HIST 4165

This seminar course centres upon an extended examination of the infamous witch-hunters' manual, the Malleus maleficarum, first printed in 1486. The Malleus is a crucial text, for it helped spread the "elaborated theory of witchcraft" which argued that witches made a formal alliance with the devil to work maleficent magic. Yet for all of its influence on the witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Malleus is a very poorly argued book, full of contradictions. Along with analysis of the treatise, this course will use the legal sections of text to re-enact a witch trial.