Introduction

In Norway, death by burning was also applied as a penalty, although many culprits were executed by sword, Knutsen, Gunnar, Troldomsprocesserne på Østlandet. En kulturhistorisk undersøgelse (Tingbogsprojektet: Oslo 1998), pp. 142f.Google Scholar

Johansen, Jens Chr. V., Da Djævelen var ude…Trolddom i Danmark i det 17. århundrede (Odense University Press: Viborg 1991), pp. 242–282.Google Scholar

Johansen’s book is still among the most important works on Danish witchcraft. Key works also include Mitchell, Stephen A., Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages (University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia 2011);CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Appel, Hans Henrik, Tinget, magten og æren. Studier i sociale processer og magtrelationer i et jysk bondesamfund i 1600–tallet (Odense University Press: Viborg 1999);Google Scholar

Wittendorff, Alex, ‘Trolddomsprocessernes ophør i Danmark’ in Historisk Tidsskrift, 92/1 (1992), pp. 1–28 and ‘“Evangelii lyse dag” eller hekseprocessernes mørketid? Om Peder Palladius’ historieopfattelse’ in Tradition og kritik. Festskrift til Sven Ellehøj, Christensen, Grethe et al. (eds.) (Den Danske Historiske Forening: Copenhagen 1984), pp. 89–119,Google Scholar

and Danish works by Gustav Henningsen, ‘Anmeldelse af Da Djævelen var ude…Trolddom i det 17. århundredes Danmark’ in Historisk Tidsskrift, 92/1 (1992), pp. 131–149, and Heksejægeren på Rugård (Skippershoved: Ebeltoft 1991).Google Scholar

The important works on Italian witchcraft prosecution are all linked to studies on the Roman Inquisition. The most recent monographs in English are the two volumes by Mayer, Thomas F., The Roman Inquisition on the Stage of Italy, c. 1590–1640 (University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia 2014) and The Roman Inquisition. A Papal Bureaucracy and Its Laws in the Age of Galileo (University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia 2013);CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Black, Christopher, The Italian Inquisition (Yale University Press: New Haven 2009)Google Scholar

and Decker, Rainer, Witchcraft and the Papacy. An Account Drawing on the Formerly Secret Records of the Roman Inquisition (University of Virginia Press: Charlottesville and London 2008),Google Scholar

and Duni, Matteo, Under the Devil’s Spell. Witches, Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in Renaissance Italy (Syracuse University Press: Florence 2007),Google Scholar

see also Tamar Herzig’s article on the Italian witchcraft prosecutions in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern and Colonial America, Brian P. Levack (ed.) (Oxford University Press: Oxford 2013), pp. 249–267.Google Scholar

In Italian, the collected volume edited by Matteo Duni and Dinanora Corsi on the Roman Inquisition and witchcraft, Non la vivere la malefi ca. Le streghe nei trattati e nei processi (secoli XIV–XVIII) (Firenze University Press: Florence 2008) and the monograph by Di Simplicio, Oscar, Autunno della stregoneria, Malefi cio e magia nell’Italia moderna (il Mulino, Ricerca: Bologna 2005).Google Scholar

The most comprehensive work on the Roman Inquisition is the newly published Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, by Adriano Prosperi in coll. with John Tedeschi and Vicenzo Lavenia, 4 vols. (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale 2010); essential reading also includes Del Col Andrea, L’inquisizione in Italia. Dal XII al XXI secolo (Libri Editore Mondadori: Milan 2006);Google Scholar

Prosperi, Adriano, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Giulio Einaudi Editore: Torino 1996);Google Scholar

Romeo, Giovanni, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell’Italia della Controriforma (Sansoni Editore: Florence 1990) and Esorcisti, confessori e sessualità femminile nell’Italia della Controriforma (Le lettere: Florence 1998);Google Scholar

on the grey area of saints, witches and the Counter-Reformation, see also Gentilcore, David, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester University Press: Manchester 1998);Google Scholar

Jacobsen Schutte, Anne, Aspiring Saints. Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition, and Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618–1750 (Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore 2001).Google Scholar

See Pihlamäki, Heikki (ed.), Theatres of Power. Social Control and Criminality in Historical Perspective (Matthias Calonius Society: Helsinki 1991).Google Scholar

A similar argument is posed by Knutsen, Gunnar, Servants of Satan and Masters of Demons. The Spanish Inquisition’s Trials for Superstition, Valencia and Barcelona, 1478–1799 (Brepols: Turnhout 2009), pp. 2f.Google Scholar

The semantic field as introduced by Reinhardt Koselleck. Although I find great inspiration in conceptual historians as Koselleck and Quentin Skinner, this study does not pretend to be one. My references to Koselleck are limited to some Danish works by Nevers, Jeppe and Niklas Olsen (eds.) Begreber, tid og erfaring (Hans Reitzels Forlag: Copenhagen 2007);Google Scholar

see also Nevers, Jeppe, ‘Til begreberne! En skitse af to begrebshistoriske analysestrategier’ in Historiefagets teoretiske udfordring. Hansen, Per H. and Jeppe Nevers (eds.) (University Press of Southern Denmark: Odense 2004), pp. 81–105.Google Scholar

