The Witchcraft Sourcebook

This book is a collection of 61 documents illustrating the development of ideas about witchcraft from ancient times until the eighteenth century (the blurb says “to the twentieth century”, but apart from a 1917 Norwegian drama, the latest document is The Repeal of the English and Scottish Witchcraft Statutes of 1736). The majority of the sources come from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when tens of thousands of people (mainly women) were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe and colonial America. During these years the prominent stereotype of the witch as an evil magician and servant of Satan emerged. Catholics and...