Articles
Title: Witchcraft, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe
- Author:
- DONATELLA LIPPI, DOMIZIA WEBER
- Language:
- EN
- Journal:
- Archives of the history and philosophy of medicine
- Year:
- 2012
- Volume:
- 75
- Number:
- 1
- Start page:
- 68
- Final page:
- 73
- ISSN:
- 0860-1844
- Keywords:
- History of witchcraft, history of witch-hunts, witchcraft's investigations
Read Witch-hunts supported by the Roman Catholic Inquisition began in the Late Middle Ages. In 1487, the notorious
Malleus Maleficarum was published, inaugurating the
period of witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe which
would last for the following two centuries. The witch
trials in Early Modern Europe became a major issue in
the 17th century: persuasion and some torture was used
to make people confess to a covenant with the Devil. Different methods were used in the examinations: archive
records provide a rich amount of them. In this article, the
Authors provide a short introduction about witchcraft,
focusing on the situation in Northern Italy during the
period of 16th-17th century, using original sources and
archive records1.