally available in English, this is one of the best regional studies of German witchcraft]
Wolfgang
Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoecklin and the Phantoms
of the Night (1998) [a good case study of a village heretic and
healer]
Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Transformations, c.1650-c.1750 (1997) [a good study of the politics of the witchcraft debate in England; unfortunately for history, the author is now a leading concert tenor]
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed (1974) [long the standard work, from the "village history" interpretative tendency in Salem studies]
Michel de Certeau, The Possession at Loudun (2000) [after thirty years, finally available in English; a superb study of the mass possession of nuns and the trial of Urbain Grandier, made famous in the English-speaking world by Aldous Huxley's novelistic account and Ken Russell's film, The Devils]
Fernando
Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: the Impact of Diabolism in New
Spain (1994) [one of the best books on demonology in Mexico,
but marred by a neglect of some obvious sources and by a failure to acknowledge
that the native population was not under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition]
cf. Fernando Cervantes, 'The Devils of Querétaro: scepticism and
credulity in late seventeenth-century Mexico', Past and Present,
130 (Feb. 1991)
Stuart Clark and P.T. Morgan, 'Religion and magic in Elizabethan Wales: Robert Holland's dialogue on witchcraft', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 27 (1976) [virtually the only scholarly work on Wales]
Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England (1989) [a social and political history of the decline of English astrology]
Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736-1951 (1999) [the first serious attempt to survey belief in magic and witchcraft after the end of the English trials; see also his various articles]
John
P. Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New
England (1982) [deals with the New England cases before Salem,
from a psychohistorical perspective; perhaps stronger on the social history
and social psychology than when he tries to engage in depth analysis: see
the exchange between Demos and the psychologist Nicholas Spanos: Journal
of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 21 (1985) 60-67 and 21 (1985)
180-181.]
Gregory Durston, Witchcraft and Witch Trials: a History of English Witchcraft and its Legal Perspectives, 1542-1736 (2000) [I have yet to see a copy of this book, so I am not sure it is available]
Ann
Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth-Century Mind: William Lilly and
the Language of the Stars (1995) [an intellectual history
of the practice of English astrology]
David Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch: the System of the Sacred in Early Modern Terra d'Otranto (1992) [an excellent study of clerical and popular magic in southern Italy]
Marion Gibson, Reading English Witchcraft: Stories of Early English Witchcraft (1999) [a close reading of the documents and pamphlet literature; excellent methodological advice]
Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1983) [an important work, long unavailable in English, on the benandanti of Friuli, an anti-witchcraft cult turned over time into witches by incomprehending inquisitors; one of the few examples of a really strong folk tradition]
Richard
Godbeer, The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England
(1992)
Julian Goodare, 'Women and the witch-hunt in Scotland', Social History, 23 (1998)
Anthony Grafton, Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Work of a Renaissance Astrologer (1999) [good introduction to the social roles of astrology through the life of a leading astrological physician; see also Nancy Siraisi's book on his medical practice]
Annabel Gregory, 'Witchcraft, politics and "good neighbourhood" in early seventeenth-century Rye', Past and Present, 133 (Nov. 1991) [a good study of how local disputes could interact with a witchcraft accusation]
David Harley, 'Explaining Salem: Calvinist psychology and the diagnosis of possession', American Historical Review, 101 (1996) [a critique of the historiography for the neglect of the distinction between bewitchment and possession, which it is argued was crucial at Salem]
Gustav
Henningsen, The Witches' Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish
Inquisition, 1609-1614 (1980) [a thorough study of a famous inquisitor,
Alonso de Salazar, who was highly sceptical about witchcraft accusations]
Clive Holmes, 'Popular culture? Witches, magistrates and divines in early modern England', in S.L. Kaplan (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture (1984)
Clive Holmes, 'Women: witnesses and witches', Past and Present, 140 (Aug. 1993) [an early treatment of the question of why the accusers were often women]
Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (1987) [a classic feminist account of New England witchcraft; weak on the possession/bewitchment distinction and on the role of midwives, but an interesting argument about the significance of property transfers, which has yet to be challenged or confirmed]
Gábor
Klaniczay, The Uses of Supernatural Power: the Transformation of Popular
Religion in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (1990) [one of the
few accessible treatments of Hungarian beliefs; see also Eva Pocs for a
more narrowly focussed study]
Christina Larner, Enemies of God: The Witch-Hunt in Scotland (1981) [the classic study of Scottish material; not all of the conclusions are still accepted, as they have failed to stand up to scrutiny]
Christina Larner, Witchcraft and Religion: Studies in Culture and Belief (1984) [posthumous collection of essays, some drawing on her Scottish material but making more general points]
Brian P. Levack, 'The great Scottish witch-hunt of 1661-1662', Journal of British Studies, 20 (1984)
Alan
Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (1970: 2nd edn,
1999) [the classic English case study, which applied functionalist
anthropology to argue that English cases were about the refusal of charity
to impoverished neighbours and the transfer of guilt]
Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550-1650 (1989) [a good study of the lenient policies of the Venetian Inquisition towards those accused of magic and witchcraft]
H.C. Erik Midelfort, Witch-Hunting in South-Western Germany, 1562-1684 (1972) [one of the earliest regional studies undertaken in Europe, looking at an area of intense prosecution]
Robert Muchembled, 'The witches of the Cambrésis: the acculturation of the rural world in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries', in J. Obelkevich (ed.), Religion and the People, 800-1700 (1979) [an essay summarizing the position adopted by a leading historian of witchcraft in Northern France and the Low Countries, that prosecutions were about attacks on popular culture]
Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts, Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland: James VI's Demonology and the North Berwick Witches (2000) [a good analysis, with plenty of source material transcribed; probably not suitable for book review but excellent as part of survey essay on Scotland, or for a primary sources study, counting as a foreign text in the latter case. NOT in the ND library yet, but available in paperback.]
