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Chapter 7: Witchcraft for Further Reading Chapter 7: Witchcraft For Further Reading There is a huge literature on witchcraft, which continues to grow every year. The best place to start on any topic is the four-volume Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, edited by Richard Golden (New York, ABC-Clio, 2006). The most up-to-date general survey, which specifically address the issue of why women were more likely to be accused, is Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 3rd ed. (London, Longman, 2006). Another solid survey is Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1985). Bengt Ankarloo, Stuart Clark, and William Monter, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Period of the Witch Trials (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), is part of a six- volume series covering witchcraft and magic in Europe from biblical and pagan societies through the twentieth century. Some studies promote ideas that have proved to have little basis in fact, such as the idea that witches were members of a pre-Christian cult of worshippers of the goddess Diana, or that witch-hunting was primarily an attempt to wipe out knowledge of birth control. The list of readings that follows includes only the most important basic studies, the conclusions of which have continued to shape our understanding of the witch hunts, and works that focus on the issue of the gendered nature of witchcraft. For further suggestions, see the general studies noted earlier and also two recent review essays: Garthine Walker, “Witchcraft and History,” Women’s History Review 7, no. 3 (1998), 425–32, and Barbara Becker-Cantarino, “‘Feminist Consciousness’ and ‘Wicked Witches’: Recent Studies on Women in Early Modern Europe,” Signs 20 (1994), 152–75. For references to older works, see H. C. Erik Midelfort, “Witchcraft, Magic and the Occult,” in Steven Ozment (ed.), Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research (St. Louis, Center for Reformation Reserach, 1982), pp. 183–209. An excellent survey and critique of many schools of witchcraft research is Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (London, Routledge, 1996). Elspeth Whitney, “The Witch ‘She’/The Historian ‘He’: Gender and the Historiography of the European Witch Hunts,” Journal of Women’s History 7 (1995), 77–101, explicitly analyzes the role of gender in witchcraft studies. Older general studies that continue to be useful include Julio Caro Baroja, The World of the Witches (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1964); H. R. Trevor-Roper, The European Witch Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Other Essays (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1969); Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (London, Routledge, 1970); Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971); H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witchhunting in Southwestern Germany 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1972); Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt (New York, Basic Books, 1975); E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands during the Reformation (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1976). Darren Oldridge (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader (New York, Routledge, 2001) includes secondary articles on a range of topics, as does my Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2007); both of these books are designed for students. Brian Levack has edited two multivolume collections of articles, Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, 12 vols. (New York, Garland, 1992; vol. 10 looks specifically at women), and New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, 6 vols. (New York, Routledge, 2001). Other wide-ranging collections of articles include Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen, eds., Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centers and Peripheries (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989); Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts (eds.), Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996); Stuart Clark, ed., Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). Owen Davies and Willem de Blécourt (eds.), Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe (New York, Manchester University Press, 2004), and Witchcraft Continued: Popular Magic in Modern Europe (New York, Manchester University, 2005), are collections that deal with witchcraft after the end of the witch trials; both emphasize the continued power of beliefs in witchcraft in many parts of Europe. There are many good collections of original sources: Barbara Rosen, ed., Witchcraft in England 1558–1618 (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1991); P. G. Maxwell- Stuart (ed.), The Occult in Early Modern Europe: A Documentary History (New York, St. Martin’s, 1999); Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters, eds., Witchcraft in Europe 400– 1700: A Documentary History, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Brian Levack, The Witchcraft Sourcebook (New York, Routledge, 2003). Marion Gibson has edited two collections of sources: Early Modern Witchcraft: Witchcraft Cases in Contemporary Writing (London, Routledge, 2001), includes scholarly editions of the surviving witchcraft pamphlets from Elizabethan and Jacobean England, sixteen in all, and Witchcraft and Society in England and America, 1550–1750 (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2003), includes many types of texts. Elaine G. Breslaw, Witches of the Atlantic World: A Historical Reader and Primary Sourcebook (New York, New York University Press, 2000), includes primary documents and scholarly interpretations of European, Native American, African, South American, and African American beliefs about witchcraft. Hans Peter Broedel, Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft: Theology and Popular Belief (New York, Manchester University Press, 2003), is the first book- length study in English of the most influential witchcraft treatise. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), is an enormous work that analyzes hundreds of witch treatises and related writings. Recent work on witchcraft has stressed the fact that patterns of persecution differed widely in different areas of Europe, and many of the best studies are those that focus on a specific city, country, or region. See Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice 1550–1650 (London, Basil Blackwell, 1989); Gustav Henningsen, The Witch’s Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (Reno, University of Nevada Press, 1980); David Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch: The System of the Sacred in Early Modern Terra d’Otranto (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1992); Christina Larner, Enemies of God: The Witch Hunt in Scotland (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Carlos Nogueria, “Sexuality and Desire: The Witches of Castille,” Revista Brasileira de Historia 15 (1987–88), 169–84; Valerie Kivelson, “Through the Prism of Witchcraft: Gender and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Muscovy,” in Barbara Evans Clements et al. (eds.), Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991), pp. 74–94, and “Patrolling the Boundaries: The Uses of Witchcraft Accusations and Household Strife in Seventeenth-Century Muscovy,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 19 (1995), 302–23. Sally Scully, “Marriage or a Career: Witchcraft as an Alternative in Seventeenth-Century Venice,” Journal of Social History 28 (1995), 857–76; James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); Edmund M. Kern, “Quotidian Distinctions: Women, Gender, and Witchcraft in Styria, 1550–1750,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2000); Christine Worobec, Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia (Dekalb, Northern Illinois University Press, 2001); P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, An Abundance of Witches: The Great Scottish Witch-Hunt (London, Tempus, 2005); Malcolm Gaskill, Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2005). Single-case studies provide fascinating details that general surveys cannot. Michael Kunze, Highroad to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft, trans. Willian E. Yuill (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1987), provides a gripping narrative of a single case of otherwise obscure people charged with witchcraft in Bavaria; this is a book that is impossible to put down, and, although slightly fictionalized in terms of details, is based on exhaustive archival research. Retha Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989), which explores the case of one of the most prominent women ever accused of witchcraft. Gilbert Geis and Ivan Bunn, A Trial of Witches: A Seventeenth-Century Witchcraft Persecution (London, Routledge, 1997), traces an English case of two women hanged for witchcraft, with in-depth analysis of the court proceedings. Despite the sensational subtitle, James A. Sharpe, The Bewitching of Anne Gunter: A Horrible and True Story of Football, Witchcraft, Murder, and the King of England (London, Routledge, 1999), provides careful reconstruction of a case involving a young woman who claimed to be
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