Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria: Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and Reason of State in Early Modern Europe

by Wolfgang Behringer , Translated by J. C. Grayson , David Lederer

• ISBN13: 9780521482585
• ISBN10: 0521482585
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-01-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This is a major, groundbreaking study by a leading scholar in the field of continental witchcraft studies. Based on an intensive search through central and local legal records for south-eastern Germany, an area extending well beyond but including present-day Bavaria, the author has compiled a thorough overview of all known prosecutions for witchcraft in the period 1300-1800. He shows conclusively that witch-hunting was not a constant or uniform phenomenon, and that three-quarters of all known executions for witchcraft were concentrated in the years 1586-1630, years of particular dearth and famine. The book investigates the social and political implications of witchcraft, and how the mechanisms of persecution served as a rallying cry for partisan factionalism at court. The author also explores the mentalities behind witch-hunting, emphasizing the complex religious debates between believers and sceptics, and Catholics and Protestants.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	ix	(2)
List of tables	xi	(2)
Preface and acknowledgements	xiii	(4)
List of abbreviations	xvii
1 Introduction	1	(33)
Witch trials in historiographic context	1	(16)
Investigating witch trials and learned discourse in southeastern Germany	17	(12)
Methodology	29	(5)
2 Moving toward a social history of witchcraft	34	(81)
Quantification in synchronic and diachronic juxtaposition	35	(30)
Witch trials and popular magic	65	(24)
A `crisis of the late sixteenth century'?	89	(26)
3 The wave of persecutions around 1590	115	(97)
Contemporary interpretations	115	(6)
The course of the persecutions	121	(37)
Triggering factors	158	(25)
Mechanisms of persecution	183	(11)
The breakdown of consensus	194	(12)
Regulatory efforts at the end of the persecutions	206	(6)
4 The struggle for restraint, 1600-30	212	(110)
The witch craze at its peak	212	(1)
The Protestant solution	213	(3)
The Catholic stance hardens	216	(14)
Formation of an opposition party in Bavaria	230	(17)
Learned debate, 1601-4	247	(22)
Conflict over the mandate against superstition and witchcraft of 1612	269	(22)
Predominance of the moderates in Bavaria	291	(19)
Triumph of the moderates in southern Germany	310	(12)
5 Perpetuation through domestication 1630-1775	322	(33)
Convergence of trial procedure	322	(9)
Novel polarities and structural changes of trials	331	(13)
The last executions for witchcraft 1749-75	344	(11)
6 The final Catholic debate	355	(33)
From Tanner to Spee	355	(2)
The onset of Catholic debate	357	(2)
Public debate and the victory of the Enlightenment, 1766-70	359	(22)
Combating superstition after the `witchcraft war'	381	(7)
7 Conclusions	388	(28)
Witchcraft trials and learned discourse in southeastern Germany: a summary	388	(12)
Structures and regions in comparison	400	(5)
Witch trials and social crises	405	(11)
8 Sources and literature	416	(41)
Sources	416	(9)
Literature	425	(32)
Index	457