English translation in Bloch, Marc, ‘Toward a Comparative History of European Societies’ in Lane, Frederick C. and Jelle C. Riermersma (eds.), Enterprise and Secular Change. Readings in Economic History, George Allen and Unwin: London 1928, pp. 494–522.Google Scholar

Dillinger, Johannes, ‘Evil People’. A Comparative Study of Witch Hunts in Swabian Austria and the Electorate of Trier (Charlottesville, VI: University of Virginia Press 2009).Google Scholar

Knutsen (2009), see also Norwegian historian Liv Helene Willumsen, Witches of the North. Scotland and Finnmark (Brill: Leiden 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

See Cameron, Euan, Enchanted Europe. Superstition, Reason, and Religion 1250–1750 (Oxford University Press: Oxford 2010);Google Scholar

Clark, Stuart, Thinking with Demons. The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford University Press: Oxford 1997).Google Scholar

Kieckhefer, Richard, The European Witch Trials. Their Foundation in Learned and Popular Culture, 1300–1500 (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1976), esp. ‘Introduction’ and ‘Distinction of Popular and Learned Tradition’;Google Scholar

Cohn, Norman, Europe’s Inner Demons. An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt (Sussex University Press: London 1975).Google Scholar

The earliest work inspired by anthropology is probably Trevor-Roper, Hugh, The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (HarperCollins: London 1969),Google Scholar

see also Henningsen, Gustav, The Witches’ Advocate. Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (University of Nevada Press: Reno 1980).Google Scholar

Ginzburg, Carlo, The Night Battles. Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, transl. by Tedeschi, John and Anne (Routledge and Kegan Paul: London 1966/1983); the micro-historical approach was unfolded in The Cheese and the Worms, transl. by Tedeschi, John and Anne (Johns Hopkins University Press and Routledge and Kegan Paul: New York and London 1976/1982/1992); ‘L’inquisitore come antropologo’, Danish translation ‘Inkvisitoren som antropolog’, in Spor, Thing, Morten (ed.) (Museum Tusculanum: Copenhagen 1999), pp. 142–151.Google Scholar

Del Col, Andrea, ‘I processi dell’inquisizione come fonte: Considerazioni diplomat-iche e storiche’ in Annuario Istituto storico italiana per l’eta moderna e contemporanea, vol. 35–36 (1983/84), pp. 31–50, here esp. p. 44; see also the introduction to Domenico Scandella Known as Menocchio. His Trials Before the Inquisition, trans. by Tedeschi, John and Anne, (Renaissance Studies: Binghampton, NY, 1997), pp. xlv–xlix.Google Scholar

Ruggiero, Guido, Binding Passions. Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance (Oxford University Press: Oxford 1993).Google Scholar

Davis, Natalie Zemon, Fiction in the Archives (Stanford University Press: Stanford 1987), p. 3;Google Scholar

see also Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, Silencing the Past. Power and the Production of History (Beacon Press: Boston 1995), esp. pp. 1–30.Google Scholar

Cohen, Elizabeth, ‘Back Talk: Two Prostitutes’ Voices from Rome c. 1600’ in Early Modern Women. An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2 (2007), p. 95, p. 101.Google Scholar

See Jansson, Karin Hassan, ‘Våld som aggression eller kommunikation? Hemfridsbrott i 1550–1650’ in Historisk Tidskrift (Sweden), 126:3 2006, pp. 429–452, esp. 445f.;Google Scholar

see also Österberg, Eva and Erling Sandmo, ‘People Meet the Law. Introduction’, in People Meet the Law. Control and Confl ict Handling in the Courts, Sogner, Sølvi and Eva Österberg (eds.) (Universitetsforlaget: Stamsund 2000), pp. 9–26;Google Scholar

and Sandmo, Erling, ‘Volden som historisk konstruksjon’ in Nord Nytt 1999:77, pp. 61–74.Google Scholar

The Danish Archive for Folklore has a collection of photocopied trials in its collection. Extracts of trials have been published by Jacobsen, J.C., Danske Domme i Trolddomssager i øverste Instans (G.E.C. Gad: Copenhagen 1966) and Christenze Kruckow. En adelig Troldkvinde fra Chr. IV’s Tid (G.E.C. Gad: Copenhagen 1972), Grønlund, David, Historisk Efterretning om de i Ribe Bye for Hexerie forfulgte og brændte Mennesker (Ribe 1784). Extracts of trials can also be found in the collective volumes of published court records from the lower courts, for instance from Skast (Southwestern Jutland), Aasum (Funen) and Elsinore (Zealand).Google Scholar