Wallace Notestein, A History of Witchcraft in England (1911) [now hopelessly dated, but still useful, especially as a source mine]
Jonathan Pearl, The Crime of Crimes: Demonology and Politics in France, 1560-1620 (1999) [good brief intellectual history of French demonology in the context of religious struggle]
Eva
Pocs, Between the Living and the Dead (1999) [Hungarian witchcraft
and shamanism]
Robert Rapley, A Case of Witchcraft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier (1998) [not as searching as Michel de Certeau's study, but of some utility]
Alison Rowlands, "Witchcraft and Popular Religion in Early Modern Rothenburg ob der Tauber", in Bob Scribner and Trevor Johnson (eds.), Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400-1800 (London, 1996) 101-118 [good study of an area that experienced a low level of prosecutions]
W. F. Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia (1999) [a magisterial treatment, dealing with magic rather than witchcraft accusations; includes sections on alchemy and astrology]
James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England, 1550-1750 (1996) [a good if somewhat pedestrian study of English witchcraft, better on the cases than on the analysis of discourse or gender issues; see also his recent book on the Anne Gunter case and his various articles]
Per
Sorlin, Wicked Arts: Witchcraft and Magic Trials in Southern Sweden,
1635-1754 (1999) [the only full-length case study on Scandinavian
material translated into English, as far as I can recall]
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971) [the classic study, by the mentor of Alan Macfarlane, Peter Burke and James Sharpe; like Macfarlane, a little hampered by functional explanations and by a "Whiggish" view of Progress; see the exculpatory introduction by Jonathan Barry, in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe)
Richard Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts (1984) [a good sociological study, taking theology into full account]
Gerhild S. Williams, Defining Dominion: the Discourses of Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern France and Germany (1995) [excellent case histories of demonologists, looking especially at the relevant works of Paracelsus, Weyer, and Bodin]
Deborah
Willis, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early
Modern England (1995) [a literary study, which perhaps lays a
little too much stress on breastfeeding, under the influence of Kleinian
psychoanalysis; should be read in conjunction with Diane Purkiss's book]
R. Zguta, 'Witchcraft trials in seventeenth-century Russia', American Historical Review, 82 (1977)
Selected primary documents full guides to Notre Dame holdings of primary texts
Virtually all books published in early modern England on related topics are available on microfilm. Please ask for help in locating such material.
The Bible, notably Exodus 7:8-12; Exodus 22:18; Leviticus 20:6; 1 Samuel 28:7-8; Acts 8:9-24
Brian
P. Copenhaver (ed. and trans.), Hermetica (1992) [a translation
of two of the most important texts influencing Renaissance magical philosophers
such as Ficino]
Edward Fenton (ed.), The Diaries of John Dee (1998) [the daily life of a Renaissance magician]
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (ed.), Paracelsus: Essential Readings (1999)
Francesco Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, ed. M. Summers (1929; first pub. 1608)
Frances
Hill, The Salem Witch Trials Reader (2000) [also contains
material from historical and literary authors]
Michael Hunter and Annabel Gregory (eds.), An Astrological Diary of the Seventeenth Century: Samuel Jeake of Rye, 1652-1699 (1988) [interesting example of the daily life of an amateur astrologer]
James VI, Daemonologie, ed. G.B. Harrison (1966; first pub. 1597)
Alan
C. Kors and Edward Peters (eds.), Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: a
Documentary History (revised 2nd ed. 2001; first ed. 1972, covering
only from 1100 and containing forgeries)
Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum (c.1486; trans. 1929) [the translation by Montague Summers is unreliable but the only one available as yet]
Henry C. Lea, Materials Towards a History of Witchcraft, 3 vols., ed. A.C. Howland (1939)
Peter G. Maxwell-Stuart (ed.), Investigations into Magic: Martin Del Rio (2000; first pub. 1599-1600) [Not yet in the ND Library, as far as I know]
Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts, Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland: James VI's Demonology and the North Berwick Witches (2000) [plenty of source material transcribed, with annotations; for a primary sources study would count as a foreign text. NOT in the ND library yet, but available in paperback.]
Robert Pitcairn (ed.), Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, 3 vols. (Bannatyne Club, 1833)
Barbara
Rosen (ed.), Witchcraft in England, 1558-1618 (1991)
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) [the classic English attack on witchcraft trials; paperback edition available from Dover]
George Sinclair, Satans Invisible World Discovered
(1685; repr. 1871) [a Scottish defence of trials]
Johann
Weyer, Witches, Devils and Doctors in the Renaissance: Johann Weyer,
De Praestigiis Demonum, ed. G. Mora, trans. J. Shea (1991; first pub.
1563) [the classic European attack on trials; the abridged translation,
seen here, is also available in the library]
