This course is centred upon an extended examination of a single text, the infamous Malleus maleficarum. The Malleus is a crucial text, for it introduced into a (sort of) scholarly text the so-called “elaborated theory of witchcraft” which brought together a number of disparate and disconnected themes in medieval discourses of demonism and magic to create the idea of the maleficent witch--that is, a witch (usually female) operating in a formal alliance with the devil to work mischief and mayhem throughout Christian society. It was this notion of the witch and witchcraft that came to underlie most of the major top-down prosecutions in Catholic and Protestant countries in Europe from the late 15th century to the middle of the 17th.
- Professor: Raiswell Richard