The European Witch-Craze

While 16th- and 17th-century English pamphleteers portrayed those accused of witchcraft as impoverished and elderly, court records suggest that it was just as likely to be powerful women who stood trial.

In 1615 Katharina, mother of the great scientist Johannes Kepler, was accused of witchcraft. Ulinka Rublack asks what her landmark trial tells us about early-modern attitudes towards science, nature and the family.

An introduction by Geoffrey Parker on the European Witch-craze of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Andrew Allen describes how the toad owes its relationship with witchcraft to the virulent poisons that its warty skin produces.

British attitudes to witchcraft during the Tudor era tended to be less extreme than those of contemporary Europeans, argues Victoria Lamb.

Alison Rowlands investigates the case of a 'child-witch' during the Thirty Years War.

Robin Briggs believes some historians produce more fantasies than the witches they study.

More witches were executed in the German-speaking territories than in any other part of Europe. Why was the German witch-hunt so assiduously and successfully prosecuted?

Comparisons between the English and Scottish witch-hunts have been drawn from as early as 1591. Using recent research on the subject from both sides of the border, Christina Larner offers a timely reassessment of their differences.

David Nicholls examines the central position of Satan in early modern French popular culture.