Witchcraft and Magic in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe

In their study of witchcraft and magic in 16th and 17th-century Europe, Geoffrey Scarre and John Callow provide an examination of the theoretical and intellectual rationales which made prosecution for the crime acceptable to the continent's judiciaries. Crucial to their approach is the conflict between supposedly rational and irrational systems of belief. Through the use of scholarship in the fields of anthropology, gender and historical studies, they present a vision of witch belief as central rather than, as was once thought, peripheral to intellectual and theological debate in early modern Europe.