The Routledge History of Witchcraft is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of the belief in witches from antiquity to the present day, providing both an introduction to the subject of witchcraft and an overview of the on-going debates.
This extensive collection covers the entire breadth of the history of witchcraft, from the witches of Ancient Greece and medieval demonology through to the victims of the witch hunts, and onwards to children’s books, horror films, and modern pagans. Drawing on the knowledge and expertise of an international team of authors, the book examines differing concepts of witchcraft that still exist in society and explains their historical, literary, religious, and anthropological origin and development, including the reflections and adaptions of this belief in art and popular culture. The volume is divided into four chronological parts, beginning with Antiquity and the Middle Ages in Part One, Early Modern witch hunts in Part Two, modern concepts of witchcraft in Part Three, and ending with an examination of witchcraft and the arts in Part Four. Each chapter offers a glimpse of a different version of the witch, introducing the reader to the diversity of witches that have existed in different contexts throughout history.
Exploring a wealth of texts and case studies and offering a broad geographical scope for examining this fascinating subject, The Routledge History of Witchcraft is essential reading for students and academics interested in the history of witchcraft.
Editor’s Preface
Part 1: Witches in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages
Giorgos Andrikopoulos: Witches in Greece and Rome
Marco Frenschkowski: Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology in the Bible, Ancient Judaism and Earliest Christianity
Naomi Janowitz: Demons and Witchcraft in the Early Church
Michael D. Bailey: Witchcraft and Demonology in the Middle Ages
Martine Ostorero: The Rise of the Witchcraft Doctrine
Part 2: The Early Modern Witch Hunts: Regions and Issues
Matteo Duni: Witchcraft and Witch-Hunting in Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy
Johannes Dillinger: Germany – "the Mother of the Witches"
Dries Vanysacker: Witch Hunts in the Low Countries (1450-1685)
Maryse Simon: Witch Hunts in France
Lu Ann Homza: Witch Hunting in Spain: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
James Sharpe: Witch Hunts in Britain
Per Sörlin: Witchcraft in Scandinavia
Petr Kreuz: Witch Hunts in Eastern Central Europe
Petr Kreuz: Witch Hunts in Eastern Europe
Robert W. Thurston: The Salem Witch Hunt
Abaigéal Warfield: Witchcraft and the Early Modern Media
Raisa Maria Toivo: Witchcraft and Gender
Nicole J. Bettlé: Child-Witches
Edward Bever: Witchcraft in Everyday Life
Kathryn Edwards: The Interrelationship of Magic and Witchcraft
Part 3: Modern Concepts of Witches
Adam Jortner: Child Eaters and Other Problems of Democracy: Witchcraft and the American Frontier
Owen Davies: Witchcraft Accusations in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe
Peter Geschiere: Shifting Figures of the Witch in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa
Linda J. Jencson: Wicca
Per Faxneld: Disciples of Hell: The History of Satanism
Part 4: Witches and the Arts
Sigrid Schade: Witchcraft and Early Modern Art (1450-1550)
Justyna Szachowicz-Sempruch: The Witch Figure in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature
John Stephens: Where Have All the Witches Gone? The Disappearing Witch and Children’s Literature
David Nash: Witchcraft in Film
Biography
Johannes Dillinger is Professor of Early Modern History at Oxford Brookes University. He has published widely on witchcraft and magic, political crime, and constitutional history. His previous publications include Hexen und Magie (2018) and Magical Treasure Hunting in Europe and North America (2012).
'The history of witchcraft, once narrowly focused on early modern Europe, now ranges widely across time and territory, and reaches deeply into every nook and cranny of human activity and experience. This diverse collection of essays, by leading experts in their fields, both reflects this remarkable historiographical development and does full justice to the importance of the subject in the twenty-first century.'
Malcolm Gaskill, University of East Anglia