The Witch Persecutions: An Early History of the Witch Hunts In Europe.

“Professor Burr gives us accurate translations and reprints of some of the most important documents relating to the witch-persecutions in Europe from Johannes Nider in 1437 to Cotton Mather in 1689. From the reading of these terrible chapters in the history of human thought, one rises impressed with the common goodness of all religions, no less than with the common weakness of all theologies. If any one doubts the evolution of mankind in word and in deed, let him read these authentic records of doubt in God’s power to hold his universe to the good, the true, the beautiful, of man’s confession of Satan’s omnipotence, his abdication of self-control, his casting off of honor, love and pity, his utter abandonment to irrational thoughts and debauched imaginations, and then turn to Browning and Lowell for evidence of the great change that has come over the minds of men….Man can never err in the same way again. Still, in America recent attacks on academic liberty of speech and action show that we have not yet reached the ideal.” -Alexander F. Chamberlain, The Citizen, Volume 3, March, 1897

This is a survey of primary sources for the history of the witch persecutions. Written late in the 19th Century, this collection doesn't attempt any analysis of the roots of the phenomena other than clerical abuse and mass insanity. Most importantly, these texts give insight into the cascading paranoia which characterizes witch hunts of any historical period. Chapters include: The Theory Of Witch-Persecution; The Beginnings Of The Witch-Persecutions; The Witch-Persecution At Trier; The Witch-Persecution At Bonn; The Witch-Persecution In Scotland; The Witch-Persecution At Bamberg; The Witch-Persecution At Würzburg; The Methods Of The Witch-Persecutions; Select Bibliography. “The belief in witchcraft and the persecution of those supposed to practice it have been almost universal in human history. Christianity inherited both the belief and the persecution from the religions, Jewish and pagan, which preceded it. But, under the influence of its monotheistic faith and its humane spirit, it was long before the belief became throughout Christendom a panic and the persecution an epidemic. When, however, in the thirteenth century, the scholastic theology, in its love of logical completeness, gave new prominence to the Devil and his followers as the counterpart and parody of God and his church and when, in the fourteenth century, the Holy Inquisition, successful in rooting out the heretics, turned its idle hands to the extirpation of those viler sinners whom it believed plighted wholly to Satan, the terror grew. The witch-persecutions it engendered ravaged for centuries all Christian lands, and have not yet wholly died away. It is with these persecutions, from their rise into full activity in the fifteenth century to their culmination in the seventeenth, that the present study deals. It seeks to illustrate their source, their scope, and their methods. With the superstitions which suggested the charges it concerns itself little. Both in these and in the procedure there is much too foul or too brutal for reproduction here. It was, indeed, no small part of the evil of the matter, that it so long debauched the imagination of Christendom.”

INTRODUCTION. THE THEORY OF WITCH-PERSECUTION. THE NATURE AND REALITY OF WITCHCRAFT. THE DUTY OF PERSECUTION. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE WITCH-PERSECUTIONS. WITCH-PERSECUTION IN THE EARLIER FIFTEENTH CENTURY. THE WITCH-BULL OF 1484. THE WITCH-HAMMER. THE WITCH-PERSECUTION AT TRIER. THE SCOPE OF THE PERSECUTION. THE RECANTATION OF LOOS. THE WITCH-PERSECUTION AT BONN. THE WITCH-PERSECUTION IN SCOTLAND. THE WITCH-PERSECUTION AT BAMBERG. THE WITCH-PERSECUTION AT WÜRZBURG. THE METHODS OF THE WITCH-PERSECUTIONS. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY.