witch craze terror and fantasy in baroque germany

The trials of a number of these witches were well documented some resulted in 300 manuscript pages as judges carried out examination after examination while attempting to establish what they saw as the truth. The German-speaking lands include some areas of the most severe witch-hunts nearly half of Europe's condemned witches were burnt in the Holy Roman Empire.

The book is attractively produced and well illustrated, and Yale University Press is to be congratulated for publishing so handsome a volume at so reasonable a price. She has researched extensively in German archives and early modern printed works she also has a firm grasp of recent German writing in her field. Her style is fluent and accessible, but those who examine the 59 pages of closely printed notes will rapidly see the depth of scholarship that underpins her work. Lyndal Roper is an original and insightful historian of witchcraft, and the publication of this major work is most welcome. Over the past decade, the witch-hunts have constituted a rich seam of historical writing, yet the topic remains one of the most puzzling, and most debated, in European history.

Between the mid-15th and the mid-18th centuries, perhaps 50,000 people were executed as witches in Europe, and innumerable demonological tracts appeared in which the intellectual foundations of witch-hunting were restated and elaborated.

Witch craze terror and fantasy in baroque germany